This kind of question: "what is your threat model" "if you need a tool like this" presumes.
I value things like this because my threat model is "go F yourself".
Not you, all the entities that do not want you or me to have privacy and agency.
It doesn't matter what their reasons are from merely being nosy for no real reason, all the way to govenments trying to become panopticons.
You don't need a justification. No one needs a justification. "why do you need" is an absolutely invalid question from the first syllable.
And, I apologize for this because it will be unkind, but, when you roll over because you fear attracting attention, all you do is displace that attention onto someone else. Someone else takes on double hassle to pay for your avoiding hassle.
It doesn't go away. The attention is there regardless, and either we all bear a tiny bit and it's harmless, or a few bear it all and it kills them.
And then, when the the thorns are cut down, you end up in a worse world because now their behavior is no longer checked by any resistance. The level of grief you decided was tolerable, is no longer the level they will inflict. It's short-sighted and counter-productive in the long term. It's the same as all other examples of appeasement. Giving the bully what they want never actually accomplishes what the bully promises.
I'm trying to ask something slightly different, I think. If I'm trying to have ultimate anonymity, I know that I can do things that actually expose myself. I don't want to be a giant beacon saying "I'M DOING SOMETHING SECRET".
I know almost nothing about Tor, but with radios, if you don't have the right setup and usage, encrypted traffic is easily detectable, just not as easily decrypted. So, if you are dumb, you'll broadcast *very loudly* your location, that you don't want people to know what you are doing, and other data. If I were using radios and wanted my communications to be untraceable, I would use some very specific measures and avoid others.
I'm more asking, in what cases is Tor helpful and in what cases are you worse off for using it? And I was trying to give a use-case that wasn't just advertisers.
To add another side of it: The more of us use it for everyday innociuous daily tasks and work, the stronger the network becomes for the cases where it matters. Adding noise to signal for adversaries and making "just block tor" a less obvious choice for operators.
In practice the main thing to watch out for is TLS-stripping attacks where malicious exit nodes will try to downgrade your connection to cleartext HTTP. This will give you a warning in the browser. Don't allow it but ctrl+shift+L in Tor Browser to retry a new connection on a hopefully better circuit.
In general I'd also say it's unsafe to use tor with unencrypted unauthenticated cleartext HTTP since it allows exit nodes to do all sorts of shenangigans undetected. Make sure it's https://(...) or http://(...).onion (.onion Hidden Services are authenticated by cryptographic key and terminate straight at the endpoint without an exit from the tor network over internet so aren't subject to that as long as you make sure the domain name is correct)
I value things like this because my threat model is "go F yourself".
Not you, all the entities that do not want you or me to have privacy and agency.
It doesn't matter what their reasons are from merely being nosy for no real reason, all the way to govenments trying to become panopticons.
You don't need a justification. No one needs a justification. "why do you need" is an absolutely invalid question from the first syllable.
And, I apologize for this because it will be unkind, but, when you roll over because you fear attracting attention, all you do is displace that attention onto someone else. Someone else takes on double hassle to pay for your avoiding hassle.
It doesn't go away. The attention is there regardless, and either we all bear a tiny bit and it's harmless, or a few bear it all and it kills them.
And then, when the the thorns are cut down, you end up in a worse world because now their behavior is no longer checked by any resistance. The level of grief you decided was tolerable, is no longer the level they will inflict. It's short-sighted and counter-productive in the long term. It's the same as all other examples of appeasement. Giving the bully what they want never actually accomplishes what the bully promises.