Facebook, the tech media and social media giant, has joined the Web's most anonymous network, allowing users to hide their Internet traces through the Tor software, Wired reported.

Tor became more popular among legitimate mainstream users in 2013, though it has been criticized for its ability to hide criminal activity as well, according to The Guardian.

Tor was the service used by Silk Road, the online black market known for selling illegal drugs, before the FBI shut down the second incarnation of the site recently.

Facebook launched a Tor hidden service, a version of its website that runs the anonymity software Tor, on Friday, Wired reported.

It can only be accessed by users running the Tor software, which also comes with its own Web browser, which bounces connections by users off of random computers and volunteer servers around the Internet. This process makes it harder for spies to track the identity and sites visited by an individual.

Tor was developed based on technology used by the U.S. Navy, which explains why the State Department and Department of Defense are responsible for 60 percent of Tor's funding, The Guardian reported.

But the technology is backed by digital rights lobbyists, journalists and other agencies.

While users may now be able to hide from spies online, they are still vulnerable to the snooping of Facebook.

"No, you're not anonymous to Facebook when you log in, but this provides a huge benefit for users who want security and privacy," Runa Sandvik, a former Tor developer and advisor to the Facebook project, told NBC. "You get around the censorship and local adversarial surveillance, and it adds another layer of security on top of your connection."

This is a relief for Tor users since accessing Facebook has previously been blocked.

That is because Tor users appear to log in from unusual IP addresses all over the world, which in turn triggers safeguards in the site's security infrastructure.