A Monero Wallet Setup for Tor Users

Monero protects what happens on the chain, but your wallet still touches the network — and that is where privacy is quietly lost if you are careless. A good setup makes sure the anonymity Monero gives you on-chain isn't undone the moment your wallet connects to the internet. Here is a practical, tool-agnostic approach for Tor users.

Pick a wallet that respects Tor

The two things that matter in a wallet, for this audience, are non-custodial key control and the ability to route its connection over Tor:

Whatever you choose, it must be non-custodial — you hold the seed, no one else holds your balance. If a "wallet" keeps your funds as an account balance you withdraw from, it is a custodian, not a wallet.

Route the connection over Tor

This is the step people skip, and it is the important one. Your wallet talks to a node to sync and, crucially, to broadcast transactions. If that connection runs over clearnet from your home IP, an observer — including the node — can tie your IP to your transactions at broadcast time. On-chain privacy does not cover this; only network privacy does.

Choose your node deliberately

Receiving hygiene

Putting it together

A sane setup looks like: a non-custodial wallet (Feather or the official GUI/CLI), connecting over Tor, ideally to your own node, receiving on fresh subaddresses, with your seed backed up offline. That combination keeps Monero's on-chain privacy from being undercut by the network layer — which is exactly where most avoidable leaks happen. Get the coins private and the connection private, and the two halves finally match.