Tor’s shadowy reputation will only end if we all use it

https://www.engadget.com/tor-dark-web-privacy-secure-browser-anonymous-130048839.html

by mikece • 3 years ago

341 351 3 years ago

jfengel2• 3 years ago

Sure. But why?

Right now it has a shadowy reputation because the only people who require that feature are criminals. A few of those are committing crimes against unjust laws, but they are badly outnumbered by widely-disapproved-of behavior.

The anonymity comes with a cost. Tracking makes for a smoother web experience for most people.

So it's a hard sell to say, "Hey, you should do this thing that makes your life harder, in order to help disguise criminals". There's good reason to think that ordinary people should take better care of their privacy, even if they don't realize it, but I don't think that they're itching to apply a technology that has a "shadowy reputation" for a reason.

netbioserror• 3 years ago

If everything is cost-benefit right down to atoms and energy, damn any principles, then what's the point? I'd rather take a stand for my privacy than make my life inconsequentially easier by assisting yet another questionable online service with tracking info. I highly doubt that info is as ubiquitously necessary as is asserted.

soco• 3 years ago

Can you please explain how is tracking making a smoother web experience for me? I mean really, what context am I missing here, that I can't grasp your statement?

throwawaysleep• 3 years ago

Allows the web to not cost you any money and for you not to have to pull out your credit card constantly.

jamal-kumar2• 3 years ago

Because what qualifies you as a criminal in one country qualifies you as a normal person just doing their thing in another, is that so hard to fathom?

Most of us don't live in authoritarian regimes where something as silly as saying the king looks like an idiot is a crime

shrimp_emoji5• 3 years ago

You can go to jail for insulting the Italian prime minister! And, in some (West!) European countries, even for insulting other countries' heads of state: https://www.politico.eu/article/european-countries-where-ins...

Also, deities: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law

zirgs4• 3 years ago

Shit like CSAM is illegal pretty much everywhere though.

pkoird4• 3 years ago

I would rather have an untracked janky web experience. I think you should think it through before speaking for others.

MattPalmer1086• 3 years ago

Not just criminals, also the intelligence community and people who are really into privacy.

pjc50• 3 years ago

I agree that most people don't care, but "Tracking makes for a smoother web experience for most people" is just nonsense - tracking slows down almost every single web page that uses it!

jbirer• 3 years ago

The internet has become progressively worse with the invention of smartphones and lowering the barrier of access for the common people, I would not like to see the same happen to Tor. If the long winded forum discussions and info sharing turns into Facebook tier posting I'll become depressed.

veave• 3 years ago

Are there any forums with "long-winded discussions" that exist in Tor only, other than kiwifarms?

swapfile7• 3 years ago

Yes.

RajT883• 3 years ago

If you have forums that haven't been raided by trolls and idiots, it's because they have a good moderation system in place.

That includes being selective about who you allow to have an account.

tenebrisalietum2• 3 years ago

A long time ago ... I recall certain sites and services (like a MUD I tried to join) would not allow you to make an account if you were from AOL. I forget if it was just by email address or if they actually checked the IP address.

Would love a reputation service that correlates IPs and/or email addresses to the amount time users spend on Facebook. I'm sure this data is out there and purchaseable, to be honest.

pkoird4• 3 years ago

People who are generally ambivalent on TOR are the ones that we need to convert. I believe the message needs to be that anonymity is not only desirable but mandatory as well, especially because of the rise of platforms that literally track each and every possible metric about your daily life and habits. Besides, even if someone says that TOR is used for illegal purposes, we all need to remind them that legality is distinct from morality and is always defined by those currently in power.

mikece2• 3 years ago

"Tor is only used for illegal purposes" is as valid as saying "only criminals use cash so they can buy things without a digital trail." I pay cash -- and refuse to use affinity/shopper cards because I would rather pay for my privacy which is worth more to me than 4 cents/gallon off on gasoline.

pixelpoet• 3 years ago

Cash is still king in Germany, and it always weirds tourists out. Personally I think it's great, and just like you do much of my shopping in cash because I don't want my bank knowing everything about my diet etc.

rootusrootus• 3 years ago

worth more to me than 4 cents/gallon off on gasoline.

The stores are getting wiser about this. My local Fred Meyer (a Kroger brand now) has a fuel rewards program -- for every $100 you spend, you get 10 cents off per gallon on your next fillup. Given how expensive groceries are, a lot of people are saving more like 50 cents per gallon, not 4.

They've also started doing instant discounts at the register, which was something that Safeway aggressively did from the beginning. FM isn't quite that aggressive yet, but when I scan the shopper card just before paying, it isn't unusual for it to knock $20-30 off a $150 purchase.

If it really were just 4 cents a gallon, I expect less people would bother. But it's not. The stores are steadily increasing the penalty for shopping without a loyalty card.

eternityforest• 3 years ago

The right to access anonymity is desirable,but so is preserving a society in which it doesn't really matter for most people.

Everyone should know how to use Tor, but we shouldn't have to, at least not all the time.

shrimp_emoji5• 3 years ago

Preserve implies we have that society now.

People's data is being farmed and their identity leaked and sold on the dark web, and they're probably not educated enough to care. That's what you want to preserve?

pkoird4• 3 years ago

Anonymity is one of those things that if you do not fight consistently for, will be eventually taken away from you. I fail to envision a society where anonymity doesn't really matter for most people because as long as there is a society, it'll imply there is a control structure. And as long as there is a control structure, it'll keep on dictating what you can and cannot do. Unless you unreasonably assume that such a structure will always, without a fail, be perfectly correct, in the event that you disagree with it, you're certain to be in trouble. I'd like to reiterate once again, there is a distinction between morality and legality. For instance, it's never immoral to bring wrongdoings to light, and yet, it's horrendously illegal to expose classified government secrets, even if they are terrible.

Shish2k• 3 years ago

I believe the message needs to be that anonymity is not only desirable but mandatory as well, especially because of the rise of platforms that literally track each and every possible metric about your daily life and habits

Normal people don’t care if their metrics are being tracked - that is happening to practically everybody all day every day, and very few people are experiencing any direct and measurable negative consequences. In their defence, why should they weigh the hypothetical-risk above the real-benefits of giving up privacy (ie, convenience and price)?

I believe if the message of privacy advocates is to have any effect at all on normal people, we really need to start focussing on things that normal people care about, not hypothetical and philosophical arguments

pkoird4• 3 years ago

It's a frog in a steadily boiling water problem. People not caring about their privacy enables certain actors to increasingly encroach it and then suddenly you find that these actors know everything there is to know about you including what you buy, eat, use, discard etc. This is not just a hypothetical scenario. For instance, look at any digitally capable dictatorial regime. No one now has the power to speak up in these regimes because everything they say is tracked and can be traced back to them and they themselves gave the regime this power happily in the past.

rashkov2• 3 years ago

I was pleasantly surprised to find Tor mode in Brave browser. I was looking for private browsing mode and it was right there. It was pretty darn fast and usable too. I honestly hope this feature and browser get more uptake

pawelduda3• 3 years ago

Brave has loads of good features Chrome doesn't but people are put off by it because "muh crypto integration", which can be disabled permanently in settings.

shrimp_emoji5• 3 years ago

Yeah, to me it seems like a skeevy browser for people without the IQ to use Firefox with good add-ons like uBlock Origin and not be put off by crypto integration.

mplewis2• 3 years ago

The crypto integration is an indication of a compromised vision and a lack of judgment. If the dev is willing to shove that in, what else is in there that I’m not aware of?

lynndotpy• 3 years ago

This is misleading. Brave had added items such as cryptocoin affiliate "cards" on the new tab page even for users who have had every cryptocoin aspect disabled.

