Managing Tor

Tor is used for anonymous browsing and online privacy, shielding users’ internet activity from being tracked by websites, ISPs, and other third parties.
It also helps circumvent censorship and access restricted content.
Tor accomplishes this by routing traffic through a series of encrypted relay servers, making it difficult to trace the connection back to the user. 

A user may access the Tor network using the Tor Browser, or other applications that provide Tor routing services to applications like web browsers running on the local machine. There are apps available for phones, and free software available for most operating systems to achieve this.
Some Commercial VPNs also provide servers that connect to the Tor network.

Tor’s typical uses:
Anonymous Browsing:
Tor masks a user’s IP address, making it harder for websites to track their online activity. 






Freedom of Speech:
Tor is used by journalists, activists, and others to protect their identities and communicate freely, especially in countries with internet censorship. 






Censorship Circumvention:
Tor allows users to bypass internet restrictions and access blocked websites and content. 






Security: 

Tor encrypts all internet traffic, providing a layer of protection against surveillance and eavesdropping. 






Dark Web Access: 

Tor is often associated with the dark web, which is a part of the internet that can only be accessed through the Tor network. 




It’s important to be aware that:
Tor is not fully anonymous:
While Tor significantly enhances privacy, it doesn’t guarantee complete anonymity. 


Poses direct and indirect security risks:
The dark web can contain illegal and harmful content. 

Many commercial websites block access to users on the Tor network.
Tor may be used to mask the exfiltration of data from an organisation.
Tor cannot encrypt the traffic between an exit relay and the destination server, so eavesdropping is still possible, and Law enforcement have used various methods to exploit vulnerabilities on Tor Applications.

Speed:
Tor can sometimes slow down browsing speeds due to the encryption and routing process and bandwidth contention at exit nodes, this makes streaming video, gaming and other applications fail, and even small file downloads can take a long time to complete. 

It is important to restrict access to Tor in commercial environments, as well in organisations that have a responsibility for the safeguarding of children or vulnerable adults. Blocking access to Tor can be challenging, as they have a ‘Relay node’ network, which changes regularity, which is not discoverable centrally, or listed.

Our products:

• We provide dynamic lists of IP address and domain data for deployment on firewalls, DNS servers and other infrastructure to block access to commercial VPN’s.
• We provide dynamic lists of IP address data to identify the source IP addresses of commercial VPN providers.
• We provide dynamic lists of data to detect and block other applications and services, block TOR, and proxy services.
• We process firewall and other logs to detect commercial VPN, Tor, Proxy and other anomalous use.
• We provide information to assist organisations adopt and implement clear policies with respect to blocking undesirable applications and technologies and assist their infrastructure in being more effective with the application of policy rules and data services.