Misc

For sharing files over Tor, OnionShare is a good option. OnionShare is an open source tool for securely and anonymously sending and receiving files using Tor onion services. It works by starting a web server directly on your computer and making it accessible as an unguessable Tor web address that others can load in Tor Browser to download files from you, or upload files to you. It doesn't require setting up a separate server, using a third party file-sharing service, or even logging into an account.

Unlike services like email, Google Drive, DropBox, WeTransfer, or nearly any other way people typically send files to each other, when you use OnionShare you don't give any companies access to the files that you're sharing. So long as you share the unguessable web address in a secure way (like pasting it in an encrypted messaging app), no one but you and the person you're sharing with can access the files.

OnionShare is developed by Micah Lee.

Many exit nodes are configured to block certain types of file sharing traffic, such as BitTorrent. BitTorrent in particular is not anonymous over Tor.

No, we don't provide any online services. A list of all of our software projects can be found on our projects page.

Thank you for your support! You can find more information about donating on our donor FAQ.

Tor is designed to defend human rights and privacy by preventing anyone from censoring things, even us. We hate that there are some people who use Tor to do terrible things, but we can't do anything to get rid of them without also undermining the human rights activists, journalists, abuse survivors, and other people who use Tor for good things. If we wanted to block certain people from using Tor, we'd basically be adding a backdoor to the software, which would open up our vulnerable users to attacks from bad regimes and other adversaries.

There is nothing the Tor developers can do to trace Tor users. The same protections that keep bad people from breaking Tor's anonymity also prevent us from tracking users.

A few things everyone can do now:

  1. Please consider running a relay to help the Tor network grow.
  2. Tell your friends! Get them to run relays. Get them to run onion services. Get them to tell their friends.
  3. If you like Tor's goals, please take a moment to donate to support further Tor development. We're also looking for more sponsors - if you know any companies, NGOs, agencies, or other organizations that want anonymity / privacy / communications security, let them know about us.
  4. We're looking for more good examples of Tor users and Tor use cases. If you use Tor for a scenario or purpose not yet described on that page, and you're comfortable sharing it with us, we'd love to hear from you.

Documentation

  1. Help localize the documentation into other languages. See becoming a Tor translator if you want to help out. We especially need Arabic or Farsi translations, for the many Tor users in censored areas.

Advocacy

  1. The Tor community uses the Tor Forum, IRC/Matrix, and public mailing lists.
  2. Create a presentation that can be used for various user group meetings around the world.
  3. Create a poster around a theme, such as "Tor for Human Rights!".
  4. Spread the word about Tor at a symposium or conference and use these Tor brochures as conversation starter.

Even if your application is using the correct variant of the SOCKS protocol, there is still a risk that it could be leaking DNS queries. This problem happens in Firefox extensions that resolve the destination hostname themselves, for example to show you its IP address, what country it's in, etc. If you suspect your application might behave like this, follow the instructions below to check.

  1. Add TestSocks 1 to your torrc file.
  2. Start Tor, and point your program's SOCKS proxy settings to Tor's SOCKS5 server (socks5://127.0.0.1:9050 by default).
  3. Watch your logs as you use your application. For each socks connection, Tor will log a notice for safe connections, and a warn for connections leaking DNS requests.

If you want to automatically disable all connections leaking DNS requests, set SafeSocks 1 in your torrc file.

Vidalia is no longer maintained or supported. A large portion of the features Vidalia offered have now been integrated into Tor Browser itself.

There are a few reasons we don't:

  1. We can't help but make the information available, since Tor clients need to use it to pick their paths. So if the "blockers" want it, they can get it anyway. Further, even if we didn't tell clients about the list of relays directly, somebody could still make a lot of connections through Tor to a test site and build a list of the addresses they see.
  2. If people want to block us, we believe that they should be allowed to do so. Obviously, we would prefer for everybody to allow Tor users to connect to them, but people have the right to decide who their services should allow connections from, and if they want to block anonymous users, they can.
  3. Being blockable also has tactical advantages: it may be a persuasive response to website maintainers who feel threatened by Tor. Giving them the option may inspire them to stop and think about whether they really want to eliminate private access to their system, and if not, what other options they might have. The time they might otherwise have spent blocking Tor, they may instead spend rethinking their overall approach to privacy and anonymity.

Tor relies on the support of users and volunteers around the world to help us improve our software and resources, so your feedback is extremely valuable to us (and to all Tor users).

Feedback template

When sending us feedback or reporting a bug, please include as many of these as possible:

  • Operating System you are using
  • Tor Browser version
  • Tor Browser Security Level
  • Step by step of how you got to the issue, so we can reproduce it (e.g. I opened the browser, typed a url, clicked on (i) icon, then my browser crashed)
  • A screenshot of the problem
  • The log

How to Reach Us

There are several ways to reach us, so please use what works best for you.