Further, there is no way to pre-emptively disable the cryptocoin elements on new profiles on the same Brave installation.

barbariangrunge• 3 years ago

They also started selling people's copyrighted website data to ai companies via a new api recently, explicitly "granting" a license to use it for ai training, without the copyright owners (ie, independent bloggers) permission

orbital-decay2• 3 years ago

There are two issues with this:

- Part of the protection Tor provides is due to having the single browser made specifically for Tor. Nearly everyone uses it; this gives you a sufficiently large crowd to blend into. There are fingerprintable clusters inside this crowd, but at least they are still large enough. By using any other browser, you make yourself stand out and even diminish the anonymity of the whole network a tiny bit. This can become a problem if enough people are using custom browsers. Brave in particular is also not restricted enough by default (no JS etc). Default settings for everyone matter.

- Brave's Tor feature wasn't thoroughly tested in real situations. AFAIK they had issues with it, and also warned users not to rely on it as it's not complete.

Grimburger• 3 years ago

Brave in particular is also not restricted enough by default

While I'm in agreeance with everything you've said it should be pointed out that Tor Browser doesn't ship with JS disabled either, it simply breaks so much of the web that they've concluded it's not reasonable for a browser to do by default if they want to attract new users.

bombcar7• 3 years ago

Brave even tells you not to use Tor if it's a life/death matter, but for general "poor-man's VPN" it's just fine.

DANmode19• 3 years ago

Brave's Tor feature wasn't thoroughly tested in real situations

Meanwhile, we know for certain that Firefox has played a role in multiple deanonymizations.

pcdoodle• 3 years ago

Brave is fantastic for this. Also it sips power while on battery.

fimmy• 3 years ago

it's slow as a wet week

NoZebra120vClip9• 3 years ago

For what? What would I use it for?

Practically everything I do on the web involves authentication and a login and an identity. They're all US-based services. It's stuff that I use to manage my household, and finances. It's also social media stuff; some of it's pseudonymous, but I've got Facebook too.

These services factor in security hints such as device fingerprinting, and a consistent local IP address that belongs to an ISP account I pay for. That's as safe as it gets in this modern digital jungle.

I also use Chrome. I don't use Firefox. Don't try to get me using Firefox; it's incompatible with my workflow. I don't even have it installed to debug website errors. I also own a Chromebook and I do a lot on the Chromebook. 100% of my employment relies on it, and 20% of my personal use is there, too. TOR isn't compatible with ChromeOS (prove me wrong.)

The #1 error of TOR users is that they eventually reveal themselves online, by authenticating to some service, or by going to haunt specific websites or URLs they like. This is similar to people in Witness Protection or abuse victims who run away: they eventually contact family or friends and reveal personal details, and then they're re-victimized.

Sorry TOR, you're not for me.

ipaddr• 3 years ago

https://www.google.com/amp/s/beebom.com/how-install-tor-brow...

If you reveal yourself by logging today none of your other sessions from yesterday or tomorrow will be revealed or connected.

andrewfurey2003• 3 years ago

Pls dont use chrome, theyre pushing drm on the internet

rightbyte• 3 years ago

TOR isn't compatible with ChromeOS (prove me wrong.)

It seems futile to use Tor when the OS itself is made by a notorious spyware vendor. But there are Tor browsers for Android that should work.

NoZebra120vClip9• 3 years ago

notorious spyware vendor

So, like, Windows 10?

trolan• 3 years ago

Not trying to prove you wrong on this one, just a Chromebook fan myself. Have you tried/do you consider app support on Crostini/Linux? I haven't tested it, so unsure if it works, but all of the Linux programs I've installed have ran fine on a Chromebook.

zetta0• 3 years ago

A simple article on Chrome Unboxed suggests you can install Tor browser and have it work. I think there is less issues with TOR and more issues with you fundamentally not caring about privacy. Like most of the internet.

NoZebra120vClip9• 3 years ago

I care about privacy quite a bit, and I exercise good privacy practices, just not the same ones you seem to care about. Why judge me like that?

jakubwojciech• 3 years ago

what does it mean that Firefox is incompatibile with your workflow? I am really curious about it

nottorp3• 3 years ago

Don't try to get me using Firefox; it's incompatible with my workflow. I don't even have it installed to debug website errors.

Please tell us what sites you worked on so we Firefox users can avoid using them :)

Or they're so bad they wouldn't even load the entry page in FF?

Ycdr4thfdd• 3 years ago

Sure, it's easiest if you stay on the happy path. You'll only regret that if you or what you want to do online falls out of favor of whomever is in power.

NoZebra120vClip9• 3 years ago

Why do you judge me so? What do you know of my regrets?

The only One who is in power will judge me justly, and I eagerly anticipate that with joy and thanksgiving.

fsflover2• 3 years ago

Practically everything I do on the web involves authentication and a login and an identity.

How about using HN to make this comment? Even if you use your real name for it, you add some traffic to Tor, which helps.

NoZebra120vClip9• 3 years ago

It's just amazing to see the tech support bros come out and I've got at least six replies telling me how I can use Tor when my OP listed fewer than half the reasons I won't use it, but tech support comes out and asks me if I tried rebooting my ideology and upgrading my politics to the latest.

whatscooking• 3 years ago

Child porn

RajT883• 3 years ago

I think more people would become interested in Tor if they could see everything advertisers know about you.

I have yet to find something which lets you get a good peek at that data. Does anyone know of anything?

mtlmtlmtlmtl• 3 years ago

If you live in a GDPR jurisdiction, Facebook has a way for you to look at everything they have on you(and delete it).

I had a look when I went in there a few years ago to disable all their collection and they basically know every website you go to.

RajT883• 3 years ago

I am off facebook. I think they are not the bulk of the problem anyways.

You can see something similar with your Google ads profile, but only if you have personalized ads on. (I am sure they still have the profile on you, you just can't view it)

ramesh31• 3 years ago

I have yet to find something which lets you get a good peek at that data. Does anyone know of anything?

You don't need Tor to avoid advertisers. Blocking all cookies and browsing in private mode will get you 99% of the way there. Throw in an ad-blocking VPN and there's basically nothing anyone can know about you that you aren't explicitly sharing.

somenameforme3• 3 years ago

This is not really true, because of how centralized the web is. From Google fonts to jquery and the million in between endpoints, most sites you visit are going to be reporting you to Google. Logging into a single identity verifying site or even just viewing a distinct set of sites can all work as instant deanonymizers.

A VPN that has multiple users using the same IP simultaneously can help on this front, but I don't know how common this is? Basically emulating how Tor exit nodes work. Though even that is also almost certainly possible to break.

bell-cot2• 3 years ago

Reaction: Sounds nice...but the author seems oblivious to the motivations and technical skill levels of >95% of web users. And to TOR's (in)ability to grow its infrastructure, to support anything resembling the traffic that would result from anything resembling a "we all use it" scenario.

matricaria2• 3 years ago

What technical skills are needed to browse with Tor that are not needed in any other browser?

bell-cot2• 3 years ago

Well, if Tor isn't the pre-installed default browser on Joe User's new computer or smart phone, then...

