Guides

A social network's widget can appear on a site you never intended to share with that network.

Intermediary page formats can give a platform another view of what you read and how you navigate.

A destination may learn which page sent you there, exposing a sensitive topic before you say a word.

A link can carry campaign and identity markers in its URL.

A click can be routed through a tracking intermediary before reaching the destination.

Some tracking vendors hide behind a site's own-looking subdomain, hoping ordinary third-party blocking will miss them.

Trackers can combine details about your device and browser into a recognizable fingerprint even after cookies are blocked.

Blocking ordinary cookies is insufficient if embedded services can reuse other browser storage across websites.

Cross-site cookies can turn unrelated visits into one persistent history.

A single ad network appearing on many websites can connect visits that feel separate to you.

A tracker embedded in a page can learn that you visited even though you never chose to deal with that company.

Torrent clients can ignore proxy settings or announce an ordinary IP address through tracker requests, defeating the privacy you expected.

Tor traffic crosses multiple relays, and the capacity and latency of those volunteer-operated relays vary.

The site may block Tor exits, its server may be down, or the current exit relay may have trouble reaching it.

Tor encrypts traffic inside the Tor network, but an ordinary website is reached from an exit relay.

Websites see shared exit-relay IP addresses and may apply automated abuse controls or explicit policies to those addresses.

Many people share the same Tor exit IP address, so a website's fraud system may interpret the combined traffic as automated or suspicious.

Tor Metrics publishes public data about relays, bridges, traffic, performance, and onion services.

Use a bridge when Tor Browser cannot connect directly because of network blocking, or when a direct connection to a public Tor relay would draw unwanted attention.

First confirm that ordinary internet access works and your device clock is correct.