The website can see where you are coming from (and track you), and your internet service provider can see which website you’re loading (and track what you’re doing and sell advertising based on your activity).īut if you open Tor Browser and load the same website, none of those parties can spy on you. When you load a website in a normal web browser like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge, you make a connection over the internet directly from your house (or wherever you happen to be) to the web server you’re loading. Tor Browser Lets People Browse the Web Anonymously But the CIA is the first intelligence agency to make the leap.Websites that end in “.onion” are known as Tor onion services - or if you want to be dramatic about it, the “dark web.” Here’s how it all works. The National Police of the Netherlands even has an onion service related to its dark-web criminal takedown operations.

Also called an onion service, Facebook launched one in 2014, and The New York Times added one in 2017. Over the years, several organizations have made so-called onion sites-a dedicated version of their website that they configure and host to be accessible through the Tor anonymity network. The service protects your IP address and browsing online by encrypting the traffic and bouncing it around a series of waypoints to make it very difficult to trace. Tor is an anonymity network that you access through a special browser, like the Tor Browser, and that uses its own URLs.

On Tuesday, the CIA announced its own Tor 'onion service,' so that people around the world can browse the agency's website anonymously-or, you know, send history-altering tips. But now, the CIA is staking out a more public presence there. The anonymity service Tor has grown in popularity around the world over the past few years, but it has also long been a tool for intelligence agencies and clandestine communications-not to mention endless cat-and-mouse games between law enforcement and criminals.

Tor onion sticker