Tor can be used for any internet browsing you usually do. The key difference with Tor is that the network hides your IP address and other system information for full anonymity.
The company behind a VPN can still access your information, sell it or pass it along to law enforcement. With Tor, there’s no link between you and your traffic, according to Jed Crandall, an associate professor at Arizona State University.
I don’t know if it’s even possible, but it would be cool if I could use the fediverse over TOR just for the sake of supporting TOR. Not sure if there would have to be specific .onion instances, if normal instances could just be mirrored with a .onion address, or if a .onion instance would even be able to federated in the first place. I just don’t know how it works.
Other use cases may include keeping the identities of sensitive populations like undocumented immigrants anonymous, trying to unionize a workplace without the company shutting it down, victims of domestic violence looking for resources without their abuser finding out or, as Crandall said, wanting to make embarrassing Google searches without related targeted ads following you around forever.
I’m certain an all-out legislative war would be waged against TOR if it were to become popularized for most of those reasons, under the more convenient guise of “criminals and children!”
Tor can be used for any internet browsing you usually do. The key difference with Tor is that the network hides your IP address and other system information for full anonymity
Also, this isn’t true. MANY sites and services block access from Tor, including major ones that people use everyday.
Also. Those running an exit node can and do sniff traffic.
It’s bad practice to login to stuff that’s important (like banking) over tor. Or login to anything over for you have logged into over the clear.
Also, nation states can track you using a variety of techniques from fingerprinting to straight up working together to associate connection streams. A large number of tor nodes are run by alphabet agencies. Hell the protocol was developed by the us navy.
Last I tried you couldn’t access social media, Google constantly forces you through captchas because it thinks you’re a bot, and anything on a CDN will either constantly force captchas or just doesn’t work. Financial institutions absolutely are all inaccessible.
I’ve also found that many ones that are blocked aren’t completely blocked, I can access them by using a new circuit (lots of these sites seem to really hate European Exit nodes but anything else has typically worked).
Is that what it is? Every once in a while I have to Ctrl+Shift+L it to get into something, but I’ve never watched that closely. What did Europe do to these guys?
I’ve noticed that just as the most aggressive ad blocker blockers are news media websites, the most aggressive tor-exit-node blockers are retail sites such as lowes.com. My working hypothesis is that they view anonymous transactions (or perhaps even anonymous window shopping) as stealing. When it comes to actionable data for market research, data about actual finalized transactions where actual money changed hands is the holy grail. It’s the data that has skin in the game. As for window shopping online, you know the drill, you do that, you hear about it on Fecebook. Until recently I searched retail sites with the site: filter of a search engine (the one that works on Tor, of course), but until recently, most site searches were even more enshittified than most of the two search engines. Now search engines are out and Tor is out. Perhaps offline shopping is in. BTW, just for shits and giggles, try carrying a clipboard next time you visit a brick and mortar retail establishment and see what happens, or better yet, whip out your cell phone and start photographing not merchandise but shelf tags. Information is power, my friends.
I mean, I’ve used it. It works. But I don’t get why you would bother most of the time. It’s slow as hell and while I’m generally fairly concerned about my privacy there is a point where I can’t be bothered.
Well any instance owner could also get an onion link and host the instance over tor.
Of course the instance itself can’t really hide. Since it needs to federate with others that are not onions. But your accesses would all show as from localhost.
What effect would using Tor browser to access a non onion site have over using a different, privacy-focused browser? Honest question. I assumed Tor browser was no different than other browsers in that aspect.
The difference is that your ISP doesn’t know where your packets are headed, and the destination doesn’t know where your packets came from. The ISP sees you connect to the entrance node and the destination sees you connect from the exit node, and it’s very difficult for anyone to trace the connection back to you (unless they own both the entrance and exit and use traffic coorelation or some other exploit/fingerprint). Regardless, both parties are generally able to tell that you are using TOR if they reference lists of known entrance/exit nodes. Also the anti-fingerprinting measures taken by TB are a bit more strict than other privacy-focused browsers
Thank you for the detailed answer. I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about using tor browser, considering how privacy-minded the community tends to be.
It is confusing, Tor is an excellent privacy tool if used properly (don’t log in to stuff), but I guess it’s still a technical hurdle to most. Probably also from a lack of marketing.
I think in countries where the government is decidedly more authoritarian it’s more known. On my relay right now I see a ton of russian and a smaller amount of German connections.
No problem! And yeah, it’s good to see people talking about it over here. I think it’s the best tool for online privacy OOTB (depending on your threat model), and it gets better the more people use it.
I’m certain an all-out legislative war would be waged against TOR if it were to become popularized for most of those reasons, under the more convenient guise of “criminals and children!”
I guess we’ll have to see what happens after that right wing Twitter account posted CSAM, Twitter suspended the account, then Elon said they removed the posts and reinstated the account 🤷🏽♂️
It’s really worth reading the article.
I don’t know if it’s even possible, but it would be cool if I could use the fediverse over TOR just for the sake of supporting TOR. Not sure if there would have to be specific .onion instances, if normal instances could just be mirrored with a .onion address, or if a .onion instance would even be able to federated in the first place. I just don’t know how it works.