_fat_santa• 3 years ago

I haven't used TOR recently but from my memory one of the biggest issues with is was speed. Yes you get anonymity but websites also load 2-3x slower because they have to go through all the nodes on the network. The people that care about privacy at the expense of speed already use TOR, and for everyone else it's going to be a very hard sell.

teddyh3• 3 years ago

In my experience Tor has not been slow for years now.

nebulous13• 3 years ago

Tor is faster than it used to be but this person is not wrong. 2-3x slower is a conservative estimate.

notyourwork2• 3 years ago

Not been slow compared to what? It's been slow for me any time I've tried it.

bogtog• 3 years ago

Much faster than in the past, but still annoyingly slow by all means

shrimp_emoji5• 3 years ago

Yep. Decentralization entails degraded service, almost as a thermodynamic principle. It's the "eating your vegetables" of technology; even if you think people should, you can guess how many actually do.

dahart2• 3 years ago

Why do you believe decentralization is responsible for TOR’s speed? Decentralization often improves speed by routing around traffic, and the regular non-TOR internet is decentralized. BitTorrent is often faster than regular internet due to its additional decentralization of the data. I suspect TOR is slow due to intentionally long and twisty routes, added encryption, extra hops that require more processing, low numbers of exit nodes, and limited bandwidth at the exit nodes. In a way, the speed is probably partly a byproduct of TOR accidentally centralizing traffic at the scarce exit nodes.

Qem• 3 years ago

Torrents disagree ;-)

jononomo• 3 years ago

Ironically, once I cut all vegetable and, in fact, all plant-based calories, out of my diet, I experience dramatic health and fitness benefits. I expect in this case the conventional wisdom is also exactly backwards and in fact transparency is more important than privacy.

pessimizer4• 3 years ago

Decentralization entails degraded service

Not decentralization, but anonymous decentralization that involves indirect routing. Decentralization can actually offset that anonymity tax somewhat by the fact that you might have multiple sources that you can request data from in parallel.

xur17• 3 years ago

Latency is bad, throughput is pretty decent. Unfortunately this is a side effect of it's routing system (routing through 3 random nodes around the world).

holmesworcester10• 3 years ago

Latency is actually pretty reasonable once you're connected. Connection times are where most people really feel the slowness with Tor. For example, chat and SPA's are pretty snappy over Tor.

guestbest• 3 years ago

There is no anonymity with tor if there is logging. There is only Obfuscation for most use cases. The latency makes is also have poor appeal. An untrusted internet or a hostile network isn’t going to change because there is a pretext of anonymity. I personally think highly trusted peers are the only solution.

randomuser23423• 3 years ago

In my experience, TOR's been fine for latency, but the problem I've been having is getting stuck in an infinite loop of Cloudflare "Checking if the site connection is secure."

chii• 3 years ago

There just isnt enough exit nodes that cloud providers have opted to either blacklist, or heavily deprioritize those nodes' traffic.

I'd want to see every computer connected to the internet turn into an exit node! It makes it infeasible to block those IPs, and also prevents people from being charged a crime for such traffic.

Name_Chawps• 3 years ago

Why use slow internet when fast internet do trick?

tenebrisalietum2• 3 years ago

Road A: Takes 2 minutes, chance of getting robbed is 80%

Road B: Takes 2 hours, chance of getting robbed is 2%.

woodruffw• 3 years ago

What’s the robbery in this analogy? From a liability perspective, using Tor is strictly more risky than routing over the ordinary Internet.

Sohcahtoa824• 3 years ago

I've been on the Internet for 25 years and only got robbed once, and even then, the credit card charges were reversed so it didn't cost me anything other than the annoyance of updating some accounts once I got my new credit card number.

apples_oranges• 3 years ago

It won’t if we can’t even be bothered to delete cookies or use private mode in our normal browsers.

userforcomment• 3 years ago

Try visiting this from incognito and clearing cache/cookies: https://fingerprint.com. This can't be legal, right?

izzdrasil2• 3 years ago

This is the "workaround" now that websites aren't given free range access to your cookie jar. They make a unique identifier out of a range of info like OS, browser, screen size, whatever seemingly harmless info they can get.

DANmode19• 3 years ago

Fonts you have installed, what certs or APIs you have enabled in your browser, someone else can continue with their favorites..

MayeulC• 3 years ago

Sounds like it should be illegal. That said, changing my User Agent to IE+Win7 changed the identifier for me. Looks like Firefox's "resist fingerprinting" setting also works. I wish there was a separare setting for private browsing.

That said, that was enlightening, thank you for pointing this out. It's disgusting that there are companies selling this.

monetus• 3 years ago

Permanent identifier

Consistent visitor ID over months or years, even as browsers are upgraded.

This advertisement implies some things that could potentially be illegal, but I don't think that practice is by itself. Stalking as a service really gives Saas a new meaning .

drc500free• 3 years ago

https://amiunique.org/fingerprint gives some insight into what is used for fingerprinting, if you want to randomize your profile.

This one overestimates uniqueness because it doesn't consider stability (e.g. it uses your current battery charge level as a uniqueness measure, which is obviously not stable minute-to-minute let alone day-to-day).

izzdrasil2• 3 years ago

I like the idea of Tor but I don't like the idea of federal governments running nodes and snooping.

northrup• 3 years ago

This right here… when the government can just run exit nodes and case after case comes out about the government capturing data from a tor node they operated, that problem needs solved first.

causi4• 3 years ago

I very rarely use Tor because using Tor without being an exit node just slows it down for everyone else using it and running an exit node means CSAM passing through your router sooner or later which I find unacceptable. Most of my privacy needs are met by a commercial VPN.

amiga3862• 3 years ago

Here's a novel thought: take the money you give to the commercial VPN provider and donate it to Tor instead. They can spend it on running more exit nodes themselves, which fixes both the issues you say you have with it.

causi4• 3 years ago

It would make up for it, but not fix it. The network would still be faster without my traffic. Plus, torrenting hundreds of gigabytes of data over Tor would be rather abusive.

zirgs4• 3 years ago

I would love to help a dissident to bypass internet filters, but I don't want to get anywhere near illegal stuff.

PheonixPharts• 3 years ago

but I don't want to get anywhere near illegal stuff.

Then you should probably stop using the web altogether.

I'm seriously confused how using Tor places you closer to "illegal stuff" then browsing as you do? Could you clarify?

Even if we're going to draw the distinction between .onion sites and the plain web (and there's nothing about Tor that requires you to visit or interact with .onion sites) I'm nearly certain that there are many orders of magnitude more "illegal stuff" being shared on traditional websites than the "dark web". Plenty of drugs are purchased through Venmo, and Tumblr and Twitter have had pretty high incidents of child exploitation materials being shared on there (and, despite having been a heavy user of those sites at some point, never came across any content close to that).

My experience has been that, barring 4chan 10 years ago, it is extremely rare that you'll ever come across any "illegal stuff" unless you are looking for it.

zirgs4• 3 years ago

I was talking about running an exit node. In an ideal world everyone could run an exit node and help others to bypass censorship. Unfortunately sooner or later some sick fuck would abuse it to post CSAM or hack something. And then good luck explaining the cops that it wasn't you.

JimDabell• 3 years ago

Helping a dissident bypass Internet filters is illegal stuff.

zirgs4• 3 years ago

In their country not mine. Meanwhile shit like CSAM distribution is illegal everywhere.

Renaud2• 3 years ago

Are there any app that uses the Tor network and existing hidden protocols to provide anonymous chat?

This could be an alternative to some of the instant messaging systems that provide privacy but not anonymity.

I know that some chat messaging systems can use Tor as the transport, but they have problems of their own.

