Silk Road was an anonymous e-commerce website like Amazon and eBay, but with an emphasis on user security and privacy. It used two key pieces of technology to this end: Tor and Bitcoin. Tor is a global network of computers that routes internet traffic in a way that is nearly impossible to trace. It allowed users to connect to Silk Road without revealing their identity or location and without their internet providers knowing about it. The cryptocurrency Bitcoin, little known at the time, allowed users to pay or be paid for the goods listed on the site while staying anonymous.