Tor is a connection-based low-latency anonymous communication system.

Clients choose a source-routed path through a set of relays, and negotiate a "virtual circuit" through the network, in which each relay knows its predecessor and successor, but no others. Traffic flowing down the circuit is decrypted at each relay, which reveals the downstream relay.

Basically, Tor provides a distributed network of relays. Users bounce their TCP streams (web traffic, ftp, ssh, etc) around the relays, and recipients, observers, and even the relays themselves have difficulty learning which users connected to which destinations.

This package enables only a Tor client by default, but it can also be configured as a relay and/or a hidden service easily.

Client applications can use the Tor network by connecting to the local socks proxy interface provided by your Tor instance. If the application itself does not come with socks support, you can use a socks client such as torsocks.

Note that Tor does no protocol cleaning on application traffic. There is a danger that application protocols and associated programs can be induced to reveal information about the user. Tor depends on Torbutton and similar protocol cleaners to solve this problem. For best protection when web surfing, the Tor Project recommends that you use the Tor Browser Bundle, a standalone tarball that includes static builds of Tor, Torbutton, and a modified Firefox that is patched to fix a variety of privacy bugs.