so we've gone over the course introduction, we've talked about some ethics, but now it's time to talk about what you really came here for, which is tor.
tor is really a set of privacy tools for the online world.
it consists of a browser and a network proxy tool used by millions every year and it's most commonly known as being used to browse the dark web.
it was actually created by the us government and it's short for the onion router or tor.
the tor project has two major components to it, the tor browser and the tor proxy.
when you think about tor, you're probably most familiar with the tor browser.
this is a version of mozilla firefox built for secure internet browsing and it routes all of its traffic through the tor proxy.
and the tor proxy is what actually handles the network communication so you can access dark websites or access regular online websites seamlessly.
both of these work hand in hand.
you can use the tor proxy without the tor browser, though i wouldn't recommend it unless you know what you're doing.
and we'll talk about that a little bit later in this course.
so the big question that always comes up from some people is why would you ever use tor?
and there's a lot of legitimate reasons to use tor.
to avoid censorship or to speak out.
this is commonly done by whistleblowers.
there's also usage of illegal and illicit activities which definitely takes place or you might just want to hide your online identity or like we're doing throughout this course is mostly just practice with security tools.
it's important to remember that tor is just a set of security tools.
it can be used for good and bad, but at its core, tor is about privacy.
privacy is used by many types of people for many types of things.
a little bit later, we'll talk about some myths surrounding tor and the dark web in general, but before we go too deep into that, it's important to get an understanding of how the internet works as a whole.
now if you have any networking experience, it experience, this will probably be very basic for you, but it's important to give this understanding to people who may not understand how the internet they're using currently works today.
so let's go into that in the next video.