Is the Tor network really that safe?

About Tor:

Tor, also known as “Onion Routing” is a network that allows users to remain anonymous, it accomplishes high anonymity levels by using layers of encryption. It also disables all location tracking and possible surveillance. To access the Tor network you need a modified version of Mozilla Firefox ESR

History of Onion Routing

Onion Routing was developed in the mid 1990s by “U.S Naval Research Laboratory” employees. They started working on the project to protect US intelligence communications. The project was further developed and improved by the “Advanced Research Projects Agency”

How Onion Routing works, and why ‘Onion’?

An onion structure is formed by wrapping the data in many layers of encryption. The number of layers are equal to the number of relay nodes (computers in-between). As the content is being passed from one node to the next one it remains encrypted and no relay node knows where the origin or the destination of the content is. This is called ‘Onion’ because just like a real onion it consists of many layers.

Is Tor safe?

If you are careful then Yes ,it’s perfectly safe. Most deep-web criminals are caught because they are not careful, they usually do something risky. One example is many people that shop on illegal markets like ‘Dream Market’ do not encrypt their personal data before sending it to the seller. It is also really easy for the government to track vendors on markets like that. All the government needs to do is place many different orders from a seller and track down the origin of the package. Then all they have to do is cooperate with the post office to catch the sender red handed.

There are some new ways that the government is working on to track Tor users, one of their latest ideas is cross device communication using ultrasound. This will make your device emit ultra sound waves that contain information about your device, that data will then be picked up by nearby devices that will have a known location and will be sent to a database linking your device to that location. It is unclear if that will ever happen and if it does there will be many ways to bypass this tracking method.

Conclusion:

Some people say that ‘Onion Routing’ is unsafe because it has been made by the US Government, that is a false statement. It is perfectly safe as long as you are careful and do not leak any of your own information…