What I'm thinking about is something along the lines that each user app hosts a hidden service that receives messages through a standard HTTP API. Users need to hand their hidden service address to friends. The protocol itself already handles payload encryption and routing but messages could be further encrypted at the app level before being sent (using the other user's public key once an initial exchange has been done).

Granted, sending a message would require all parties to be online at the same time, but there could be a set of relay servers to hold messages until they get fetched.

I'm sure there are lots of hairy issues to take into account, but I would expect the existing protocol to mitigate some of these compared to a ground-up approach (like Session is doing). Tor is fairly mature and, despite all attacks on its infrastructure and protocol, it is still standing.

I'm also wondering if such a messaging system couldn't be useful for some IoT types of scenarios, as it would protect the location and communication of the source of the data, so the devices could not be easily physically found and hacked.

None of this would be useful for high-bandwidth real-time data, but you can get reasonable latencies and traffic sent this way.

Maybe it's all just a dumb idea...

mikece2• 3 years ago

There is Session which combines TOR message routing with a message encryption scheme which is inspired by Signal. Is that what you mean?

dabber21• 3 years ago

there was a project https://blog.torproject.org/tor-messenger-beta-chat-over-tor... but I don't know what the status is, quick google searches make it seem abandoned

holmesworcester10• 3 years ago

Yeah. Also there's Ricochet and its continuation Ricochet Refresh, but these only do 1:1 messaging AFAIK.[1][2]

Ricochet was a big inspiration for my project Quiet.[3]

Cwtch also deserves a mention, though it depends on ephemeral servers and isn't fully p2p. Briar is another and frequently comes up on HN. [4][5]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricochet_(software)

2. https://www.ricochetrefresh.net/

3. https://tryquiet.org/

4. https://cwtch.im/

5. https://briarproject.org/

holmesworcester10• 3 years ago

My team is building Quiet, an alternative to team chat apps like Slack and Discord that works as you describe:

https://github.com/TryQuiet/quiet/#readme

Granted, sending a message would require all parties to be online at the same time, but there could be a set of relay servers to hold messages until they get fetched.

We actually do a bit better than this! We use a gossip network (libp2p gossipsub) so all peers don't have to connect directly, and a CRDT over a private IPFS network so that everyone in a community eventually syncs all messages. As long as there's a continuity of online peers, the availability of messages is the same as a central server, and with a few Android users in the mix it's pretty easy to get to that level of continuity.

(The battery impact of staying connected all the time on Android isn't as bad as you'd think, and we haven't even begun to optimize it.)

And yes, it builds on the maturity of Tor rather than trying to roll its own onion routing layer as Session is doing. Quiet is still a work in progress, but we've been dogfooding the desktop app for over a yearn now as our main team chat, and the Android app for a little less than that. We're working on iOS now, which is... tricky. But we're hopeful.

Renaud2• 3 years ago

That's really interesting and I hope the project gets continued support.

a_vanderbilt• 3 years ago

I use Tor occasionally to see what's going on in the flip side of the net and to contribute to routing, but honestly you aren't going to convince anyone who isn't ideologically inclined to support it. It doesn't help that Tor itself is full of scams and dark markets selling who knows what. It seems to have gotten better over the years, but normal people aren't going to put up with that. Nobody wants to see that stuff.

throwaway2905• 3 years ago

If you use a Tor browser you see the same web as with your "normal" browser. You'd need to actively search for dark web and shady markets (and no you can't just google that up either, you'd need to lurk much deeper). It's not possible, never was, to "accidentally" see that stuff if you use web the way you did it before Tor.

WallyFunk2• 3 years ago

Yes. I don't get ambushed by illegal content, as most of my surfing with Tor is for browsing the clearnet, (which is fairly innocuous and more sanitized than the dark web). I do use the 'real world' onions[0] to read The New York Times, etc

[0] https://github.com/alecmuffett/real-world-onion-sites

swapfile7• 3 years ago

Tor itself is full of scams and dark markets selling who knows what.

Did you forget to read the article? They make the point that this is not the case. Tor Browser can be used to access most of the web besides aggressively anti-privacy platforms like Meta.

If you choose to go on a "Dark Web Search Engine" and that's what you find, that's entirely your decision and not something you would stumble upon.

but normal people aren't going to put up with that. Nobody wants to see that stuff.

They would never see that stuff by accident, as they never do right now.

nebulous13• 3 years ago

Does anybody use Tor for everything? I'd be interested in hearing their experience if so. There are sites that I have been unable to get working in tor, usually due to the browser. Some services actively block it. There's also a performance hit.

Also, while you should always assume your traffic is open to inspection/modification before it reaches its destination, this is more likely to happen with tor, not less likely. The Tor browser does help here, by not easily allowing obvious mistakes like using http.

swapfile7• 3 years ago

I use Tor for everything that doesn't require identification, and I use very few of those services. For example, this HN account and the email for it have never been used without connecting through Tor. Feel free to ask me anything.

There are sites that I have been unable to get working

This happens, most of the time because of Cloudflare. A solution is to get a new Tor circuit 3-5 times, and then the page will load. If a site simply won't work, like Meta platforms I won't use them. Using alternative front-ends[1] makes most sites that usually wouldn't work, work as well.

The Tor browser does help here, by not easily allowing obvious mistakes like using http.

This is false, HTTPS only is enabled by default in Tor Browser. It's common knowledge for everyone including users of Google Chrome and Firefox to not use HTTP sites.

[1] https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends

nebulous13• 3 years ago

Thanks.

This is false, HTTPS only is enabled by default in Tor Browser

I think you misread me. I said the Tor browser does help here.

fruitreunion12• 3 years ago

I use it for just about everything except for things tied to IRL identities. (short-lived usage like making a search request, to persistent identities like this)

Some services block Tor. Sometimes they can be bypassed by pressing "New Tor circuit for this site" a few times, sometimes they cannot. Some of the methods listed here [0] can help (though I wouldn't log into any accounts using this as TLS isn't being terminated at your machine).

Some features don't work in Tor Browser, off the top off my head, sites using AudioContext, Webauthn, Webassembly. (webassembly can be a pain due to some encrypted paste bin sites using it).

I run multiple instances of Tor Browser (separated with Linux namespaces, particularly netns because Tor Browser will fail to load if an existing Tor service is running at port 9150) so that I can multitask between for example posting this on HN and random browsing in another instance. That also helps with the webassembly thing as I run a script to spin up a temporary instance of Tor Browser, enable webassembly in about:config, and load the failing page.

For the sites that block Tor that I need to login to or that don't work with the ad-hoc methods listed above, I will fallback to using a VPN + an about:config-modified version of Tor Browser that has the Tor proxy disabled. Mullvad Browser can also be used as an alternative.

I also use it outside of TB for IRC among other things. You have to be careful as there is no uniform configuration for everyone like TB.

0: https://gitlab.torproject.org/legacy/trac/-/wikis/org/doc/Li...

yankput• 3 years ago

If we all use it, it will slow to a crawl. Even more than now.

Nobody that’s not halfway suicidal is running exit nodes on their home machines (I won’t, I don’t want police knocking on my door).

And just for the onionspace… yeah I saw some bad stuff there. After what I saw I don’t think anonymity is a good idea. There is darkness inside people that lack of rules, lack of order, lack of accountability brings out.

aredox• 3 years ago

And in the end it can't circumvent stuff like the great firewall of China.

In the end Toe is just a legacy project from the CIA/NSA that has outlived it's usefulness. The NSA has certainly redteamed all the ways to take it down or uncloak users, if needs be, so it's not even a tool against a potential fall into dictatorship of the USA.

holmesworcester10• 3 years ago

And in the end it can't circumvent stuff like the great firewall of China.

