Live data from Hacker News

Tor Browser 12.0

blog.torproject.org

51–60 of 230 posts

Re: Tor Browser 12.0

#51

Just FYI that HN is very anti-tor. I made this account via Tor just now to prove the point. It will be dead by default (unless someone "vouches" for it). It's a very user-hostile stance that HN takes (along with not letting you delete your account). It really makes you wonder what they're doing with all this data? Doxxing is almost a given.

"Just FYI that HN is very anti-tor..." @deadfromtor

Citations please?

Otherwise this is horseshit. Many of HN's users signed up and access HN from tor.

I /often/ utilize the tor browser to access HN. I've not had a single issue /ever/ with that.

Re: Tor Browser 12.0

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a circuit to clearnet it's 3. Guard --> Middle --> Exit. For a onion service it's 6 and the connection is a bit more complicated [0]. The speed varies from very fast to unbearable depending on your circuit and how bad the ddos is at that moment. [1] You can try to create a new and hopefully faster circuit by clicking on the onion symbol on the left in the address bar. [0] https://github.com/mikeperry-tor/vanguard…

My mistake, updated my comment

In your defense I also wasn't sure for a minute and had to look it up. Could also have been three hops to the intro point from the onion service.

Re: Tor Browser 12.0

#53

Just FYI that HN is very anti-tor. I made this account via Tor just now to prove the point. It will be dead by default (unless someone "vouches" for it). It's a very user-hostile stance that HN takes (along with not letting you delete your account). It really makes you wonder what they're doing with all this data? Doxxing is almost a given.

Yup. Suspicious just like when reddit became hostile to Tor.

It's also a violation of the spirit of the internet. Tim Berners-Lee wrote about this in the December 2010 issue of Scientific American that any walled off website that blocks you from accessing it is unacceptable because it's not the web anymore.

Re: Tor Browser 12.0

#54

Just FYI that HN is very anti-tor. I made this account via Tor just now to prove the point. It will be dead by default (unless someone "vouches" for it). It's a very user-hostile stance that HN takes (along with not letting you delete your account). It really makes you wonder what they're doing with all this data? Doxxing is almost a given.

Does that restriction go away after you get enough reputation? Or does every single comment need to be vouched for even after several have been posted and accumulated upvotes?

Re: Tor Browser 12.0

#55
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't emailing @dang be against the purpose of Tor, which is to enhance privacy?

> Wouldn't emailing @dang be against the purpose of Tor, which is to enhance privacy? Just use webmail in your tor browser. And don't send it from your main gmail, but create a throwaway.

It's pretty hard to sign up for an email account over Tor. The closest I've seen is Protonmail, which will let you make an anonymous account in exchange for a Bitcoin payment.

Re: Tor Browser 12.0

#56

The inescapable fact about Tor is that its traffic patterns make you stand out prominently. Just the fact you’re using it automatically makes you interesting and worthy of a closer look. All well and good if you’re just maintaining a cookie recipe site on the dark web, but it’s rarely ever that, is it?

Tor can be made substantially less obvious if you make sure the bitrate and packet timings over each 'hop' of users connections are fixed.

Eg. each client sends out 1000 1 kbyte packets per second to each peer, once per millisecond. Inside each packet, they send the onion encrypted user data. The rest of the packet is filled with rand().

Without that protection, any network attacker can do packet size and timing analysis to unmask nearly any user rather quickly.

Re: Tor Browser 12.0

#57
post #37

The inescapable fact about Tor is that its traffic patterns make you stand out prominently. Just the fact you’re using it automatically makes you interesting and worthy of a closer look. All well and good if you’re just maintaining a cookie recipe site on the dark web, but it’s rarely ever that, is it?

There is also the inescapable fact that Tor was created by US Intelligence, specifically the US Naval Research Lab[0]. And according to FOIA documents it continues to receive a huge chunk of funding & resources from US Intelligence, particularly from the United States Agency for Global Media (formerly the Broadcasting Board of Governors), which supervises our propaganda channels Voice of America and Radio Free Europe…

I use Tor Browser as my daily driver (for everything that doesn't need me to be logged into an account), for an on-principle protest against the out-of-control commercial surveillance that almost every Web site willingly participates in.

The federal government isn't in my threat model, and "you can't fight city hall".

Re: Tor Browser 12.0

#58

The inescapable fact about Tor is that its traffic patterns make you stand out prominently. Just the fact you’re using it automatically makes you interesting and worthy of a closer look. All well and good if you’re just maintaining a cookie recipe site on the dark web, but it’s rarely ever that, is it?

> but it’s rarely ever that, is it? Maybe I'm unique, but my dark net activity is usually pretty tame. The number one reason I use Tor is because browsing onion sites reminds a bit more of how the web used to be in the late 1990s. Lot's of garbage of course, but a lot more serendipitous discovery than the web today. Because of its anonymous nature Onion sites are inherently resistant to being swallowed whole by adver…

If I may ask (provided you’re comfortable with disclosing) what kind of content do you find there that’s genuinely interesting?

Re: Tor Browser 12.0

#59

I'm surprised that they haven't bundled Arti, their Rust-based tor client implementation. I will say I am thankful for Tor Browser, but any JavaScript-enabled browser seems like the wrong choice for privacy and security.

Arti isn't ready for production use yet. Its a long ways away from being usable in TBB or as a full drop in for tor itself.

I think in a years time that will change.

Re: Tor Browser 12.0

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I installed the Tor Browser to access the Z Library a few days ago. I guess I shouldn't complain, but the downloads are very slow (I'm not sure if the problem is in my end).

Tor works by proxying through (at least) 3 PCs before hitting the open web. The problem is that you’re trying to download big files which is not a use case for tor. It’s specifically for browsing the web anonymously.

When I first starting using Tor in the mid aughts, I was using it to download movies and music. I remember talking with a security friend and he was like, "Bruh, what are you doing? That's not what Tor is for." and then launched into a 20 min rant about why I was misusing Tor and affecting other people using the service by what I was doing.

It was a good lesson and helped me realize what Tor should really be used for.

Post reply on HN