The problem with Tor, as I see it, is that it can easily make you more vulnerable rather than less so.
When I access some random website from home, my traffic is vulnerable to capture and analysis by my ISP, the intervening backbones, and the website that I am accessing. I don't trust my ISP and the backbone providers not to examine my traffic, but I do have quite a bit of confidence that they don't care about me. I'm not very interesting.
If I use Tor, I add another party who can capture and examine my traffic: The Tor exit node.
I most emphatically do not trust random Tor exit nodes not to examine my traffic. I'm quite confident that the NSA and other government organizations run their own Tor exit nodes--after all, a stream of traffic generated by people who are interested in hiding their activities is likely to be quite interesting.
I can encrypt my traffic...but not all of it, and do I really want to trust that everything important is properly encrypted?
If I had something to hide, I'd do so by blending into the crowd, not by slapping a big "I'm trying to hide" label on my traffic and sending it to the people most likely to be interested in it.
When I access some random website from home, my traffic is vulnerable to capture and analysis by my ISP, the intervening backbones, and the website that I am accessing. I don't trust my ISP and the backbone providers not to examine my traffic, but I do have quite a bit of confidence that they don't care about me. I'm not very interesting.
If I use Tor, I add another party who can capture and examine my traffic: The Tor exit node.
I most emphatically do not trust random Tor exit nodes not to examine my traffic. I'm quite confident that the NSA and other government organizations run their own Tor exit nodes--after all, a stream of traffic generated by people who are interested in hiding their activities is likely to be quite interesting.
I can encrypt my traffic...but not all of it, and do I really want to trust that everything important is properly encrypted?
If I had something to hide, I'd do so by blending into the crowd, not by slapping a big "I'm trying to hide" label on my traffic and sending it to the people most likely to be interested in it.