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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

#121

Post by throwaway290 »

curiousfab wrote: post #7

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…

Note that the growth is not just in Germany. Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland also show jumps (however in absolute terms they are still much smaller). I would not rule out it's people or bots connecting from third country/countries through VPNs based in Europe... for whatever reason.

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#122

Post by RobotToaster »

0xDEF wrote: post #28
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 b…

Hardly surprising, treuhand left east Germany extremely poor.

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#124

Post by moooo99 »

sparkling wrote: post #84
FinnKuhn wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be that someone is using a Cloud Provider in Germany, for example Hetzner

Doubt it. Hetzners smallest machine is something like $4/month, additional IPv4 addresses come with extra cost. They have quite tight service quotas, and this 2M additional IPs would be almost their entire IPv4 pool.

I don’t know about the details, but I know Hetzner has quite a backstory with their servers being abused by spammers. I don’t know how the state is today, but maybe it’s not as unlikely as it seems?

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#125

Post by wonderwonder »

infinityio wrote: post #93
wonderwonder wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you required to provide doxxing personal information proving your age on these sites or can you browse anonymously?

No - the law that may end up requiring that is a proposal that is at least several months from being enacted [0], although it's been gaining momentum for several years - so unfortunately is looking like it might actually happen [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-6606560

Is there concern in the press with the state having access to this data and using it to leverage individuals?

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#126

Post by wonderwonder »

circuit10 wrote: post #90
wonderwonder wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you required to provide doxxing personal information proving your age on these sites or can you browse anonymously?

Only on my mobile data. They’re not actually 18+ sites though, for example someone’s blog that was posted here is blocked and it seems the Tor site is too But I think that’s a Vodaphone thing rather than a UK thing

So private companies are able to decide the websites their customers are allowed to access?

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#127

Post by PrimeMcFly »

Blahah wrote: post #112
PrimeMcFly wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

I don't think anyone claimed or implied otherwise?

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#128

Post by CaptainFever »

justinclift wrote: post #22
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... ;)

> 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... ;)

For HTTPS sites, why?

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#129

Post by hattmall »

flangola7 wrote: post #117
Blahah wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Revealing the identities of tor users or hidden services. One way to do it is by controlling a large share of the network.

Re: Drastic increase in Tor clients from Germany

#130

Post by moooo99 »

spuz wrote: post #96
jandrese wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That site doesn't seem to have any stories about Germany

Honestly, the most notable political prosecution I could think of right now is police in Bavaria prosecuting climate activists under anti terror laws in anticipation of a possible crime.
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