so now that we've gotten an understanding of how the internet works, we want to see how tor fits into this equation.
tor didn't just come up from nowhere.
it was created at some point and the question is why was it created?
tor was officially sort of conceived as a concept from the us naval research laboratory in the 1990s.
that's where they developed onion routing as a way to protect online military communication.
and in 1998, the actual patent around onion routing was created and the us navy held the patent for this technology.
then in 2002, the tor project, the 1st beginnings of the tor project were developed.
so further work was given by the u. s. navy, by darpa to actually focus and create the tour project as we know it today.
more time was spent on it, more cycles, more money, more funding.
and then in 2004, the naval research laboratory released tour under a free license where anyone could use it and funding by the electronic freedom foundation began.
and this is really the prerequisite for 2006 where the tor project officially becomes a nonprofit and maintains responsibility for updating tor and keeping new tools, new solutions coming out.
and in between 2006 and 2014 a lot of things happened related to tor and the silk road and that's why in 2014 tor really started wanting to focus on marketing.
they wanted to combat views around the darknet and hidden services and all of this mystery surrounding tor about it being illegal or illicit or full of just bad content because that's not the primary use of it.
obviously if you're watching this you probably know like i do they've not done a great job.
most of the modern media around tour is not very positive.
it's mostly about all the illegal things.
it's not really touted as an actual security tool.
it's more touted as a way to see terrible things or buy drugs online.
that's probably the way you know about it and that's the way i 1st learned about it as well.
but that's why we're taking this course because there's so much more to tor to understand and to use.
so that's enough boring history lessons.
let's talk about some tor alternatives because tor is not the only thing that's sprung up in this space.
if you have any questions let me know.
otherwise i'll see you in the next one.