How many members are using the TOR Browser?

[Larry]

Recently I was in a discussion with a friend and he mentioned this browser, that I had not heard of https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc-osx.html.en - I understand that with a VPN your identity is completely hidden on the web. I understand that the military use it - but today many other people use it.

However I understand that you are still traceable......

What is your experience with it?

[gunug]

I have experimented with it; but I have settled for using Opera for the time being!  Seemed like Tor needed some work to get it the way I wanted it!

[Xairbusdriver]

We don't know. That's kinda the point of TOR (The Onion Router).

Have you don't any searching on the web? BTW, if you use Google, they will be recording/storing what you search for.

Perhaps these few quotes from Wikipedia may help:

Tor enables its users to surf the Internet, chat and send instant messages anonymously, and is used by a wide variety of people for both licit and illicit purposes.

Tor is not meant to completely solve the issue of anonymity on the web. Tor is not designed to completely erase tracks but instead to reduce the likelihood for sites to trace actions and data back to the user.

While Tor does provide protection against traffic analysis, it cannot prevent traffic confirmation (also called end-to-end correlation).

In July 2016 the complete board of the Tor Project resigned.

As one commenter stated, "TOR has a press problem" because of miss-usages in the past. Perhaps that's the reason for the "complete board" change?

From what I've read, it could be useful if you or family/friends are being web-stalked. I do have a VPN app but seldom use it. It may boil down to who you can trust; a single entity selling a service or thousands of un-known individuals (volunteers) and their various ethical standards. There are many options to provide similar protections.