r/TOR

Hello everyone. It's a pleasure to connect with you all through this community.

I recently installed the Tor browser on my personal computer. As a completely new user, I have some questions and concerns I'd like to clarify before I start using it regularly.

First of all, I'd like to explain why I initially decided to install it.

I currently work professionally in the economic and financial sector, so I constantly have to conduct research to complement other aspects of my work. I have a multidisciplinary approach that connects purely economic and financial areas with social ones to cover much more than I could with raw data alone.

I often encounter the problem of blocked pages or blocked or extremely biased information.

I've been considering many options, one being to use a VPN, like the one available from Surfshark. The other is to switch to a browser that gives me the opportunity to broaden my horizons, which is why I considered Tor as a valuable tool to achieve this goal.

I would like to know if Tor is the right tool for this task. I'm looking to understand the risks, implications, and pros and cons of using this browser. I'd also like to take this opportunity to clarify (if it's not true) whether the browser could pose vulnerabilities to my computer simply by installing or using it passively.

Thank you in advance for your time and attention.

Yes, I have read the rules.

On both Windows and Linux, I've noticed how there isn't a full-device TOR routing application for desktops. With the exception of RiseUp VPN, TailsOS, and QubesOS, the only desktop-based apps I know of including TOR are Brave Browser and TOR Browser. And on Android, there's Orbot.
In your opinion, would having a full device TOR routing app on desktops be of use for everyday systems like Windows and most Linux distros?

The Tor Project announced Tor 0.4.9.14, addressing several high-severity security vulnerabilities.

The developers explicitly state that the issues affect clients, onion services, directory authorities, and relays.

They strongly recommend upgrading immediately. Detailed vulnerability tickets will remain private for at least another week to give operators time to update.

Official Tor Project security release.

This is another significant security release following Tor 0.4.9.13 in September. The rapid succession of security fixes makes keeping Tor installations current particularly important.

For beginners, remember that Tor Browser and the underlying Tor software have separate version numbers. Users should update through their application's official update mechanism rather than manually replacing bundled components.

The Tor Project released Arti 2.7.0, its next-generation Tor implementation written in Rust. Tor says this version fixes multiple security issues ranging from low to high severity and specifically urges users of arti, arti-client, and `arti-ureq, especially people operating onion services—to upgrade promptly.

The release also advances Arti's eventual relay/directory-authority support and adds work around DNS streams, directory mirrors and RPC-based configuration. Arti is not replacing the Tor client inside everyone's stable Tor Browser today, so ordinary Tor Browser users don't need to install Arti themselves.