I just don’t think Tor Browser is currently suited as a primary browser for most people. You lose things like staying logged into websites, you can’t (or at least shouldn’t) really add extensions like a good content blocker, you generally can’t tweak or customize the browser to your liking, etc. Plus factor in things like the slow speeds, being blocked by websites, bombarded with captchas everywhere, etc, and it just becomes a harder and harder sell for a lot of average people.
Tor Browser’s great and it absolutely has its need and purpose, I’m not trying to knock it for that at all because it works damn well for what it is and what it tries to do, but I just think its hard to be using as a primary browser and daily driver in its current form, at least for a lot of people.
I dont think this article is suggesting everyone use Tor Browser as their main browser (and if they are, thats obtuse), but that people use Tor / Tor Browser at all, even for just sensitive searches or websites that dont require a login.
So when I first learned about TOR almost 10 years ago in uni, it was said to be compromised to a significant extent by secret services holding entry and exit nodes.
Is that not true anymore?
I’ve hear something similar. I think I read that the US Air Force has a bunch of nodes or something.
Additionally I don’t really understand what I would use it for if I already have a vpn and how it might put me a risk of legal trouble if I’m using it and someone routes something bad through me while I’m using it…
I’m not even sure how to talk about it.
I am decently technical, I just don’t know this tech.
Disclaimer that I haven’t used Tor in a while, do your own research, etc
The US navy designed and open sourced the Tor network. If all the traffic meant to be anonymous was coming from the US navy it doesn’t work well as an anonymizer. There’s been various claims that they have backdoors over the years, but to my knowledge none have held water.
Unless you’re running an exit node (which requires different software than the Tor browser) other people’s traffic isn’t getting routed through you so you’re fine legally.
VPNs are not very good at protecting you from the websites or services you connect to. They’re best used to hide where you’re connecting to from your ISP. Modern fingerprinting using things like browsing habits, installed software, web browser size, cookies, etc is barely effected by VPNs and the Tor browser takes care of an minimizes lots of those tools.
The biggest issue for day to day use for me is how slow it is. Because your traffic is being routed through 3-5 nodes before getting to its destination overall speed and latency suffer a lot
The biggest issue for day to day use for me is how slow it is. Because your traffic is being routed through 3-5 nodes before getting to its destination overall speed and latency suffer a lot
That’s why I never continued to use it after the times I experimented with Tor.
Modern fingerprinting using things like browsing habits, installed software, web browser size, cookies, etc is barely effected by VPNs and the Tor browser takes care of an minimizes lots of those tools.
But can’t you just spoof most of that if you really want to? If you’re putting in the effort to be concerned with anonymity.
Most operations aren’t going to try that hard to fingerprint, although presumably a few will do everything they can.
The problem with spoofing is that in many cases it is even more differentiated than other traffic. If you are the only client claiming to use a rare and defunct browser, it doesn’t matter what IP you dial in from. So if you want to be invisible, you can’t just hide your fingerprint, you have to camouflage it so it doesn’t look anomalous.
For the typical user concerned about privacy from standard actors - as opposed to someone on a most wanted list - one of the more effective methods is to fragment your data. Companies like Facebook and Google create ghost profiles when you interact while not logged in or otherwise identifiable. If you want to use these services more or less unimpaired while preserving your privacy, it’s usually acceptable to have all of their data on you split among unlinked ghost accounts as an improvement over them being able to associate the data with your real ID. Spoofing can be a part of that, but if you overdo it then you end up making yourself identifiable again.
I use an app to fake my location data. I think the default is somewhere in the middle of an ocean. It’s a pretty safe assumption to all of the corpos out there that my prole ass is not on a yacht in the middle of the ocean. I heard of a map the other day of geolocated activity for a platform. All of the coasts were lit up with activity - including Antarctica. They were being botted, and the bots (I assume) pick a random geocoordinate when interacting… and if that coordinate is in the ocean, the bot adjusts it to the nearest land coordinate. Hence the coasts being lit up with disproportionate activity. Some very smart people, much smarter than me, are being paid a lot of money to find much more difficult signals in all of the noise. Much like Zynga hires PhDs to maximize addiction and profit.
Being a private netizen is like being a pack animal: You don’t want to stick out from the pack. That’s how you get picked off.
Edit: Tor has a great use case, btw, but I’m not aware of it being a great use case for most people and purposes.
Thanks for summarizing this for me. I think I could just use a vpn and librewolf to accomplish what you are talking about with the tor browser.
Librewolf wipes everything once it’s closer and it pretty basic if you use the default settings.
Are people using it to casually browse Lemmy and stuff?
I use librewolf, but for me the first thing to change was to do not delete things on exit. I’m looking for a better firefox, not a lighter tor browser
Theres also the mullvad browser which is just tor browser without the tor part
Try i2p
Compare and use the right service for your needs: https://geti2p.net/en/comparison/tor
Interesting, ty
I also heared that bit about the secret service owning nodes a few years ago. It was trough a teacher that’s also really in the stuff outside of teaching, and has a network of non-teaching proffesionals in the field.
