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Tor: Directly connecting users from Turkey

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Re: Tor: Directly connecting users from Turkey

#71

Post by adrusi »

sly_g wrote: post #51
saryant wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was probably The Economist. Paired with an interesting experiment (for them) in their presentation of long-form essays. http://www.economist.com/news/essays/21596796-democracy-was-...

"Freedom score"? Really? Some number, representing "freedom", calculated from the US point of view - it's, how should I put it... Less than impartial. Not to mention method of calculating freedom.

It doesn't seem any less contrived than standard of living scores or happiness scores. It's obviously an imperfect metric, but while it might be useless for comparing the freedom of Germany and the US, it's perfectly adequate for comparing the freedom of the US and Croatia, or of Croatia and China. For the sake of calculating the overall freedom of the world over time, as in the case of the great-grandparent's question, it works as well as anything.

Re: Tor: Directly connecting users from Turkey

#72

Post by adrusi »

saryant wrote: post #18
adrusi wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember reading an article a couple weeks ago, I'm not sure where, but I think it was posted on HN, about democracy over time. While not the same, that's a good proxy for measuring freedom. It said that democracy reached a peak around 2000, and that it's declined a little since then, but much slower than it was increasing before then. I think this article was either on The Atlantic, The Economist or BBC, if you wa…

It was probably The Economist. Paired with an interesting experiment (for them) in their presentation of long-form essays. http://www.economist.com/news/essays/21596796-democracy-was-...

That's the one. The whole article is a great read, but the visualization a couple screenfuls down is what the grandparent was looking for.

Re: Tor: Directly connecting users from Turkey

#73

Post by alexnking »

I wonder if twitter alternatives have also become more popular in Turkey lately - it seems like if people are willing to setup Tor, they might also try App.net (you're of course loosing your network of followers, but your followers in Turkey can't see twitter anyway).

Of course then you can just block that other service as well.

Re: Tor: Directly connecting users from Turkey

#74

Post by d0ugie »

edoloughlin wrote: post #62

I'd like to help, but without also facilitating paedos. Is there an easy way to limit my tor exits to Twitter and its subdomains? I.e., can I do the configuration in Tor rather than messing with routes/firewall on the OS?

uProxy will be hopefully released a few months, which should help you help others in a censorship jam that you trust with greater confidence not to use your connection for such activity. And I imagine speech freedom will still need your help whenever it's released.. To whoever downvoted this, how is his question and concern not valid?

Re: Tor: Directly connecting users from Turkey

#76

Post by wiml »

edoloughlin wrote: post #62

I'd like to help, but without also facilitating paedos. Is there an easy way to limit my tor exits to Twitter and its subdomains? I.e., can I do the configuration in Tor rather than messing with routes/firewall on the OS?

Yes, it's really easy if you know what IPs and ports you want to allow. You can whitelist a handful of services in your torrc and reject all others by default. I've been running a mostly-relay node for years now with a few allowed exits, with never any trouble at all. Though, I don't think my node gets used as an exit node very often; whenever I've checked, it's just doing normal relaying, which is basically what I want/expect.

https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#ExitPolicies

Re: Tor: Directly connecting users from Turkey

#77

Post by eliteraspberrie »

edoloughlin wrote: post #63

It's still nowhere near its peak. I wonder what happened around Sep last year? https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-re...

That was the Sefnit botnet which started to use the Tor network heavily in mid-August 2013.

Re: Tor: Directly connecting users from Turkey

#79

Post by keule »

1ris wrote: post #39
arjie wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drops every Sunday¹. Employees of companies are using Tor to bypass company site blocks. ¹ https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-re...

No, I don't think so. Look at a bigger time frame: https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-re... There was a huge spike in Mid 2013, cause by a botnet that installed tor. Before there was almost not oscillation. After that there is quite a bit. I think there are many infected PCs at companies.

Do you still got a reference to news/blogs about that botnet install?

Re: Tor: Directly connecting users from Turkey

#80

Post by spiffytech »

hershel wrote: post #60
logicchains wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The TOR website is blocked in mainland China, as is TOR itself, but it works via obfsproxy, all it requires is someone to send you the executable/source. Most people who bypass the great firewall use VPNs, however.

Is it common for chinese citizens to do this , or is it only done by some tech guys ?

I once spoke with a student from China who told me bypassing the Great Firewall with a VPN is quite common. Not practiced by anything close to a majority of the population, but common enough that it would probably be used by e.g., that guy you know who couldn't tell Ruby from Python, and has never touched Linux, but is quite capable of figuring out how to fix his Windows box when it breaks.
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