Pros and Cons of using Tor

Tor is one of the most popular hide IP tools as it is free and it allows users browse in (almost) total privacy.

Tor improves your security and your privacy through a network of virtual tunnels. With Tor, you have anonymous outgoing connections along with hidden services to protect not only your privacy but to give you more protection against traffic analysis attacks.

As any other solution Tor comes also with several downside you should be aware about. Here is a list of pros and cons for this tool.

Pros and Cons of Tor

Pros

• It’s completely free;
• Encrypts all traffic (incoming and outgoing) between his nodes;
• It is virtually virtually unbeatable (if properly configured)

Cons

• The configuration is not trivial;
• The perfomance is unpredictable as it depends on routes between the Tor network nodes;
• Not suitable for p2p applications such as Torrent;
• It only protects applications that are configured to work through Tor. No automatic configuration.
• As written on Tor’s Downloading page: “While Tor blocks attackers on your local network from discovering or influencing your destination, it opens new risks: malicious or misconfigured Tor exit nodes can send you the wrong page, or even send you embedded Java applets disguised as domains you trust.”

To sum up, Tor offers great privacy, it’s free, but it’s not very easy to use and the speed is unpredictable. Below you can a look to a schematic description of the way Tor works (Source: LinuxReviews.org).