Actually, this isn't true: Tor with private Snowflake bridges can be very effective against the Great Firewall. I'm an activist who works in this area and I've spoken with activists who were using it as recently as this year.

The issue is scaling bridge discovery, since any automated bridge discovery mechanism rapidly exposes available bridges to a determined censor. But any team doing high profile, notable, or sensitive work can find an individual or organization outside China to provide them with private bridges. So Tor is one effective option now for key activists in China, just not a mass-scale solution for everyone.

ravenstine• 3 years ago

Tor is a meme in 2023. Even advocates for it seem to believe it's only really good for circumvention, which is the totally wrong way to look at it. Having a built-in outproxy to the web is probably it's greatest flaw, not its strength. Why? Because there's nothing stopping anyone from setting up exit nodes and analyzing the traffic. The open web itself is a vulnerability. Being an anonymizer for the web also encourages people to not contribute energy to "hidden services" but to the non-hidden web, which is self defeating.

And as others have pointed out, Tor wouldn't scale if everyone was using it. Contrast this with I2P which not only would scale but become more resistant to DDOS attacks with the more nodes on the network. Unlike For, I2P has no distinction between nodes, mostly because it's not designed to be an outproxy. But no, let's keep insisting that everyone use a deep state tool with chronic flaws because reasons. /s

pandog• 3 years ago

There are a bunch of projects from Tor to aid in circumvention of the great firewall of China: https://support.torproject.org/censorship/connecting-from-ch...

duxup• 3 years ago

There is darkness inside people that lack of rules, lack of order, lack of accountability brings out.

This extends to social networking too. As much angst as there is about moderation, it’s a feature people want.

version_five• 3 years ago

There is darkness inside people that lack of rules, lack of order, lack of accountability brings out.

Maybe, but it's nothing in comparison the darkness that comes out of people who want rules and someone held accountable.

NoMoreNicksLeft• 3 years ago

It's certainly an interesting mindset: "I'd rather live in a neighborhood where the HOA is run by psychopathic busybodies, even if it means I have to become a pod person!"

Run_DOS_Run2• 3 years ago

yeah I saw some bad stuff there. After what I saw I don’t think anonymity is a good idea

This is a somewhat one-sided way of thinking.

Tor is a tool that can be used for useful things as well as misused for bad things (like a knife or a truck). Now, leaving aside the fact that websites related to credit card fraud, child pornography, and terrorism also have a large presence on the Clearweb.

Also, I'd like to note that Instagram is a global hub for human trafficking, and the moderators' stories don't sound any more innocuous than the Onion stories.

I use Tor daily and abide by the law, but don't want to miss the anonymity or pseudonymity of a Whonix VM and a Tails session.

Since I've been hosting Tor Nodes since I was 14, I don't have to worry about showing up on blacklists of 3-letter organizations, since I've been on top for over a decade anyway.

mrits2• 3 years ago

Not all tools are equal. The iron maiden was also a tool that I suppose could be used for cracking open pecans.

yakireev• 3 years ago

Since I've been hosting Tor Nodes since I was 14

Honest question: why do people host exit nodes when they aren't 14 anymore?

Given how dangerous it is to host one, and how little personal benefit one gets from it, I kinda assumed most exit nodes are hosted by three-letter agencies from various countries. Is that so? If not, how so?

DANmode19• 3 years ago

After what I saw I don’t think anonymity is a good idea.

Any ideas for how to eradicate it without authoritarianism?

6346363462• 3 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if the author, and a large segment of HNers agreeing with her, did a swift about-face when they realized that Tor also provides an end-run around the internet backbone black-holing of IPs that some Tier 1 ISPs did to KiwiFarms last year, during the height of the campaign to deplatform it. More people using Tor in general means more people having the means and know-how to evade censorship, and we can't have that, can we?

somehnguy• 3 years ago

I don't think anyone would be surprised - what you're describing is pretty obvious to anyone who has ever looked into Tor for more than .1 seconds. It's also pretty well understood that when restrictions can be evaded it will be used for both good & bad purposes, that's just the nature of it.

tekla2• 3 years ago

We want privacy for everyone, except for the people we don't like.

Sohcahtoa824• 3 years ago

Describing KiwiFarms as "people we don't like" is dishonest.

The people on KiwiFarms are actively harmful and engage in illegal harassment activities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms#Harassment

tomatotomato37• 3 years ago

Actually wouldn't a move to Tor completely destroy the ability to effectively moderate any sort of community since you have no way of banning spammers/bots? Even a "lawless" place like 8chan or Kiwifarms will have trouble holding discussions if all their forums are filled with copy-pasted CP from some random botnet

swapfile7• 3 years ago

No it wouldn't. You can use difficult to obtain cookies or registration to prevent bots.

captainbland3• 3 years ago

To be honest despite agreeing with many arguments around privacy, they're not quite compelling enough to convince me to adopt Tor's approach to it which in my mind is akin to hiding in a bin.

Sure, you're hidden, but you're also in with a lot of stuff you don't want to be in with and that can come with legal liabilities and ethical issues that I don't feel qualified to mitigate. And as other people have pointed out maybe the government or your least favourite company actually has a camera in the bin you chose to hide in.

holmesworcester10• 3 years ago

A common misconception about Tor is that by using Tor as an end user you are also hosting and relaying stuff on the Tor network for other users.

This is not the case, unless you explicitly set up a relay node or volunteer to run a Snowflake bridge.

True, you're mixed in with other users from the point of view of websites that might treat you as spam, say. But you aren't taking on any liability unless you run an exit node, and even that is fairly well-established as safe in at least some jurisdictions.

vorticalbox2• 3 years ago

Snowflake as far as I am aware only helps people connect to tor, it doesn't route any traffic after that point.

captainbland3• 3 years ago

I think even as a user, the risk then is that law enforcement agencies want to unmask/correlate users which leads to the possibility of them screwing that up and conflating people's identities. Arguably this is more of an issue with trust in those performing/acting on the analysis but on an individual level still factors into the "do I want to use tor?" mental model.

foobiekr2• 3 years ago

Well, you are _absolutely_ taking on the potential liability implicit in becoming a person of interest in any case involving the exchange of materials that you are facilitating.

You may not _lose_ but you may find yourself with your life seriously disrupted.

kmeisthax• 3 years ago

In the case of Tor, the government you're trying to hide from actually made the bins and handed them out all over the world so that CIA agents would have somewhere to dead-drop files in.

optimalsolver• 3 years ago

IIRC the US Gov still funds the Tor project.

A4ET8a8uTh0• 3 years ago

I can understand that argument due to the nature of Tor, but if you use it as a communication medium only, how is different from using non-Tor internet or a cell phone. Yet, no one seems to argue that you are one of those nefarious internet or cell phone user. I think the argument is solid. The fact that is is not commonly used makes it a niche application. If it was more widely adopted, all those 'bad things' would likely be on par with regular phone/net issues in terms of volume.

gjsman-1000• 3 years ago

Imagine if I was under investigation for drug trafficking, or tax fraud, or whatever have you. “He had Tor on his computer to access the Dark Web” is extremely strong jury bait even though it doesn’t intrinsically mean anything. The government might not be able to prove what, if anything, I did - but I'll still probably look pretty dang guilty just for having it.

