The Tor network provides a way of remaining anonymous on the internet and many people assume they don’t need a VPN because of this.There is a lot of misinformation being promoted in various privacy circles about Tor. I decided to take a deeper look into using Tor without a VPN to find out if this still provided the levels of protection a VPN can provide. What happens if you use Tor without a VPN? Using Tor without a VPN could allow the operators of the Tor exit nodes to see your information or tamper with it, as it travels through their exit nodes. By using HTTPS downgrade attacks, encrypted HTTPS connections could still be snooped upon by forcing the connection to use HTTP as it leaves the Tor exit node. Whilst Tor can help in maintaining your privacy and keeping you anonymous on the Internet, it doesn’t offer the level of protection a VPN offers. As the connection leaving the VPN server can end up being better protected than a connection leaving the Tor network’s exit node. This is because with a reputable VPN, the VPN server is under the control of the VPN provider whilst the Tor exit node is operated anonymously. The Tor exit node could be run by people who are intent on keeping with the goals of the Tor project or they could be malicious parties, like hackers, government agencies or even rogue states. Let’s take a look at how Tor works without using a VPN to see potential issues in privacy and protection. The way in which the Tor network works is by channeling connections made from the Tor software installed on your device through a network of global Tor nodes. With special Tor nodes known as exit nodes providing an exit point from where the connection leaves the Tor network and carries on along the normal Internet routes to the website being connected to.

The website will only see the IP address of the Tor exit node, making it difficult to trace who made the connection and it’s this difficulty in tracing connections, that gives Tor the ability to provide privacy protection and keeps its users anonymous.

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