Tor Project lays off a third of its staff due to the corona crisis

The Tor Project lays off more than a third of its staff; 13 of the 35 employees are fired. The non-profit organization is suffering from money problems due to the corona crisis.

“We had to make tough choices,” the company wrote in a blog post. “Like many foundations and small businesses, we have been hit hard by the Covid-19 crisis.” Until the crisis, the Tor Project had 35 employees, but is now scaling that back to 22. The company does not write what that means in concrete terms for business operations or for browser development. “We will continue to provide services for privacy, security and to circumvent censorship,” is all the blog post says.

The Tor Project is the developer of the browser behind the Tor network. It is a non-profit organization that mainly consists of donations from users. This is different from a few years ago, when the Tor Project was still mainly dependent on government subsidies. The company did not want that and has been actively calling on users to donate ever since.