See a Visualization of Tor’s Anonymous Data Flowing Around the World

For a tool that’s meant to serve as a cloak of online anonymity, Tor is surprisingly transparent. The nonprofit Tor project whose software powers its network of thousands of volunteer proxy computers also publishes a frequently updated collection of data about the location and bandwidth of those privacy-enhancing machines on desks and in data centers around the world. TorFlow, a project created by the data-visualization software firm Uncharted, maps the Tor network’s nodes and data movements based on the IP addresses and bandwidth of the “relay” computers that bounce around its users’ connections to prevent them from being censored or surveilled. “The whole point of the Tor network is to remain anonymous,” says David Schroh, one of Uncharted’s software engineers who built TorFlow. “But by visualizing it, you can see patterns you wouldn’t expect.” One unexpected takeaway: just how much it is actually privacy-loving Europe that supplies Tor’s bandwidth, despite the project’s American roots as a U.S.