Copy TOR into your Applications folder* and launch the TorBrowser app (OS X users may need to right-click and choose “Open” to bypass Gatekeeper).

The first thing you’ll need to do is download the free TOR client from the Tor Project, it’s available for every major operating system: How to Use Tor on Mac OS X for Anonymous Web Browsing Thus, many of us won’t have a need for TOR, but if you do want to be anonymous on the web, or you plan on visiting a network or country where you anticipate restrictive internet filtering and access, it can be the easiest solution to reach the outside world using communication platforms you’re already familiar with. Similarly, I know many people who use Tor to be able to access those same websites through heavily restricted corporate network firewalls. For example, I have a friend who lives across the ocean in a large country with famously restrictive internet access, and many there have to use TOR or general proxy services to access fairly boring web sites the rest of us can get to without incident, like Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail.

For the vast majority of people, there probably isn’t a point, but Tor is very popular in certain regions of the world where internet access is restricted, monitored, or heavily filtered.

We’re going to focus on using Tor in Mac OS X, but there are Tor clients available for every significant OS, including Windows, Android, and Linux (there is currently no official iOS client).īefore beginning you might be wondering what the point of using TOR is. Though that may sound complicated, using Tor is actually quite simple. The Tor software protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location, and it lets you access sites which are blocked.

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