The other downside would be how trying to be secret can shine a spotlight - kind of like the bomb threat at that school (I’m forgetting the name). The student used Tor, but was quickly identified… because nobody else on the school network used Tor. (Make no mistake - I’m glad the student was caught - I’m just taking about how trying to increase your privacy can backfire.)

vorticalbox2• 3 years ago

I'm not sure it would that's like going "he owns a car he could have used it to speed"

DANmode19• 3 years ago

Sounds like this wasn't a jury of their peers, then.

poisonborz• 3 years ago

You're not more "in the bin" as with some fellow knife users who stick them into humans - or a better parallel, recent community favourite Mastodon, which, according to it's federated nature, has also a massive CSAM problem(1). In the digital world, either you have complete freedom (also meaning choose your own server/fellow bin companions) or complete censorship - not much in between.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/24/23806093/mastodon-csam-st...

JadeNB2• 3 years ago

You're not more "in the bin" as with some fellow knife users who stick them into humans

Except that the law has come to terms (outside the UK) with the possibility of peaceful knife ownership, whereas the law around Tor and such things is still in the "probably non-technically savvy judge has heard scary terms around Tor and wants to be on the safe side" stage.

sitzkrieg• 3 years ago

the csam problem is a fediverse problem. not just a mastondon problem, let me just say i am one of the most vocal critics of mastodon after running an instance for 5 years and running. but its unfair to call it a mastodon problem, mastodon is just a fediverse client. the csam can come from any fediverse peer.

but it is indeed a problem, and mastodon mirrors all remote content that is in your federation network and now you have csam splattered across the connections of mastos w only blacklists if entire instances to recourse.

its a bad approach but they've buried head in the sand years ago. things like pleroma do not do this by default

anthk3• 3 years ago

False. Mastodon blocks those CSAM instances (speccially the Japanese ones) in masse. It's the opposite of you say. Twitter and FB have a harder problem on that because they are single-net based.

WindyLakeReturn• 3 years ago

If privacy is really private, and not merely a promise from a benevolent entity they won't look at your details, not that they can't, then you will always find in your company those who need privacy because they are hiding from all of society that hate them. Even if we were to go 100,000 years into the future where morals are entirely different and alien to modern day ones, if privacy exists at all, you'll find it most popular among those whose behaviors are the most morally repugnant to the futuristic society.

Privacy is good even when you have nothing to hide, but it is imperative for those who do need to be hidden. The ethical issues I generally see people concerned with are ethical issues with privacy itself, not a specific implementation.

holmesworcester10• 3 years ago

There's also a very long history of ideas that were fundamental to scientific and societal progress being morally repugnant to a majority, initially.

Heliocentrism, democracy, etc.

Without some degree of freedom to violate the majority's morality (or even one's parents' morality!) without judgement, we should expect society to stagnate due to arbitrary lock-in of the status quo on any sufficiently controversial issue.

Privacy is great because it lets groups violate the majority's morality invisibly, without flagrantly disrupting the sense the majority has of there being a moral order.

Privacy gives you the upside of social innovation without the downside of a generalized, diminished belief in the morality of others (which can be a downward spiral for societal self-organization.)

m3kw9• 3 years ago

Pita to use and slow af

superkuh2• 3 years ago

Tor doesn't want people using it for building normal communities. Their treatment of tor v2 and the wiping away of all those links, indices, and sites shows this. Yes, 1 year of warning that all of .onion domains were going away was given, thanks The Tor Project. But why bother building a community on an onion domain when they're only treated as temporary and transient identifiers by the tor project?

No, I tried building normal websites and community on tor for 10 years. Then the tor porject wiped it out for potential future security. They will always prioritize the needs of the people who really need privacy over us. And that's fine. But I will not make the mistake of building on tor again.

holmesworcester10• 3 years ago

According to Tor Project, v2 onion services were "fundamentally insecure" [1]. It sucks that you lost your URL, but wasn't redirection an option?

Tor definitely has a commitment to people building communities using hidden services, but they also have a commitment to your community members' expectations of security, no?

1. https://support.torproject.org/onionservices/v2-deprecation/

superkuh2• 3 years ago

You can't redirect clients that cannot even parse your domain name. I can't update the links in all the indices and search engines built the last decade. I can't change the links to my .onion site on other people's sites. No, most .onion domains just went away, poof, inaccessible and sit unvisited while the remaining tor v2 infrastructure goes unused because the tor project clients dropped support. There's more to a web than any single site. And that web of interconnected links was destroyed with no recourse.

As for fundementally insecure, yeah, in a few years maybe by spending $10k you could brute force a hash and take over a domain. So they killed it entirely to protect the people that need absolute privacy and security. They could've left v2 alongside v3 and let people choose but the tor project considers that too risky for their prized use case.

Those of us just using tor for owning our own domains were not important in comparison. That "not being important" will continue. Shadowy users are what tor cares about. Not open communities. Tor is great for pseudo-privacy. It is not great for people wanting to make normal sites on it.

AlbertCory• 3 years ago

"Tor’s shadowy reputation will only end when normies become human shields for the truly bad people."

Fixed it.

No, using Tor is equivalent to holding up a sign to the spooks "Hey, over here! Look at me!"

jacobsenscott• 3 years ago

I've tried tor a few times, but unless you enjoy solving captchas as a hobby it is only worth using when you actually need some anonymity.

swapfile7• 3 years ago

unless you enjoy solving captchas as a hobby it is only worth using when you actually need some anonymity.

Use services that respect your freedom. Hacker News works just fine using Tor Browser. ;)

rambojohnson• 3 years ago

oh no, let's save all these shadowy technologies by using them. why? lol

timbit424• 3 years ago

Some people don't like their government and corporations knowing everything about them.

lll-o-lll4• 3 years ago

Tor is not what I want. Humans are, by and large, not equipped to handle anonymity while maintaining ethical behavior. We thrive in accountable communities. Even with pseudo-anonymity, there’s still a karma or reputation to think of! I will feel bad as this post gets modded down.

I think all communication and activity should be anonymous to companies, somewhat visible to your inner circle, and able to be exposed to authorities only when they have something akin to a warrant. That sounds hard to achieve in practice, but Tor is not the answer to any of it.

samsin3• 3 years ago

Tor is surely the answer to having your activity be anonymous to companies, how else would you achieve that?

lll-o-lll4• 3 years ago

How do you interact with companies while maintaining anonymity? How to I buy something online?

What stops companies from using various fingerprinting techniques to continue to track me online? Does Tor stop JavaScript running client side?

alkonaut• 3 years ago

And we’ll only use it if it comes at nearly zero cost in performance and convenience. It’s as simple as that.

Imnimo• 3 years ago

victims of domestic violence looking for resources without their abuser finding out or

I don't really understand the threat model that would make Tor helpful here.

nohankyou• 3 years ago

Associated advertising by source IP address. Happens all the time, I see ads pop up on my wife's computer that are definitely meant for me, and based on searches she would never think of.

bratgpttamer3• 3 years ago

I can't decide if it would be easier to convince people of the benefit of extra steps/slow internet/privacy protections, or to reflexively engage their skepticism/critical thinking muscles upon hearing Save-The-Children-and-Stop-The-Terrorists rhetoric.

As it stands, it seems most people (of a certain race and class, anyway) feel more threatened by vague stories of child abductors in white vans at WalMart[1,2] or terrorists (c. 2000's generally) than being randomly victimized by our j̶u̶s̶t̶i̶c̶e̶ legal system.

Nothing to hide, nothing to fear, as they say. Abstract thought and generalization are hard, I guess.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/04/tech/facebook-white-vans/inde...