It’s something to keep in mind, at the very least. Tor already has some weaknesses anyways. You shouldn’t trust it blindly just because it’s Tor. If anything, I think it more has a false rep for how strong it is over struggling with a stigma.
It was pretty much the same context for me, yeah.
Opsec always applies
Aren’t bridges meant to prevent that?
Iirc holding both the entry and exit of a routed connection, you can in theory match traffic going through, which would let you connect a user to the server/site they are connecting to. It might still be encrypted at that point, idk the details anymore.
No, bridges are meant to bypass censorship
Most of the nodes are hosted by Tor Foundation itself
[citation needed]
Is there any way to check that?
Yup. You can check a lot of stat about a node on tor website. https://metrics.torproject.org/
If true, I’m not happy about that. I want lots of different owners so it’s harder to compromise the network by compromising a single entity.
I don’t think a single credible source has shown this to be a vulnerability. You’re talking about an attack that would cost, what, millions of dollars to run per day?
Dunno if it’s all that expensive when there are hundreds of nodes on several individual malicious networks confirmed https://nusenu.medium.com/how-malicious-tor-relays-are-exploiting-users-in-2020-part-i-1097575c0cac
You’d need much more than hundreds of nodes.
The graph tracks exit probability and the article speaks about the matter, especially what you’re referencing. Check it out.
Problem is that many sites don’t work because of anti-ddos and anti bot measures.
It is a pity
Cloudflare is pretty TOR-friendly, they even offer onion routing for your website.
Yeah, we need to make it illegal to block someone from doing a simple GET request just because they’re using a privacy tool.
It should only be legal to block access based on how you act, not based on how you look.
I would use it if it wasn’t so slow. I get that it’s slow because of the security, but that’s precisely the reason it can never be my primary browser.
Sorry if my question is stupid, but can I use it as a “regular” browser (like Chrome, Mozilla, Opera, etc) on my Android smartphone?
Yes, but you lose all data after exit
Yes, that’s the point.
Thank you for the answer! :)
You can, but you really shouldn’t.
Why?
It’s meant for you to be completely anonymous. Logging in to stuff would defeat the whole purpose of TOR, as it would associate your activity with the account you logged into. When browsing sites without really needing to interact, it’s good, as the sites cannot track you easily.
There are many use-cases for Tor. One is anonymity. One is to bypass censorship. The most popular website on the darknet is Facebook.
It doesn’t “defeat the purpose” of using Tor in Tibet to access a Facebook page.
I’d feel bad using the Tor network for everyday browsing. I think it should be reserved for people who really need it to protect themselves.
No. Use it for everyday tasks. If Tor is used by only people who need them, they will be easily detected. The whole reason US Navy released Tor to public was so normal users can scramble the usage detection. One more advantage is that right now lot of website block tor users if more users will use tor then they might stop it.
Won’t it cause browsing to much slower than it normally is?
More usage means more visibility which means more recognition and thus more funding
Maybe, but the added obfuscation is probably worth it to the people who need it.
It’s not meant to be a high performance browser amyway
A slower connection is better than ending up in prison, the re-education camps or worse, beheaded.
Without average Joe’s using it for nonsense Tor usage is basically a neon sign saying “I’m doing something worth hiding. Come and kill me.”
This is an incorrect, unrealistic way to view this. By using the Tor network normally (you argument certainly applies to doing overly traffic intensive tasks like torrenting over Tor) you are normalizing its use, protecting those who really rely on it. If the only people using Tor were criminals and people who needed the protection, listening on Wifi networks for connections to Tor could lead to immediate prosecution (look what the UK is trying to do with encrpytion, and that French case where all of the evidence against a suspect was use of open source technology like Tor.) By default, Tor does not hide the fact its being used from your network (thats what a bridge is for), so the more people use Tor, the safer everyone is.
If you really want to help those that need Tor’s protection, run Snowflake on your desktop or Orbot’s ‘kindness’ on Android. This allows users to use your device as a bridge, bypassing censorship in other countries / networks.
We’ll see if Google’s new efforts manage to kill the thing.
The US government would never allow Tor to die. They need it to conduct terrorism cyberwarfare
Is there an index of Tor network only sites?
Yes. Alec Muffett was the guy who setup the most popular Tor darkent site: Facebook. I think he did Twitter’s too. He maintains an excellent list.
The reason why Tor is publicly available is to get lots of people using to better hide western intelligence agency traffic. So this article is basically stenography for the CIA. It may be secure or whatever, but you’re essentially helping US assets hide their internet traffic.
You’re looking at it from the wrong end.
In fact, the international intelligence community is helping me to launder my drug purchasing traffic.
Existence is chaos anyway. Not saying I don’t feel what you say. I’m indifferent. Respectable 1st governing is a thing of the past.
Its good that not everyone uses it because otherwise the notes would run hot.
