Using a public Tor relay as your first Tor relay makes it clear to your local network that you are connecting to Tor, while still keeping your online activity secure and anonymous.
Use a bridge as your first Tor relay if connecting to Tor is blocked or if using Tor could look suspicious to someone who monitors your Internet connection.
It does so by camouflaging your connection so it cannot be recognized as a connection to Tor. As a consequence, the same technology can be used to hide that you are using Tor if it could look suspicious to someone who monitors your Internet connection.
<p>You can learn more about our security assessment of this time synchronization in our [[design documentation about non-Tor traffic|contribute/design/Tor_enforcement#non-tor-traffic]].</p>