Number of people reaching Facebook via Tor grows to one million

Facebook now registers an average of one million users every month who access the social network via Tor. In June last year that was just over half a million. Facebook has been offering the option since 2014.

To arrive at the monthly average of one million, Facebook counts the users who visit facebook.com or the onion site with the Tor browser, or via Orbot on Android. In 2014, Facebook put facebookcorewwwi.onion and the mobile version of that site online, eliminating the need for an exit node to visit with the Tor Browser.

Since January, the social network has been providing support for Tor connections to its Android app via the Orbot proxy app. In addition, Facebook points to the role it played in ensuring that the Internet Engineering Task Force designated .onion as a special-use domain name.

The average number of one million in thirty days is minimal of the total number of Facebook users, but the company believes it is important to offer methods to use its services securely. Dissidents, among others, use Tor to surf the Internet anonymously for reasons of privacy and security.