A Tor exit node is the final relay in a Tor circuit. It forwards traffic from the Tor network to the requested public internet destination. The destination generally sees the exit node’s IP address rather than the user’s, but the exit relay is not an encryption layer for the connection’s contents.
This makes the exit node a trust boundary. A malicious or compromised relay may observe unencrypted traffic and metadata, but it cannot automatically read data protected by end-to-end encryption. For example, HTTPS helps protect web content between a browser and a website. Secure protocols also require users to heed authentication checks: SSH clients should verify server host keys and not ignore warnings. Defenders should treat exit relays as untrusted networks and use encryption and verification for sensitive communications.