About TorWatch
TorWatch is an independent publisher covering Tor, the dark web, privacy tools and crypto privacy. It has no ownership ties to any project, company or service it writes about. No link on the site pays a commission, and no tool's placement on a page is paid for.
Every page is written by Michael Miller, a cybersecurity practitioner, speaker and educator whose specialisms are security engineering and the Tor network. His author page covers his background and links to the LinkedIn profile you can check it against.
What TorWatch covers
The site has four sections and a news page. The home page sorts them by the situation you're in.
- Tor
- How the network and Tor Browser work, how to get past a block with bridges, how Tor compares with a VPN, Tails and Whonix, the cases where Tor users were identified, and the network's 2026 usage figures.
- The dark web
- What it is, how to reach it, legitimate onion sites with the operator's own source for each address, search engines, the scams aimed at newcomers, and a dated record of darknet market seizures and exit scams.
- Privacy tools
- One pick per job, from passwords and messaging to VPNs, email and browsers, with the audit, court record or policy each pick rests on.
- Crypto privacy
- What Bitcoin and Monero reveal, what an exchange keeps, and where privacy coins stand under US, EU and UK rules.
- News
- Short notes on sentencings, takedowns and decisions by the Tor Project and privacy companies, each tied to the official document behind it.
The readers are people setting up Tor for the first time, people who have used it for years, journalists and sources in countries that censor the internet, and crypto holders who want to know what the ledger gives away.
Who pays, and who doesn't
TorWatch is not owned by, funded by or partnered with the Tor Project, any VPN or email provider, any messenger, any exchange or any onion service on its pages. Links to those services are ordinary links. None carries a referral code, and nobody is paid when you sign up through one.
Where a company behind a recommended tool has changed hands, been ordered by a court or published a narrower audit than its marketing suggests, the tool's page says so beside the recommendation. The methodology page explains which kinds of evidence a verdict can rest on, and which it can't.
Nothing on TorWatch tracks readers. The privacy page lists what the web host's own logs can still record.
Corrections and tips
Pages that depend on a version number, a usage figure or an onion address carry the date it was last checked. When a fact on a page turns out to be wrong or out of date, the page is corrected, and the source for the new version is linked in the same place as the old one. The editorial policy covers how sources and news notes are checked.
To report an error, send a tip or ask about something the site covers, use the contact page. A link to the document that shows the problem makes a correction quickest.