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Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

metrics.torproject.org

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Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#22

Post by justinclift »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #11

[flagged]

Probably depends on what kind of service you're providing.

I (a legitimate user) get blocked on websites when using Tor quite a lot. It's a pita. :(

That being said, there's no chance in hell I'd ever put a CC or similar private info though a Tor based network connection. Just in case... ;)

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#24

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

wood_spirit wrote: post #9
fefe23 wrote: post #6

Could these be attempts at data mining for unmasking Tor users?

Back in 2017 the German BND was revealed to have a history with that: https://netzpolitik.org/2017/secret-documents-reveal-german-...

I would be shocked if any intelligence service in the world wouldn't have their hands in that, even in the most respected democracies. Infiltrating "underground" networks and communities, and breaking encryption, is literally their job.

Especially now that there's a war on our borders, the spooks have a plethora of reasons to use to justify their invasiveness.

We just need to make sure to keep them accountable, which is the tricky part, as their work is always classified and our human and privacy rights often clash with their jobs, so unless any whistleblower comes through we might never know the extent of their rule breaking.

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#27

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

lxgr wrote: post #20
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might also depend on how it’s enforced. The blocks in Austria basically do not exist because they are only done by carrier DNS servers. Use 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 and you would not know.

The vast majority of people use their ISP’s DNS server, though.

I don’t think that is relevant here. If in one country you need a VPN to bypass blocking but others you only need a different DNS server I would expect most users to go for the latter if given a choice.

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#28

Post by 0xDEF »

netsharc wrote: post #8

Maybe related to the Proto-Nazi party AfD winning a district a few days ago. And this 5 day old news story: https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-far-right-afd-securi... "Germany’s far-right AfD placed under security service surveillance" - "The party is now treated as a ‘suspected case’ for far-right extremism". I wonder if anyone can see inside the right-wing chat networks and if they've been mentioning Tor. Alth…

As a Danish person who has been to Eastern Germany (outside Berlin) I'm really not surprised by the rise of the AfD. It's common to see people on social media praise Germans for de-Nazification and criticize the Japanese for not confronting their past in the same way. Those people have clearly not interacted with Eastern Germans. In Eastern Germany the underlying neuroticism, persecution complex, and willingness to believe in every conspiracy theory, things that were foundational for the rise of Nazism, is very much still alive.

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#29

Post by Blahah »

Grimburger wrote: post #13
fefe23 wrote: post #6

Could these be attempts at data mining for unmasking Tor users?

Seems most likely, either by academics or government. Not really the most subtle way about it though and likely to face some response. I'd assume both have the capability to run a fairly accurate simulated network without anyone noticing so it's a bit strange.

I doubt it's either of those - it would be extremely unethical and illegal for academics to do, and governments don't need to take this approach because they have a bunch of systemic attacks that are less obvious. Perhaps someone with a botnet looking to sell unmasking, which has been popping up as a service recently. Or trying to use it against a specific DWM or vendor.
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