Can TOR Keep You Anonymous? See How FBI Arrested An Illegal TOR User

In this article, we will see if TOR really keeps you anonymous, how FBI agency nabbed an illegal ISIS agent and we will also see how to stay truely anonymous while using TOR and surfing Darknet.

CyberSec_Sai
Coinmonks
Published in
5 min readJan 17, 2023

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Photo: Ralf Liebhold (Shutterstock)

Building the Story:

TOR, or The Onion Router, is a network that allows users to browse the internet anonymously. It’s often used by people who want to protect their privacy online, such as activists, journalists, and people living in oppressive regimes. But does TOR really keep you anonymous?

According to the article “The FBI Won’t Say Whether It Hacked Dark Web ISIS Site” in Vice website, in a case dealing with illegal ISIS activities, Muhammed Momtaz Al-Azhari was charged with attempting to provide material support to ISIS in May 2020. The FBI discovered that Al-Azhari visited a dark web site multiple times on May 14, 2019, that hosted unofficial propaganda and photographs related to ISIS. The site was hosted on the Tor anonymity network, which makes it difficult to determine the real IP address of visitors. However, the FBI was able to trace Al-Azhari’s IP address back to his grandmother’s house in Riverside, California. The FBI also found…

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CyberSec_Sai
Coinmonks

Security Researcher, CTI, Author. Writes About: Cybersecurity, Threat Intelligence, Darkweb, Tech, AI/ML, Crypto, Money, Investing, Finance, Startup, Freelance