They also use it to replace traditional VPNs, which reveal the exact amount and timing of communication. Corporations use Tor as a safe way to conduct competitive analysis, and to protect sensitive procurement patterns from eavesdroppers. Activist groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recommend Tor as a mechanism for maintaining civil liberties online. Groups such as Indymedia recommend Tor for safeguarding their members' online privacy and security. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) use Tor to allow their workers to connect to their home website while they're in a foreign country, without notifying everybody nearby that they're working with that organization. Journalists use Tor to communicate more safely with whistleblowers and dissidents. Individuals also use Tor for socially sensitive communication: chat rooms and web forums for rape and abuse survivors, or people with illnesses. Tor's hidden services let users publish web sites and other services without needing to reveal the location of the site.

Individuals use Tor to keep websites from tracking them and their family members, or to connect to news sites, instant messaging services, or the like when these are blocked by their local Internet providers. Tor provides the foundation for a range of applications that allow organizations and individuals to share information over public networks without compromising their privacy. It also enables software developers to create new communication tools with built-in privacy features. Tor is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. Today, it is used every day for a wide variety of purposes by normal people, the military, journalists, law enforcement officers, activists, and many others.

Navy in mind, for the primary purpose of protecting government communications.

It was originally developed with the U.S. Tor was originally designed, implemented, and deployed as a third-generation onion routing project of the U.S. Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location.

Tor project online