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Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

metrics.torproject.org

111–120 of 262 posts

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#111

Does anyone understand the mass flagging and downvotes going on in this comment section? I'm very confused as I've never seen anything like it.

I'm guessing that there is some automatic system that works on certain words in comments. Flame detection has been mentioned before. Probably in combination with account age or karma. I also imagine that users vouching for these might offset the behaviour.

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#112
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is, because it's a botnet

That would likely make researching and demasking the entities involved explicitly legal .

My claim is that researchers are unlikely to be operating the botnet

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#113

Does anyone understand the mass flagging and downvotes going on in this comment section? I'm very confused as I've never seen anything like it.

Just the usual political flamewar that happens here from time to time, not sure why it escalates on some threads and not on others though.

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#114

From an average of significantly below 500k to almost 2.5M users. This drives up the global number of connecting users from approx. 3M to almost 5M. Hard to imagine that so many people in Germany suddenly switched to TOR, especially since there has not been any significant event lately that may have triggered such a decision (afaik)? My personal experience with TOR (as an administrator of various websites and service…

The interesting question is if there is a bot net spreading in Germany since the 17th of June. What would be the likelihood of that going undetected. If you like conspiracy theory, the rise in one country could point to state actors.

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#116

[flagged]

It's amusing to me that you're getting crushed on here for blocking/ "defederating" known IPs that you don't want traffic from, but I would bet that these same people would champion your right to do the same if you were blocking a spammy mastadon or lemmy instance that you didn't like!

It's not hypocritical. They have every right to block Tor traffic. I don't want them to do it, but also don't want them to lose the right to do it.

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#117
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What is unmasking? What does it have to do with a botnet

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#118

Does anyone understand the mass flagging and downvotes going on in this comment section? I'm very confused as I've never seen anything like it.

If you click the timestamp there should be a "vouch" button for comments to restore them.

It's quite annoying, possibly NAFO or similar.

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#119
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say this is the best solution. I live in another EU country where ISPs also block it via DNS.

No excuse for that censorship honestly.

Eliminating enemy propaganda is extremely common and a long running practice. It's less censorship and more self defense.
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