I’m certain an all-out legislative war would be waged against TOR if it were to become popularized for most of those reasons, under the more convenient guise of “criminals and children!”
Also, this isn’t true. MANY sites and services block access from Tor, including major ones that people use everyday.
Also. Those running an exit node can and do sniff traffic.
It’s bad practice to login to stuff that’s important (like banking) over tor. Or login to anything over for you have logged into over the clear.
Also, nation states can track you using a variety of techniques from fingerprinting to straight up working together to associate connection streams. A large number of tor nodes are run by alphabet agencies. Hell the protocol was developed by the us navy.
Which ones? I use it quite a lot and never found a site that has blocked me.
Last I tried you couldn’t access social media, Google constantly forces you through captchas because it thinks you’re a bot, and anything on a CDN will either constantly force captchas or just doesn’t work. Financial institutions absolutely are all inaccessible.
I’ve checked facebook, instagram and tiktok, they’re all fine.
https://www.nvidia.com doesn’t work
There are a few, but there’s always an alternative.
I’ve also found that many ones that are blocked aren’t completely blocked, I can access them by using a new circuit (lots of these sites seem to really hate European Exit nodes but anything else has typically worked).
Is that what it is? Every once in a while I have to Ctrl+Shift+L it to get into something, but I’ve never watched that closely. What did Europe do to these guys?
I remember hearing that Yelp blocks Tor users, but I’m not sure if that is the case through proxies.
Also iirc Cloudflare blocks all Tor exits.
I’ve used sites with cloudflare over Tor. They always seem to require pressing a check box, but usually work.
I’ve noticed that just as the most aggressive ad blocker blockers are news media websites, the most aggressive tor-exit-node blockers are retail sites such as lowes.com. My working hypothesis is that they view anonymous transactions (or perhaps even anonymous window shopping) as stealing. When it comes to actionable data for market research, data about actual finalized transactions where actual money changed hands is the holy grail. It’s the data that has skin in the game. As for window shopping online, you know the drill, you do that, you hear about it on Fecebook. Until recently I searched retail sites with the site: filter of a search engine (the one that works on Tor, of course), but until recently, most site searches were even more enshittified than most of the two search engines. Now search engines are out and Tor is out. Perhaps offline shopping is in. BTW, just for shits and giggles, try carrying a clipboard next time you visit a brick and mortar retail establishment and see what happens, or better yet, whip out your cell phone and start photographing not merchandise but shelf tags. Information is power, my friends.
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They’re right. I dont have specific examples but a lot of wikis and some general news sites blocked me when i used it.
I mean… I asked for examples and you gave ‘there are examples but I don’t know any’, which is not really supporting the point here.
You don’t need to access a .onion instance to use Tor. You can simply perform your day-to-day web usage through Tor directly.
On your phone, you can even use Tor natively with most of your apps.
I’ve literally always browsed Lemmy over Tor. I even made this account over it, which surprised me when it worked.
How do the big CDNs handle Tor traffic? Do you find you get blocked, or is it just a matter of more captchas/challenges?
CloudFlare puts up a captcha occasionally, everything else just leaves me alone.
At this point using someone else’s browser with no adblock feels more difficult to navigate.
I see, thanks! Yeah, surfing the web without Adblock is actually horrible these days.
Lots of capchas usually, I can’t remember being outright blocked when I used it
I mean, I’ve used it. It works. But I don’t get why you would bother most of the time. It’s slow as hell and while I’m generally fairly concerned about my privacy there is a point where I can’t be bothered.
Well any instance owner could also get an onion link and host the instance over tor.
Of course the instance itself can’t really hide. Since it needs to federate with others that are not onions. But your accesses would all show as from localhost.
Just download Tor browser and go to Lemmy. World
What effect would using Tor browser to access a non onion site have over using a different, privacy-focused browser? Honest question. I assumed Tor browser was no different than other browsers in that aspect.
The difference is that your ISP doesn’t know where your packets are headed, and the destination doesn’t know where your packets came from. The ISP sees you connect to the entrance node and the destination sees you connect from the exit node, and it’s very difficult for anyone to trace the connection back to you (unless they own both the entrance and exit and use traffic coorelation or some other exploit/fingerprint). Regardless, both parties are generally able to tell that you are using TOR if they reference lists of known entrance/exit nodes. Also the anti-fingerprinting measures taken by TB are a bit more strict than other privacy-focused browsers
Thank you for the detailed answer. I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about using tor browser, considering how privacy-minded the community tends to be.
It is confusing, Tor is an excellent privacy tool if used properly (don’t log in to stuff), but I guess it’s still a technical hurdle to most. Probably also from a lack of marketing.
I think in countries where the government is decidedly more authoritarian it’s more known. On my relay right now I see a ton of russian and a smaller amount of German connections.
No problem! And yeah, it’s good to see people talking about it over here. I think it’s the best tool for online privacy OOTB (depending on your threat model), and it gets better the more people use it.
I guess we’ll have to see what happens after that right wing Twitter account posted CSAM, Twitter suspended the account, then Elon said they removed the posts and reinstated the account 🤷🏽♂️