Directly answering the question
Yes—police can investigate people using Tor, but they usually cannot “magically” track every Tor user in a universal way. Whether investigators can identify a specific person depends on what evidence they can collect (for example, at endpoints) and whether there are mistakes or additional identifying signals.
What “track Tor” can mean in practice
“Tracking Tor” can refer to different goals:
- Identifying a user behind Tor activity.
- Linking Tor activity to a particular device or account.
- Determining whether someone accessed a specific service.
Those are not the same. Tor is designed so that one network observer (by itself) cannot easily learn both who you are and what you do at the same time. However, identification can still be possible through other information sources.
A simple mental model (and why the answer is conditional)
Think of Tor as making it harder to connect the start and the end of a communication from a single observation point. If investigators only observe one part of the chain, they may see encrypted traffic without enough context to name a person.
But if they can observe or obtain information at other points—such as your device, your browser/app behavior, or the service you connect to—then correlation or direct identification becomes more plausible.
Key limitations and common exceptions
The ability to identify someone using Tor can change based on several factors:
- Endpoint exposure: If a device or software environment leaks identifying details, it can undermine anonymity.
- Account logins and patterns: Using real identities, linked accounts, or consistent behavioral patterns can enable association with a person.
- Errors and operational mistakes: Reusing identifying data, misconfiguring settings, or clicking/visiting content in ways that reveal information can create evidence.
- Investigation scope and vantage point: Different jurisdictions and legal processes can change what data can be obtained and from where.
Because you asked for police specifically, the important practical point is: “Can police track Tor?” is not answered by the Tor network alone. It’s answered by what investigators can legally and technically collect outside the network layer.
What you can check to understand your own exposure
If your goal is to assess how investigation could happen, focus on the places that are typically most identifying:
- The device and browser environment (what data could be exposed).
- Any accounts or services you log into.
- Whether you reuse the same identifying information across sessions.
- Whether your network or application settings could introduce non-Tor traffic.
If you want a clearer answer for a specific scenario, specify what “track” means to you (identify a person vs. confirm access to a site) and what you control (device, browser, accounts, and login behavior).