Tor Browser for Daily Use

One day, I was listening to an old episode of Michael Bazzell’s Privacy, Security, and OSINT Show (RIP), in which a Tor Project employee said he uses the browser full-time, and so do nearly all his colleagues. Until that point, I haven’t considered the utility of Tor for everyday activities on the clearnet.

I’m behind 7 proxies rn

You may currently be using an always-on VPN to hide your IP address and traffic from your ISP. Ultimately, a VPN is just a transfer of risk–you are trusting another company with all your data instead of your ISP. Onion routing, on the other hand, is a whole other “World Wide Web” with exits to the clearnet. I would suggest watching this Computerphile video to get a better grasp of how it works.

Tor is definitely not as slow as people make it out to be. If you are privacy-conscious, you likely already use some form of Firefox. Forks like Librewolf and Mullvad Browser are quite similar in configuration to Tor Browser, and hence occupy a similar tier of convenience. If you turn off Onion routing in Tor Browser, you would effectively have hardened Firefox. Moreover, if you already use a VPN, service providers already flag your traffic as suspicious and send you captchas and two-factor authentication prompts. In this matter, the cost of convenience of using Tor instead is nearly the same.

If you use Tor for typical activities like browsing forums, reading the news, and searching for answers, you help others as well as yourself. Normalizing Tor usage dilutes the traffic for those who may be using it for mission-critical tasks (like journalists in countries with oppressive regimes).

Comfymaxxing Tor Browsing

Ideally, you should already be using multiple browsers to separate various aspects of your life (putting your eggs in multiple baskets). If there are services you use frequently and want to stay logged into, you can use a browser like Brave for banking, work, or other more “official” uses, since Chromium will be most supported and secure. Oddly enough, my bank blocks VPN access, but allows me to log in through Tor (sometimes). Hence, in some cases, Tor may be more convenient than a VPN.

A minority of websites will block Tor connections (due to Cloudflare and such). At the same time, many popular websites like Facebook and Reddit have Onion sites. Prioritize Onion services by following this guide so that you never leave the Tor network. For example, snopyta.org provides lots of privacy-friendly replacements for things like YouTube, Twitter X, Google Docs, and has Onion services for all of them.

Everyone has a smartphone, so you can use Tor on it as well. Keep in mind that it will not be quite as un-fingerprintable as the desktop version, yet is probably still more private than any other phone option.

Another way to make the Tor experience more comfortable is to adjust the Security Settings to whatever level is acceptable to you. The Standard level enables JavaScript and other browser features, so keep that in mind.

Addons

Browser add-ons may be used for most, whose threat model doesn’t include state governments. While not all addons result in a unique fingerprint, keep it to a minimum. The point of Tor Browser is to have one standardized configuration, so any single connection blends in with the rest.

• You can use xBrowserSync, a cross-platform browser extension, to sync your bookmarks across all of your various browsers (mobile included).

• You should also be aware of LibRedirect, an addon which redirects social media links to privacy-respecting front-ends.

Conclusion

Those are just some things I felt aren’t often covered in discussions about Tor usage. Hopefully, I’ve made your browsing experience a little more tolerable, to where you would consider using Tor Browser on a daily or near-daily basis. Email me at hi@egor.app with any comments or suggestions of what else I should cover in this post.