What Is Onion Routing?

Onion routing is a networking technique that prevents eavesdropping and other attacks and enables anonymous communication. A message sent through an onion network is encrypted with multiple encryption layers, resembling layers of an onion. The encrypted information traverses the network using onion routers, nodes that can decrypt a single encryption layer and uncover only the next message destination. The final encryption layer exposes the final destination, the message recipient.