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A Tor of the Dark Web

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Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#12
post #3

The things I always wonder about TOR: Won't I look like someone else's computer? Is it possible for me to get in trouble for because someone else's traffic exits from my home network?

Yes, this is something that is covered extensively on the TOR FAQs. They actually recommend you set up a business entity to limit your liability.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#13
post #4

A couple questions. 1. Are users of .onion services protected from the server just as well as the hidden service is protected? 2. What reassurances are there that tormail is not a honeypot?

>1. Are users of .onion services protected from the server just as well as the hidden service is protected?

An .onion server, AFAIK, might have the IP of the end point your traffic ended up going through to reach the .onion server, but not of the point of origin.

The vulnerability with Tor, as a user, comes from folks operating the Tor nodes. Adrian Lamo, the guy that sold out Bradley Manning, was running Tor nodes at one points (that's not how he got wind of Manning, but my guess is he wasn't running the Tor nodes for altruistic reasons).

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#14
A word of advice for those living under truly oppressive governments - do not connect to Tor directly (nor to a Tor bridge, to be on the safe side). Get a cheap VPS/EC2 abroad and use SSH tunnel to connect to that and from then onwards - to a Tor bridge. The reason is that, if connecting to Tor directly, security services will be able to figure out you are using Tor (although not what you are using it for) and may take an interest.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#15
post #4

A couple questions. 1. Are users of .onion services protected from the server just as well as the hidden service is protected? 2. What reassurances are there that tormail is not a honeypot?

1) yes, in fact more so, because they rely upon no fixed keys

2) there is zero reassurance, there is also zero reassurance gmail isnt sending all your mail to the NSA, etc. TOR helps you ensure you can keep you tormail and your clearnet identities as separate as possible, alternatively, run your own service.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#16
Ooh, the Tor darknet. I went there recently out of curiosity. You can get used to doing everything over Tor quite quickly, if you use it for everything you don't really notice the latency.

Yes, Tor has CP, but I didn't look for it so I didn't find it. Same with all manner of other illegal content, pretty sure it's there.

I2P and Freenet are more interesting than Tor, though, because they are truly P2P. Freenet is basically a distributed hash table (DHT) for HTML, CSS, image, and other files. It filters scripts and cross-origin requests out of HTML before serving them. I2P is like Tor, but everyone's a relay node (truly P2P, no central origin), and it's faster, but I haven't tried I2P. I have been on Freenet... it's slower than Tor!

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#17
post #8
post #3

The things I always wonder about TOR: Won't I look like someone else's computer? Is it possible for me to get in trouble for because someone else's traffic exits from my home network?

You can chose whether or not to be an exit node, so nobody else's traffic will exit through your connection if you don't want it to. If you do enable it, my presumption is that by demonstrating that you have tor running you can show that traffic from your connection is as likely to not be you as to be you - but I'm not sure if this is backed up by law, or has been tested in court.

It has not been tested in court yet, however the theory is that safe harbor laws apply.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#18

Ooh, the Tor darknet. I went there recently out of curiosity. You can get used to doing everything over Tor quite quickly, if you use it for everything you don't really notice the latency. Yes, Tor has CP, but I didn't look for it so I didn't find it. Same with all manner of other illegal content, pretty sure it's there. I2P and Freenet are more interesting than Tor, though, because they are truly P2P. Freenet is bas…

> Yes, Tor has CP, but I didn't look for it so I didn't find it. Same with all manner of other illegal content, pretty sure it's there.

My assumption is that the open web has it too - but given tor isn't a single place with a directory to everywhere, I don't see how you could stumble on it accidentally at all.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#19
post #12
post #3

The things I always wonder about TOR: Won't I look like someone else's computer? Is it possible for me to get in trouble for because someone else's traffic exits from my home network?

Yes, this is something that is covered extensively on the TOR FAQs. They actually recommend you set up a business entity to limit your liability.

Mind providing a link? I briefly looked at Tor's FAQ and couldn't find anything on that.

Also, a business entity wouldn't help in the chance of criminal investigation, which means the money spent creating a business entity would be for naught.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#20
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can chose whether or not to be an exit node, so nobody else's traffic will exit through your connection if you don't want it to. If you do enable it, my presumption is that by demonstrating that you have tor running you can show that traffic from your connection is as likely to not be you as to be you - but I'm not sure if this is backed up by law, or has been tested in court.

It has not been tested in court yet, however the theory is that safe harbor laws apply.

Safe harbor laws?
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