Tor Forum

We recommend asking for help on the Tor Forum. You will need to create an account to submit a new topic. Before you ask, please review our discussion guidelines. At the moment, for the fastest response, please write in English. If you found a bug, please use GitLab.

GitLab

First, check if the bug is already known. You can search and read all the issues at https://gitlab.torproject.org/. To create a new issue, please request a new account to access Tor Project's GitLab instance and find the right repository to report your issue. We track all Tor Browser related issues at Tor Browser issue tracker. Issues related to our websites should be filed under the Web issue tracker.

Telegram

If you need help installing or troubleshooting Tor Browser and the Tor Forum is blocked or censored where you are, you can reach out to us on Telegram https://t.me/TorProjectSupportBot. A Tor support specialist will assist you.

WhatsApp

You can reach our support team with a text message to our WhatsApp number: +447421000612. This service is only available for text messages; videos or calls are not supported.

Signal

You can get help by sending a text message to our Signal number: +17787431312. Signal is a free and privacy-focused messaging app. This service is only available for text messages; videos or calls are not supported. After sending a message, our support agents will guide you and help troubleshoot your issue.

Email

Send us an email to frontdesk@torproject.org.

In the subject line of your email, please tell us what you're reporting. The more specific your subject line is (e.g. "Connection failure", "feedback on website", "feedback on Tor Browser, "I need a bridge"), the easier it will be for us to understand and follow up. Sometimes when we receive emails without subject lines, they're marked as spam and we don't see them.

For the fastest response, please write in English, Spanish, and/or Portuguese if you can. If none of these languages works for you, please write in any language you feel comfortable with, but keep in mind it will take us a bit longer to answer as we will need help with translation to understand it.

Blog post comments

You can always leave comments on the blog post related to the issue or feedback you want to report. If there is not a blog post related to your issue, please contact us another way.

IRC

You can find us in the #tor channel on OFTC to give us feedback or report bugs/issues. We may not respond right away, but we do check the backlog and will get back to you when we can.

Learn how to connect to OFTC servers.

Email Lists

For reporting issues or feedback using email lists, we recommend that you do so on the one that is related to what you would like to report. A complete directory of our mailing lists can be found here.

For feedback or issues related to our websites: ux

For feedback or issues related to running a Tor relay: tor-relays

Report a security issue

If you've found a security issue, please email security@torproject.org.

If you want to encrypt your mail, you can get the OpenPGP public key for this address from keys.openpgp.org. Here is the current fingerprint:

  pub   rsa3072/0x3EF9EF996604DE41 2022-11-15 [SC] [expires: 2024-12-11]
      Key fingerprint = 835B 4E04 F6F7 4211 04C4  751A 3EF9 EF99 6604 DE41
  uid Tor Security Contact <security@torproject.org>
  sub   rsa3072/0xF59EF1669B798C36 2022-11-15 [E] [expires: 2024-12-11]
      Key fingerprint = A16B 0707 8A47 E0E1 E5B2  8879 F59E F166 9B79 8C36

If you wish to participate in our bug bounty program, please be aware, submitting a security issue to a third-party website carries certain risks that we cannot control, as a result we'd prefer the report directly.

We are so sorry, but you have been infected with malware. The Tor Project did not create this malware. The malware authors are asking you to download Tor Browser presumably to contact them anonymously with the ransom they're demanding from you.

If this is your first introduction to Tor Browser, we understand that you might think we're bad people who enable even worse people.

But please consider that our software is used every day for a wide variety of purposes by human rights activists, journalists, domestic violence survivors, whistleblowers, law enforcement officers, and many others. Unfortunately, the protection that our software can provide to these groups of people can also be abused by criminals and malware authors. The Tor Project does not support or condone the use of our software for malicious purposes.

Tor is funded by a number of different sponsors including US federal agencies, private foundations, and individual donors. Check out a list of all our sponsors and a series of blog posts on our financial reports.

We feel that talking openly about our sponsors and funding model is the best way to maintain trust with our community. We are always seeking more diversity in our funding sources, especially from foundations and individuals.

Tor doesn't keep any logs that could identify a particular user. We do take some safe measurements of how the network functions, which you can check out at Tor Metrics.

Right now the path length is hard-coded at 3 plus the number of nodes in your path that are sensitive. That is, in normal cases it's 3, but for example if you're accessing an onion service or a ".exit" address it could be more.

We don't want to encourage people to use paths longer than this as it increases load on the network without (as far as we can tell) providing any more security. Also, using paths longer than 3 could harm anonymity, first because it makes denial of security attacks easier, and second because it could act as an identifier if only a small number of users have the same path length as you.

No. After eleven beta releases, we discontinued support of Tor Messenger. We still believe in Tor's ability to be used in a messaging app, but we don't have the resources to make it happen right now. Do you? Contact us.

We do not recommend using Tor with BitTorrent. For further details, please see our blog post on the subject.

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