161–170 of 602 posts
The more privacy the better as far as I'm concerned, but I've never used tor. What are people using tor for? General comms, piracy (mild illegal), other (very illegal), ...?
> other (very illegal), ...? I will be waiting patiently for people to admit that they do very illegal things over Tor.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Could someone like the NSA with limitless resources do it? Quite probably, sure. If you're not worried about a fairly well-resourced government agency uncovering whatever network activity you believe needs to be anonymized, why would you be using Tor at all?
Depends on what you’re doing. The NSA isn’t going to expose themselves by tipping off law enforcement about small time drug deals. If you’re sharing CSAM or planning terrorist attacks, it might be different.
They'll just employ parallel construction to avoid exposure.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you control an exit node? I had the impression, with onion services they are a thing of the past.
https://blog.torproject.org/tips-running-exit-node/
Seemed like onion services were created to solve the security issues that exit nodes bring, so I assumed people stopped using them and started running onion services instead.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you implying that Tor is primarily used for illegal or "immoral" purposes?
are you implying that Tor is not used for illegal or immoral purposes? (I took out the primarily that you threw in to make your argument stronger because that made my argument stronger, and I took out your scare quotes because morality doesn't scare me)
The best attack against Tor is convincing people not to use it. If anyone tries to convince you Tor is not safe, ask yourself: cui bono?
Society benefits when people refrain from illegal and immoral activities.
Immoral is as subjective as it gets and is therefore an awful yardstick.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Could someone like the NSA with limitless resources do it? Quite probably, sure. If you're not worried about a fairly well-resourced government agency uncovering whatever network activity you believe needs to be anonymized, why would you be using Tor at all?
Because you're an enemy of the Iranian, Saudi, North Korean, etc. gov't. Because your ex-spouse wants to murder you. Because you just escaped Scientology, or another cult. Because you're a criminal. The NSA doesn't handle that. Because you're a journalist talking to sources in the industry you're investigating.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That assumes you could run thousands of malicious tor nodes for several years without being detected. Unless you have vast resources and time, this is unlikely.
My point is that it doesn't require "vast resources". A VPS is $5 a month. A thousand of them would be in the disposable income budget of a single FAANG engineer never mind a nation state. Pay people on Fiverr to set them up for you at different ISPs so that all the setup information is different. You can use crypto to pay if you want anonimity (this is actually the main reason I used to use bitcoin - I'd pay ISPs in…
With insignificant data caps. To get the data needed I believe you're looking at a couple hundred a month, to start.
He got caught not by the FBI breaking Tor, but just by network analysis of university network traffic logs showing a very narrow list of on-campus people using Tor at the time the threat was communicated. He quickly confessed when interviewed.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/files/2013/1...
Just another factor to consider when using Tor - who's network you're on.
It's safe if you ain't a pedo or terrorist. Sometimes I wonder wtf y'all are doing with such crazy security expectations and paranoia.
2. Tor allows reception of unsolicited TCP/IPv4 traffic if you are behind a NAT you can't open ports for, because your connection to the network is initiated on your side. This is nice, especially with increasing prevalence of CGNAT.
3. Something my niece stated when I talked to her about it, who I disagree with: Many countries have a notion of upstanding citizen enforced by well funded and maintained violence-monopoly actors (R) that are not equivalent to what the majority of citizens actually do (S). R minus S is T - the tolerance gap. Things that allow T to exist include lack of will to prosecute, general social acceptance of things that were not acceptable years ago, etc. All things that are quite mutable. If your activities fall into T, privacy-enforcement tech benefits you if R and S might change in the future.
FWIW I am firmly in the "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" camp and I looked at her funny when she said this. Maybe she is a criminal or just crazy, idk.