[ignoramous]

At a very high level, Tor relays encrypted TCP traffic through atleast three intermediatories (relays). It is most effective for anonymity if used along with their Firefox based browser distribution. They do not recommend using Tor as a tunnel/proxy.

Here's a neat illustration by the Tor project of the protocol: https://2019.www.torproject.org/docs/onion-services.html.en

Here a webpage that describes Tor's v2 design in detail: https://2019.www.torproject.org/docs/onion-services.html.en

Here's the v1 (?): https://svn-archive.torproject.org/svn/projects/design-paper...

You can find some of the onion service addresses from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tor_onion_services

Facebook on Tor kicked off an interesting discussion: https://blog.torproject.org/facebook-hidden-services-and-htt...

[waldfee]

> They do not recommend using Tor as a tunnel/proxy

afaik this is because of leakage problems - which can happen silently (eg tor connection goes down, suddenly all your traffic goes through clearnet)

using whonix (https://www.whonix.org/) mitigates this problem

whonix in qubes is also an option https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Qubes

[ignoramous]

Thanks.

> eg tor connection goes down, suddenly all your traffic goes through clearnet

They did write a short doc on it on other possibilities, too [0].

> using whonix mitigates this problem

Yep and whonix is one among Tor's recommendations [1].

[0] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/Transparen...

[1] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/Transparen...