The Tor Project Inc.

Tor Browser is an easy-to-use web browser built on top of a modified version of Firefox. Unlike most mainstream browsers, though, Tor Browser is designed to protect your privacy and anonymity first and foremost.

Tor Browser routes your traffic through the Tor network and has special modifications that prevent websites from "fingerprinting" or identifying you based on your browser configuration.

There are two main benefits of using Tor Browser:

1. Your internet service provider, and anyone watching your connection locally, will not be able to track your internet activity, including the names and addresses of the websites you visit.

2. The operators of the websites and services that you use, and anyone watching them, will see a connection coming from the Tor network instead of your real Internet (IP) address, and will not know who you are unless you explicitly identify yourself.

Tor Browser is a straightforward and easy way for anybody to use the Tor network. It's useful for anyone who wants to route around censorship or protect their identity while accessing the internet. Tor Browser is available for desktop (macOS, Windows, and Linux) and Android.

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"For people who want to reduce their exposure as much as possible, Tor Browser is the gold standard for privacy." - Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Part of the Tor Project's mission is to further the popular understanding of privacy technologies, and we believe we can achieve it by combining educational efforts with usability efforts. Popular understanding is to not only be aware of such privacy technologies but to also be able to use and control them.

With that in mind, we decided to integrate user experience research into our digital security training with a single program. In this program, we connect with local communities on-the-ground to offer education and training on privacy technologies, collect feedback on Tor, and build a well-connected community.

We focus on visiting users in places where censorship and surveillance are pervasive and dangerous, and where Tor is the most needed. From 2017 to 2019, these activities reached an audience of 800 people through 71 activities in 22 cities and seven countries: Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Uganda.

More about this program: https://blog.torproject.org/reaching-people-where-they-are

Governments and other censors use a variety of tools to deny people access to the free and open internet. As a result, systems for getting around censorship, including Tor, must adopt a variety of measures as well.

Because the connection between Tor Browser and the guard relay is encrypted, parties observing a user’s internet connection (such as an ISP) cannot selectively block connections based on their content or destination. Some governments and ISPs have responded to this censorship evasion by attempting to prevent users from connecting to the Tor network in the first place.

One way to do this blocking is to prevent people from downloading the Tor Browser by blocking connections to the Tor Project website and its mirrors. We responded to this concern by launching the GetTor service, which allows users to make a request via email or twitter. The service responds with a link to a cloud storage site that the user can download Tor Browser from.
Another way to block access to the Tor network is to block connections to addresses published in the publicly available list of Tor relays. Tor bridges are Tor relays that are not in the public list, which makes blocking them more difficult.

More sophisticated censors use deep packet inspection (DPI) to recognize and block connec- tions. This method examines the data moving across the internet and tries to determine whether it’s Tor traffic. To counter this blocking, Tor uses pluggable transports. Pluggable transports disguise the traffic between the user and a Tor bridge so that it doesn’t look like Tor traffic.