This is because the IP addresses of Tor's nodes are publicly available. However, ISP will know that you're using Tor. Thanks to onion routing, your ISP can't know which site you're visiting or read your traffic. Can my ISP know that I'm using Tor and penalize me for it?īecause Tor has been used for illegal activities, some ISP might throttle or block Tor traffic.

Today's Tor network uses symmetric keys for encryption and asymmetric public/private keys for authenticating Tor nodes. Encryption was done with public keys and decryption with private keys.

In the original onion routing, public-key cryptography was used. Unlike traditional IP routing, Tor routing requires the sender to know in advance the route to destination, and keys of routers along the way. The focus is to hide IP addresses of source/destination and routers along the route rather than the message content itself. In summary, each node along the route has only partial information. However, A can't know who's C or the destination. This will reveal to A that the next hop is B. When A receives the message, it decrypts it with its key. Tor client first encrypts the message with C's key, then B's key, and finally A's key. Let's say, the message goes through nodes A (Guard), B (Relay) and C (Exit). Just as an onion has multiple layers, Tor traffic is encrypted repeatedly and then routed through multiple nodes.

Circuit: The path defined from source to destination via the three Tor nodes.

Traffic exits this node without Tor encryption. It can read the original message but doesn't know who sent it.

Exit Node: Removes the final layer of encryption to reveal the destination.

It removes another layer of encryption to obtain who's the exit node. It knows the next node but not the exit node or destination.

Guard Node: First Tor node to receive your message.This adds three layers of encryption to an outgoing message (and decrypts thrice an incoming message). Tor Client: Either the Tor Browser or a Tor-enabled program on your computer.A connection across Tor network consists of the following: When using Tor, traffic is routed through three Tor nodes or relays between source and destination. Three Tor nodes route traffic from source to destination.

Is using the tor browser illegal