Tor Browser

★★★★☆

When you really want (or need) to stay private while using the web, Tor is the way to go.

Private windows in normal browsers only “hide” your activity from other websites and your history. VPNs only hide your activity from whoever’s providing your internet connection. Even blocking trackers (or all third party cookies) like LibreWolf and Brave or using Privacy Badger do only goes so far (though it’s certainly a good start). (Speaking of Brave, that browser’s “Tor mode” is less thorough than the real thing.)

Drawbacks

The privacy does come at a cost, though:

• Tor bounces your activity around through multiple relays, kind of like chaining several VPNs together, to hide where you’re connecting from, which slows things down.
• The browser removes features that can be used to “fingerprint” your setup (even more than LibreWolf does), so sites that use those features or info for legit purposes can’t.
• While it supports Firefox extensions, they recommend not installing any in order to avoid adding more attack surface or (again) fingerprinting data.
• Some websites block access from Tor because attackers also use it to hide who and where they are.

What it’s For

OK, so it’s inconvenient for everyday browsing or shopping. But if you need to hide your tracks from a stalker or abuser, a harassment campaign, an abusive company with network access, an oppressive government agency, or just a nosy sysadmin, Tor can help you do that.

Tor can also get around network-level censorship to some extent, both with regular websites that might be blocked and by connecting to “onion” sites, websites hosted on the TOR network.

Even then, someone with access to your network traffic can still see that you are using Tor…just not what you’re doing with it. Snowflake and bridges are add-on layers designed to help disguise that further.

Using It

It’s built on Firefox, so [most of that review applies] as far as actually using it goes, both on desktop and Android. The hardening approach makes the experience a bit more like LibreWolf or IronFox. Sometimes you’ll get the wrong localization of a site depending on where the exit node ends up (like using a VPN, except with a VPN, you’re usually picking the exit yourself).

EFF has a guide to Tor as part of their Surveillance Self-Defense collection, and Tor’s own guide goes into more detail.

The browser is available on Windows, macOS, Linux (though not on ARM yet) and Android (you can add a repository to F-Droid). There’s no iOS version, but they recommend Onion Browser (iOS) and Orbot (not a browser, but proxies apps like a Tor VPN on both iOS and Android).