Be informed.

Tor Isn’t As Safe As You Think. Here Is Why
Zohair | Security Gladiators
18 November 2016
https://securitygladiators.com/tor-isnt-safe-think/

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The vast majority of the people who use Tor in order to gain anonymity are people who work in sensitive or even controversial lines of work. People who use Tor and its other services usually work as journalists, activists, whistleblowers in their daily lives in order to deliver the truth to their respective organizations.

But what if you’re not one of these people? Does that mean you can’t use the Tor network or it would be unethical of you to use the Tor browser just because you don’t work in the field of journalism or whistleblowing?

Thankfully no. Even if you just a regular internet user who is a bit more concerned about his/her privacy than the average user, means that you are well within your rights to use the Tor browser and carry out whatever it is you want to carry out without having to worry about leaking out your personal information or your online identity to people who may try to harm you if they got hold of your true identity.

With that said, Tor is used by privacy conscious people all over the world, so it doesn’t matter which part of the world you currently reside or plan to go to. Tor browser is truly for the masses since anyone with an internet connection and a laptop can make use of the software in order to gain anonymity and secure his/her private data.

What About The Other Side
We would be doing you an injustice if we didn’t make you aware of the other side of the coin regarding Tor.

While it is still true that many people who want to do good in the society make use of Tor whenever a need arises, media outlets have seen an increasing number of criminals turning to the services of Tor in order to gain anonymity and carry out their criminal acts without having fear of getting caught by law enforcement agencies.

That, as you can probably imagine, is a really bad thing.

Tor networks have been seen to be regularly used for port scans along with hacking attempts at sensitive services such as those of hospitals and banks. Tor networks have also been used by cyber criminals along with hackers to release, sell and then disseminate stolen data. It has also been used by cyber criminals to carry out many other forms of crimes on the internet that has ended up hurting a lot of innocent people in the process.

Though overall, the Tor network can be used both as a force for good and as a force of evil, from what we have seen in the past, it is mostly used as a force for evil. But that doesn’t mean that it can never be used to achieve something good and that is why for people like Edward Snowden, Tor is such a vital piece of technology that simply can’t be labeled either bad or good based on what a small percentage of people do or don’t do with the product.

What Are The Researchers Doing About It?
Because the Tor network can potentially become a very powerful tool, researchers around the world have been studying the software ever since its creation in order to improve it and protect it from being used by cyber criminals and hackers.

Now, researchers,
• Benjamin Greschbach of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology
• Tobias Pulls of Karlstad University
• Nick Feamster, Laura M. Roberts and Philipp Winter of the Princeton University in the United States of America

Have teamed up and have found out that Tor users aren’t as anonymous as they would like to think they are. In other words, Tor users can be identified if one can monitor a specific Domain Name System (DNS).

Researchers were also able to find out that Tor users could be identified without the use of any extensive equipment or technology, fairly accurately with nothing but information from a Domain Name System.