[2] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/white-van-facebook-hoax/

comfypotato• 3 years ago

I got out of academic fingerprinting research when I realized I was on the wrong side of the discussion. I’ve just never seen or heard of privacy violations that particularly bothered me.

maxbond4• 3 years ago

I too have never experienced a violation of privacy which had a significant observable impact on my life. You and I have been fortunate in this respect.

Some people are literally targeted for harassment and murder because of some aspect of their identity, journalism, or activism. This isn't a hypothetical.

Here's one example from the top of my head:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/khashog...

Tl;Dr the dissident Khashoggi was infected with NSO malware before he was murdered by the Saudi government. That's a pretty clear violation of privacy in service of something I would guess you disagree with.

This story isn't an anomaly, I think if you looked into this further you would find innumerable privacy violations which bother you.

alvarezbjm-hn• 3 years ago

"reflexively engage their skepticism/critical thinking muscles upon hearing Save-The-Children-and-Stop-The-Terrorists rhetoric"

Not part of human nature. Save the children/Rethoric is embedded. Reflexive thinking has variying energy requirements and for most requires external kickstart, when possible at all

Forcing tor in all new network adapters is more feasible, which is saying much.

pessimizer4• 3 years ago

Not part of human nature. Save the children/Rethoric is embedded.

This is ahistorical. Childrens' rights are a late-19th Century creation. We have become child worshipers, we are not naturally child worshipers.

There's a quasi-Christian doctrine that states that children are born virtually unstained, and that being unstained makes you more deserving of life. As you grow older, you are stained by the demands of the world, which makes you less deserving of life. However, the idea that a child's life is more important than an adult's life would seem moronic to people much before the 20th Century. It just takes 6 years to make a 5 year-old. It takes 51 years to make a 50 year-old. 5 year olds know almost nothing, and need to be taken care of. Every 50 year-old has a bunch of knowledge that can't be recovered, and generally can take care of themselves.

You know we used to send them into the mines... and we used to value them because of how deeply they could get their little hands into factory machinery.

Spooky232• 3 years ago

Tor doesn’t deliver any of those things. It’s a tool developed for spies that is mostly used to facilitate grifts and move contraband.

I’m not worried about clowns in white vans or terrorists. If you want protection from the government, you need to advocate for protection under the law. Journalists, NGO workers, etc have to figure out how to manage risk and may need to self-censor to avoid those risks. Tor won’t protect you if you irritate MBS.

bratgpttamer3• 3 years ago

I'm not sure what deliverables you're referring to, but if it's not useful for shielding one's identity from prosecutors/persecutors, why would spies, grifters, traffickers, terrorists, child abusers, and puppy-kickers make such extensive use of it?

r3trohack3r5• 3 years ago

This isn’t true, you’re conflating risk profiles.

There is active targeted surveillance by a nation state. Tor is not going to help you. No crypto or tech alone will help you, you’ll need to develop extreme opsec practices to stand even a remote chance against a well funded and well equipped adversary focusing on targeting you.

Then there is passive mass surveillance, i.e. the presidential surveillance program, which Tor/VPNs/HTTPS etc will absolutely help with.

r3trohack3r5• 3 years ago

Similarly my social group has recently become more concerned with hate speech and foreign influence on elections too.

The story’s walls are closing in on cracking down on cryptographic guarantees of privacy, network access, and information sharing.

anthk3• 3 years ago

With i2pd you can set up Web, IRC, Mail and NNTP proxies against retroBBS and chat with people at acceptable speeds. Also, to talk on actual daily lives beyond propaganada with Ukrainians and Russians.

Ironically, anonimity here stops terror and helps innocent people. Any terror.

xkcd-sucks2• 3 years ago

By running a Tor node, one helps dissidents / spy assets in Russia get information / communicate with handlers in Ukraine, USA, etc. -- Which is the reason for Tor's existence in the first place. If one is into supporting that kind of thing of course, but defense of Ukraine seems pretty popular in the US

dathos• 3 years ago

Pft, 100% this was developed by a three letter agency in the US.

pphysch• 3 years ago

It's not even a secret, look at the Tor Project's funding sources (public tax record). State Dept & DoD were their primary funders last time I checked.

Hypothetically, if the USG wanted to produce "official" backdoored TOR clients (e.g. only served as prebuilt downloads to IPs geolocated in Iran, etc to make detection difficult), they are in an excellent position to influence that work. And as the story of Julian Assange makes clear, that should concern anyone who purports to care about privacy, human rights, etc.

DANmode19• 3 years ago

Lazy comment - Navy has 4 letters.

neilv• 3 years ago

As an exercise, I've been using Tor Browser as a daily driver on my personal laptop, and ended up with a 3-browsers approach:

* Firefox ESR -- For sites that are necessarily linked to my identity, such as HN and shopping. Sometimes this also gets sites that don't have to be linked to me, such as if I'm too lazy to copy&paste a link from HN into Tor Browser. (Keyboard switching/starting: Mod+F)

* Tor Browser -- Almost everything else. This is the bulk of my traffic, and innocuous, not "he just switched to Tor Browser, so must be doing something interesting". (Keyboard switching/starting: Mod+W)

* Chromium -- This is my total subjugation browser, used when more-private&secure options fail for something I really need/want to access. No ad blockers, but some awful DRM enabled. Current used only for one obnoxious video streaming service. I would like to get rid of this browser entirely. (Keyboard starting intentionally discouraging: Mod+P C H R O M Enter)

My vintage laptop can handle all 3 at once, just fine. Though I usually make them short-lived -- to reduce clutter, free compute resources, and clear trackers.

That's the personal laptop. My work laptops will partition browser use differently, such as for whatever the current Web development needs, and keeping all-day corporate SaaSes (e.g., GitLab, and mandated Web apps) open in one browser, while making another browser for short-lived public Web browsing sessions.

There's also a place for Tor Browser on the work laptop, for public browsing about topics that you don't want to hypothetically leak to competitors, but some companies will flip out if they detect Tor on the corporate network.

batch122• 3 years ago

I run a service that scans and documents hidden services. I've actively contributed to the security of the Tor ecosystem by reporting vulnerabilities that would result in de-anonymization. I can say with pretty good authority that most hidden services are deserving of the 'shadowy' label. I agree that the only way to change this is to have other non-shadowy services and uses, but it's a hard sell.

How do you convince a company to intentionally stand up an onion site that provides any real value? You lose the ability to apply some defensive controls to thwart attack, you're associating your brand with something identified as 'shadowy', and most customers won't use Tor or even understand what an onion site is. If a company is unwilling to justify the effort or take the chance on standing up a hidden service, why would they be willing to take a similar risk of abuse by allowing traffic sourced from the Tor network?

hellojesus7• 3 years ago

How do you perform scans of onion urls? Two things for me come to mind:

1. Follow published links with a crawler

2. Host an exit node and observe where traffic goes

batch122• 3 years ago

Well, exit nodes aren't used for hidden services. I either discover them from when people give them to me when searching the site, http referrers, a crawler, or through other means of disclosure.

substation13• 3 years ago

I'm not convinced Tor could scale to a significant percentage of internet traffic using it.

tasbir492• 3 years ago

Adoption is gonna be difficult. Many users don't care that much about privacy in general. So getting them to change their habits is a tall order. Furthermore, a lot of sites see TOR as suspicious and make the effort to block it/put them through captcha hell. I don't see a critical mass of users dropping convenience for the sake of something they don't really care about anytime soon.

webmobdev• 3 years ago

There is a cultural factor also - Tor, like most American BigTech, tries to sell us the idea of "trust the network" over any government as "governments cannot be trusted". Yes, governments cannot be trusted but what is worse is if we lose faith in democracy and give in to the idea that some corporate overlord or a foreign network will do a better job of protecting our rights. It's a ridiculous idea that only Americans seem to buy, while the rest of the world are actually enforcing the protections of their rights through democratic means (demanding regulations and legislation).

