So, now that we know how it works, what exactly can we do with it?.

Because the information is split up into thousands of individual packets that each enter and exit from different servers, it takes an excessive amount of time and energy to find the source or the intended recipient without a hefty chunk of know-how and ingenuity on behalf of your would-be surveiller. It’s these gaps that make the traffic especially difficult (and some would argue impossible) to track. Each link in the chain is completely untraceable from the last, and depending on your preferred level of protection (and tolerance for a slow connection), your search queries, website visits, and communications can hop from as little as three to as many as 50 different locations around the globe before they successfully transfer from sender to receiver. To put it simply, Tor works by creating a series of relays in what’s known as a “meshnet,” a collection of nodes run by anyone who wants to support the service that jump from one to the other in random succession. Tor works by creating a series of relays in what’s known as a “meshnet.”

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