Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

bugzilla.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 122 posts

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#11

Post by rincebrain »

Uptrenda wrote: post #4

It would be really cool if Tor became like an open web standard that every browser supported. We would be able to freely host services with incredibly strong privacy guarantees and then work them into existing web infrastructure so that normal users can benefit from strong privacy without having any special knowledge. Doing the same thing with Bitcoin wallets would also be a good idea, though I'd want for there to be…

The only problem with that is limited levels of trust - e.g. if you have Tor support baked into your browser, you have to trust that the magic "Tor on" button isn't compromised.

This isn't a problem that just using Tor in an existing browser install is supposed to solve/be any better at, but it suddenly becomes an incredible target for any state actors/other large-scale entities who know they're going to want to suppress communication shortly.

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#12

Post by colejohnson66 »

scrollaway wrote: post #10
2bitencryption wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be really cool if Tor became like an open web standard that every browser supported. Isn't it already? My understanding is that nothing is stopping you from using the Tor service as a proxy for all your traffic. They just offer the Browser Bundle to make it dead simple for users. You could download their so-called "expert bundle" and use that to route any traffic you want. https://www.torproject.org/downlo…

I think parent means natively supporting tor as a protocol in the browser. Eg another "incognito mode", and native support for the onion tld. It would indeed be cool.

That's what I thought. The closest you can get to viewing onion URLs outside of Tor is a website like Tor2web[0]. The downside of these solutions is that you don't get the benefit of onion routing.

[0]: https://www.tor2web.org/

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#13

Post by anonbanker »

r-w wrote: post #7

* squee *

agreed. this is the biggest news a privacy advocate could ever want. How do Google and Microsoft compete? They've pretty much set on a path of VPN'ing everyone over Tor by default.

Perhaps it's too much to ask if they'd do the same for i2pbrowser?

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#14

Post by Fej »

This would be a miracle for privacy advocates. However, I'm worried that Mozilla could become irrelevant in the meantime. I say this as a die-hard Firefox user (I even refuse to use any of the forks that remove the branding).

Mozilla needs to be making moves that keep them relevant. This move is great for some privacy-minded folks who don't know that the Tor Browser Bundle exists, but unfortunately... most people don't care about their privacy online.

Does Mozilla even have a path they can take that keeps Firefox from dying a slow death? I say this because I love what they do - they're the only major browser developer that is interested in protecting their users instead of their profits. They need to start acting like the situation is getting dire.

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#15

Post by Paul-ish »

Fej wrote: post #14

This would be a miracle for privacy advocates. However, I'm worried that Mozilla could become irrelevant in the meantime. I say this as a die-hard Firefox user (I even refuse to use any of the forks that remove the branding). Mozilla needs to be making moves that keep them relevant. This move is great for some privacy-minded folks who don't know that the Tor Browser Bundle exists, but unfortunately... most people don…

We see that % share is going down for Firefox, but is there any indication that total number of users is dropping for Firefox? I suspect that as more people have been getting on the internet, the absolute number of FF users is actually going up. It stands to reason that Firefox isn't dieing at all.

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#16

Post by FungalRaincloud »

I mean, I think it's a cool idea, but I kind of hope not. Firefox is the only browser that seems to consistently be able to play video at my work, because of aggressive firewalls. If they enable tor by default, it's pretty much guaranteed that it'll be uninstalled from all company machines.

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#18

Post by martinvol »

Paul-ish wrote: post #15
Fej wrote: post #14

This would be a miracle for privacy advocates. However, I'm worried that Mozilla could become irrelevant in the meantime. I say this as a die-hard Firefox user (I even refuse to use any of the forks that remove the branding). Mozilla needs to be making moves that keep them relevant. This move is great for some privacy-minded folks who don't know that the Tor Browser Bundle exists, but unfortunately... most people don…

We see that % share is going down for Firefox, but is there any indication that total number of users is dropping for Firefox? I suspect that as more people have been getting on the internet, the absolute number of FF users is actually going up. It stands to reason that Firefox isn't dieing at all.

I broke my Chrome instance and decided to give Firefox a try, and I must say it has A LOT of usability problems compared to Google's. I'd say Mozilla has a lot to work on to avoid losing users, if they aren't already.

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#19

Post by martinvol »

Paul-ish wrote: post #15
Fej wrote: post #14

This would be a miracle for privacy advocates. However, I'm worried that Mozilla could become irrelevant in the meantime. I say this as a die-hard Firefox user (I even refuse to use any of the forks that remove the branding). Mozilla needs to be making moves that keep them relevant. This move is great for some privacy-minded folks who don't know that the Tor Browser Bundle exists, but unfortunately... most people don…

We see that % share is going down for Firefox, but is there any indication that total number of users is dropping for Firefox? I suspect that as more people have been getting on the internet, the absolute number of FF users is actually going up. It stands to reason that Firefox isn't dieing at all.

I broke my Chrome instance and decided to give Firefox a try, and I must say it has A LOT of usability problems compared to Google's. I'd say Mozilla has a lot to work on to avoid losing users, if they aren't already.

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#20

Post by halestock »

FungalRaincloud wrote: post #16

I mean, I think it's a cool idea, but I kind of hope not. Firefox is the only browser that seems to consistently be able to play video at my work, because of aggressive firewalls. If they enable tor by default, it's pretty much guaranteed that it'll be uninstalled from all company machines.

This is not to bring Tor into Firefox. Tor has been using an older, forked version of Firefox. This would go back to using the mainline version of Firefox.
Post reply on HN