VPN vs. Tor

When it comes to surfing the internet anonymously, there are a few options you can rely upon. Among these options, the two most common ones are Tor (Onion Router) and VPN (Virtual Private Network).

Both these applications allow you to surf by hiding your IP address and location. This protects your from any entity that’s trying to track your activities. Also, both, Tor and VPN, help you bypass censored or geo-restricted sites, giving you access to all kinds of content on the internet.

However, one’s better than the other. Let’s take a look at which one offers more protection?

Tor

Tor, also known as the “Onion Router” is basically a service that anonymizes your activities on the internet. What happens is that it becomes difficult for any entity to trace back these activities to you. To put it simply, Tor gives you online privacy.

Also, Tor is a free application.

With Tor, your internet searches are routed through the Tor network, which consists of volunteered relays across the globe. The network routes your internet traffic through any these relays by choosing them randomly. The traffic, when it passes through these relays, is encrypted and decrypted several times until it ends up at the exit node, which is the destination system in the Tor network.

Basically, Tor distributes your internet traffic over multiple online locations. This prevents any single point from being used to trace back the traffic to you.

VPN

VPN offers protection by hiding your Internet Protocol address and encrypting the online traffic. When you connect via a VPN, the VPN server functions as your proxy and connects you to the desired website. As a result, only your VPN server’s IP address remains visible.

VPN provides protection for all your internet traffic, which means that no one, neither hackers nor your ISP (Internet Service Provider) can track your activity or look at your personal data.

The only thing they can see is that your connection is encrypted. VPNs are allowed for use by ISPs as they are often used by remote workers to connect with their organization’s network.

Key differences

With Tor, no one can trace searches or traffic back to you and the distributed network makes it hard for governments or organizations to monitor or shut down. However, Tor slows down your internet speeds due to the use of multiple relays. Also, many ISPs actively block out Tor relays and they are allowed to do so.

Finally, when the traffic is decrypted at the destination system, it becomes open for exploitation. Anyone can see what you’re searching for.

On the other hand, VPN does now slow down your internet speed because it relies on its own server. VPNs also offer a higher level of encryption. In some cases, you can also get protection from malware and viruses from VPN packages.

Therefore, VPN serves as a better option if you require overall protection. Tor is only good for anonymous surfing.