Tor usage in Turkey surges during Twitter ban

Since Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan implemented a ban on Twitter, Tor usage in the country has surged -- with connections nearly doubling from around 25,000 direct connects in the country to over 40,000, according the anonymous browsing tool's internal metrics.

While Twitter now appears to be blocked at the IP level, there are still a few ways to circumvent the ban, including using a Virtual Private Network to forge an encrypted tunnel outside of Turkey, using SMS (the method tweeted about by Twitter's policy account near the beginning of blocking efforts), and Tor. Because the anonymous browsing tool reroutes users' traffic through onion nodes throughout the world, it helps users bypass local censorship.