Personally for me it is about the traffic that may be routed through my computer by the Tor network - I definitely do not want child porn, drugs or terrorist related site transactions packets to even touch my computer. It maybe a rare occurrence, but I want certainty. If we could control the traffic that is allowed on our network / computer, I'd be a more willing user of Tor. (A use case example would be to allow a Tor user to create a white list of onion sites from which they would be willing to accept traffic).

tasbir492• 3 years ago

I agree. The certainty is reassuring. I also would never want my computer to touch even the most remotely objectionable material. I've contemplated running a Lemmy instance before, but the concerns you've brought forth are the main contributing factors in my decision to not do so.

Not only that, but TOR is something that becomes more private the more someone uses it. Iirc it's really easy to distinguish TOR packets from regular packets. Combine that with how few people use TOR, you're job of narrowing down who's abusing it becomes much easier.

Finally, just running an exit node opens one up to many legal liabilities. It's not something that's worth the effort, but it's strength comes from many people running one.

swapfile7• 3 years ago

Personally for me it is about the traffic that may be routed through my computer by the Tor network

No traffic is routed through your computer by using Tor, running a relay is a completely separate thing that can't be done by accident.

tech_ken2• 3 years ago

I don’t think any typical internet user would accept Tor’s latency. User behavior has indicated again and again that convenience and frictionless-ness is the overriding priority for the majority. I appreciate the work done by the Tor community, but I also think we need to be realistic about what the threat model is and what viable solutions are on the table:

* If you’re concerned about the MAANGs of the world hoovering data for targeted adverts I think you’d get far more traction with aggressive privacy legislation and brutal oversight, or (and I recognize this is extreme) straight nationalization of some of their products with a mandate to operate them in the public interest like PBS or the Beeb

* If you’re concerned about an authoritarian state actor Tor was pwned years ago. TBH I think trying to win against ex. US TLAs in straight cryptography or protocol supremacy is kind of a fools errand (you’re ultimately going to get clobbered purely on the resource differential) and that the best bet is security through obscurity.

Just my 2c, maybe overly fatalistic so curious about counter views

cma• 3 years ago

If everyone used it wouldn't latency go down (more nearby nodes), or is it that for privacy via timing attacks they don't preference nearby nodes and/or they add artificial delays?

tech_ken2• 3 years ago

That’s a good question, tbh I have no idea. Yeah presumably if the user base increased then the number of nodes would also grow, but definitely unclear to me what level of latency (if any) is required for privacy

r3trohack3r5• 3 years ago

I might misunderstand how Tor works, but unless you are a relay I don’t think you participate in routing. Unlike BitTorrent, clients don’t automatically contribute resources back to the network.

akira2501• 3 years ago

If you’re concerned about an authoritarian state actor Tor was pwned years ago.

I mean.. wasn't it created by a department of the US Navy? What did everyone expect? The "white label" slapped on it years ago was that this was meant to help "Iranian dissidents" share information on the web.

The utility of this network to everyday people was never going to exist.

make3• 3 years ago

yes, why do people use Tor if it's well known that it's been hacked by multiple governments for a long time?

wolverine876• 3 years ago

It depends on the threat you are trying to mitigate. If it's commercial surveillance, then Tor makes some sense.

timbit424• 3 years ago

Where is this proof?

adr1an• 3 years ago

I used it plenty at the University to access research articles (sci hub). There are other use cases that go beyond the usual stuff that government try to monitor by serving exit nodes, or doing correlation attacks. Anyway, even if you were a terrorist, using your would be better than not using it. There are probably other solutions that they implement, sure.

DANmode19• 3 years ago

Because the protocol isn't the issue.

Lately, it's been surreptitiously fingerprinting or exploiting their Firefox fork, timing attacks (if you can see metadata all of the packets in the country or world, they can take as many hops as you choose, someone and or something can still easily line them up),

or other op-sec screwups (controversial, because what is reporterd as fatal OpSec flaws can just as easily be parallel construction finding something that would look or sound blatantly obvious in retrospect).

gray_charger• 3 years ago

If you're not doing anything that affects national security they won't bother burning that capability on you. They save action only for those they can take action against in a clandestine way (so the fact they can crack Tor is not on public record), or against someone so dangerous they need to act quickly for national security reasons (and a government acting quickly with overwhelming force is hard to keep secret).

anigbrowl3• 3 years ago

Just as with political philosophies like anarchism or communism, if your Great Idea depends on everybody else adopting it to be successful, then it's going to fail.

timbit424• 3 years ago

So like Facebook. Oh. Wait...

WallyFunk2• 3 years ago

the more people that use it, the more secure it gets, according to Patil. If only certain sensitive groups use it, it’ll be easier to deanonymize and ultimately track down identities.

Tor gained a lot of popularity after the Snowden revelations. We would need several Snowden-like leaks over the coming years to ramp Tor usage up substantially. And then there's no way of knowing how Tor would scale to support a new influx of users, year-on-year.

But I agree with Patil, the more people that use it, the better. If we could just shake the stigma that Tor = crimeware then that would be great.

badrabbit• 3 years ago

I recommend against using Tor, simply because of exit node hostility and targeted intrusions when you use Tor. Intel agencies also run the majority of relays last I heard of this subject. Perhaps if exit node operators were publicly listed and vetted humans and most relay's owners volunteered who they are and validate that with the project, I could trust it more.

IMHO, financial incentives for relay and exit operators is the best way to make sure more people without ulterior motives participate.

r3trohack3r5• 3 years ago

I believe Tor is underrated in P2P systems. Many networks consider NAT traversal mostly (or partially) unsolved. Routing between nodes over Tor immediately solves your NAT traversal problems allowing any device to tunnel to any device (at the expense of latency).

fruitreunion12• 3 years ago

i2p is an alternative with its main focus on hidden services rather than outproxying to the regular net, that seems to be somewhat used with torrents.

lallysingh• 3 years ago

Lets not forget personal services! You can setup sshd on a box behind NAT as a hidden service. It'll disconnect more than you like but screen or tmux can help with that.

Fatnino• 3 years ago

I was using tor the other day and my phone battery went below 10% triggering power saving mode. My fault, I should have had my phone charged before.

When the phone went into power saving mode, tor closed and lost my place. And since it doesn't keep local browsing history, I was back to square one.

omgmajk• 3 years ago

Wait, I'm confused. Not all people use Tor?

Honestly though, Tor is not the solution for a lot of people. If you're just going for good enough there are other alternatives, if you're already under heat from a big enough actor you are screwed whatever you use.

We need a new solution.

null4bl3• 3 years ago

I have had a plan on my list for years now, to write a medium for IoT devices, that would route all traffic through TOR as a layer of security, while it would also help the TOR network with a lot of fuzzing traffic.

lossolo• 3 years ago

Please don't. If now suddenly everyone would use TOR then we would get something a lot worse than Google's Web Environment Integrity, let me explain why. As someone being on the other side of things (running different services for years) thank god that all users are not using TOR. 99% of all attacks, spam, password brute forcing etc came from TOR on many services I worked on throughout the years. Eliminating that traffic or adding additional checks and hops for traffic from TOR solves a lot of issues for many services.

Tor’s shadowy reputation will only end if we all use it

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