People must consent to run exit nodes, as running exit nodes puts them at more of a legal risk than just running a relay node that passes traffic. if you’re accessing an unencrypted website, the exit node can potentially monitor your Internet activity, keeping track of the web pages you visit, searches you perform, and messages you send. If you’re accessing an encrypted (HTTPS) website such as your Gmail account, this is okay – although the exit node can see that you’re connecting to Gmail. In the below diagram, the red arrow represents the unencrypted traffic between the exit node and “Bob,” a computer on the Internet. This node where traffic exits the Tor network is known as an “exit node” or “exit relay.” The last Tor node, where your traffic leaves the Tor network and enters the open Internet, can be monitored. For example, let’s say you are connecting to Google through Tor – your traffic is passed through several Tor relays, but it must eventually emerge from the Tor network and connect to Google’s servers. There are ways to provide extra security to help hide from local system administrators like using Tor bridges if your network administrators or your ISP block direct access to Tor, and obfuscation doing things to make figuring out your data and where you’re sending it mor difficult.However, most Tor traffic must eventually emerge from the Tor network. Those first hops out to the Tor network have to go through your local network and ISP. The origin and destinations are still the same You still need to follow the 101 tips we offered you in prior blogs to really utilize Tor’s benefits.ģ. This also doesn’t immediately prevent your local network administrator from being able to see what you’re trying to send or what you get back (which is why Tor isn’t enough!). Using services outside of Tor, alongside it is like using your real credit card to pay for the hotel under your fake name. The network administrator or authorities can pinpoint traffic right back to you. If you’re the only one using Tor in your physical location on your Internet Service Provider's (ISP’s) network, eventually, with enough monitoring, the person you’re trying to avoid, will figure it out and you'll just stick out like a sore thumb. After a while, if you're the only one using an alias, they can tell you're the one signing your bills Mary Winchester of Lawrence, Kansas. It’s similar to using a fake name when you go to a hotel a lot. What we can say is, "Tor will ensure that your IP address isn’t recorded on the other end of your internet exchange." That’s it. Side Note: There’s real mail services that do something like this, if you'd like to have some fun. If the letter was intercepted by a nosy third party somewhere in the middle, or even at your aunt’s house, they wouldn’t know where it came from or where it was supposed to go.Each person in the chain repeats the process until your aunt's reply gets back to you.She responds to the letter back to that last person, they shove the return letter into that old envelope and do a “return to sender.That new letter can't be opened without the old envelopes and the new data, but to your aunt, it looks like it came from that last person in the chain.Several times after this is repeated the last person holds on to all of those envelopes, removes your letter, repackages it, and sends the letter in a brand new envelope to your aunt.They put it in a new envelope and send it to someone else who does the same thing.You send it to someone that takes your envelope and scrambles the to and from information.So basically, instead of sending a letter straight to your aunt: Encryption is a technique that scrambles information so no one, but the sender and receiver can understand it.(the from and to addresses on an Envelope). Packets are the bundles of data you sent out and their routing information.Routing is how data is directed through the Internet.Whew, that’s a mouthful – let’s break that down a bit. S ending your data through several extra stops makes it difficult to link the originator of the data request (you) to the target of the request (The site's servers with the information you wanted). Tor is a browser that inefficiently sends and repackages your data through several relays and special encryption hubs on the internet, before arriving at it's final location. First, a quick definition of Tor Browser and then we'll explain: