If you are in a country where Tor is blocked, you can configure Tor to connect to a bridge during the setup process.

Select “Tor Network Settings” and “Use a bridge”.

If Tor is not censored, one of the most common reasons Tor won’t connect is an incorrect system clock. Please make sure it’s set correctly.

Tor Browser

Stay safe

Please do not torrent over Tor.

Tor Browser will block browser plugins such as Flash, RealPlayer, QuickTime, and others: they can be manipulated into revealing your IP address.

We do not recommend installing additional add-ons or plugins into Tor Browser

Plugins or addons may bypass Tor or compromise your privacy. Tor Browser already comes with HTTPS Everywhere, NoScript, and other patches to protect your privacy and security.

The Tor Project, Inc, became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2006, but the idea of “onion routing” began in the mid 1990s.

Just like Tor users, the developers, researchers, and founders who’ve made Tor possible are a diverse group of people.

But all of the people who have been involved in Tor are united by a common belief:

internet users should have private access to an uncensored web.

In the 1990s, the lack of security on the internet and its ability to be used for tracking and surveillance was becoming clear, and in 1995, David Goldschlag, Mike Reed,

and Paul Syverson at the U.S. Naval Research Lab (NRL) asked themselves if there was a way to create internet connections that don’t reveal who is talking to whom, even to someone monitoring the network.

Their answer was to create and deploy the first research designs and prototypes of onion routing.

The goal of onion routing was to have a way to use the internet with as much privacy as possible, and the idea was to route traffic through multiple servers and encrypt it each step of the way.

This is still a simple explanation for how Tor works today.

In the early 2000s, Roger Dingledine, a recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate, began working on an NRL onion routing project with Paul Syverson.

To distinguish this original work at NRL from other onion routing efforts that were starting to pop up elsewhere, Roger called the project Tor, which stood for The Onion Routing.

Nick Mathewson, a classmate of Roger’s at MIT, joined the project soon after.

From its inception in the 1990s, onion routing was conceived to rely on a decentralized network.

The network needed to be operated by entities with diverse interests and trust assumptions, and the software needed to be free and open to maximize transparency and decentralization.

That’s why in October 2002 when the Tor network was initially deployed, its code was released under a free and open software license.

Tor Browser

By the end of 2003, the network had about a dozen volunteer nodes, mostly in the U.S., plus one in Germany.

Recognizing the benefit of Tor to digital rights, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) began funding Roger’s and Nick’s work on Tor in 2004.

In 2006, the Tor Project, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, was founded to maintain Tor’s development.

In 2007, the organization began developing bridges to the Tor network to address censorship, such as the need to get around government firewalls, in order for its users to access the open web.

Tor began gaining popularity among activists and tech-savvy users interested in privacy, but it was still difficult for less-technically savvy people to use, so starting in 2005,

development of tools beyond just the Tor proxy began. Development of Tor Browser began in 2008.