Where an undercover or informant operation is impractical or impossible, measures to directly infiltrate the computer system may be possible. Undercover operations in which an investigator or informant infiltrates a criminal network (online or in real life) may be able to obtain access to encrypted channels of communication and be part of the evidence in e-mails, chats, and forums located on hidden services on the Dark Web.

In cases where monitoring communications is impossible due to anonymous Internet access methods such as the Tor browser or virtual private networks, other means have to be considered. Unfortunately, that’s the tradeoff for anonymity.īrett Shavers, John Bair, in Hiding Behind the Keyboard, 2016 When All Else Fails or Is Likely to Fail Because any requests you make go through a network of servers before reaching its destination, you’ll notice that it’s slower than other browsers you may have used. If you downloaded a document and opened it, the PDF or Microsoft Word file could contain resources that are downloaded outside of Tor, which would reveal your IP address.Īnother aspect of using Tor that you should be prepared for is a decrease in performance browsing the Web. If you setup the application to use Tor, it would still send out your IP address as it makes a direct connection to get the file. For example, let’s say you were downloading a movie using a torrent file-sharing application.

Unfortunately, some activities with the Tor network can reveal your identity. Any chat or instant messaging application that uses Tor is likewise made anonymous. Because communication between your browser and the site you’re visiting are bounced across different servers, the site can’t see where your request to view a page originated. John Sammons, Michael Cross, in The Basics of Cyber Safety, 2017 TorĪs we discussed in Chapter 7, Finding a job online, using the Tor browser ( you can browse, chat, and send instant messages anonymously.

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