Run Tor Bridges to Defend the Open Internet

We believe everyone should have private access to the open internet, but not everyone is able to enjoy the luxury Tor provides. Freedom to publish, share, and access information online is critical for a healthy society, yet governments and entities around the world deny people this universal human right. All of the relays that make up the Tor network are publicly listed, so that means one way to try to prevent people from using Tor is to blacklist the public IP addresses of all of the thousands of Tor relays.

For example, the governments of China, Iran, and Kazakhstan exercise information control by trying to block Tor.

However, thanks to bridges, Tor users are still able to connect to the network when the public Tor relays are blocked. Bridges are private Tor relays that serve as stepping stones into the network. Not only are bridges private, they can also modify their network packets in a way that it's difficult for an observer to conclude that somebody is using Tor. Censored users are able to select bridges fromBridgeDBor directly in Tor Browser’s Network Settings.

The link for this article located at Tor Blog is no longer available.