3 ms·

FIrefox USIng ONions

3 points by ColanR 8y ago

jerheinze 8y ago
For some more details: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2018Rome/Notes/FusionProject https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2...
forapurpose 8y ago
What will Mozilla do about the Tor network's usability problems? Advanced users can workaround them and because they understand the benefits and engineering, accept the frustrations as a cost for a worthwhile (and free) technology. But what will non-technical users do? Many public Internet websites filter connections from the Tor network, many other websites are very slow, yet others impose extra obstacles such as multiple rounds of captchas (even 5 or more) or degraded service (including high suspicion of payments), and of course you often will receive webpages in the wrong locale or language - which can trigger regional filters. Currently, workarounds requires resetting the circuit (few non-technical users will even understand what the circuit is), lots of patience and reloads, and often just giving up. If that's the experience of typical Firefox users, they won't use it and they will have bad associations with Tor and Firefox.
- jerheinze 8y ago
  Wouldn't more Tor 3rd party integration (soon Brave, Mozilla in the future, ...) lead to greater incentive for website operators to allow Tor? (FWIW Cloudflare captchas are mostly a thing of the past now as they've been allowing Tor users as long as they come from the Tor Browser)
  - forapurpose 8y ago
    > Wouldn't more Tor 3rd party integration (soon Brave, Mozilla in the future, ...) lead to greater incentive for website operators to allow Tor? That seems like a long game. Tor is starting with a minuscule marketshare; Fusion will only be used by users in a special mode, afaict - again, probably very few; and if Brave's marketshare is higher or lower, the difference is immaterial. There are even websites that aren't compatible with Firefox itself, or so I'm told; it will be a long time before anyone cares about Tor users. Also, users whose personal data is harder to access are less valuable to the website; websites have an incentive to make it harder to use Tor. Finally, many associate Tor with criminality; that's not an attractive market and it's very easy for the CSO to say, 'just block it; it's not worth the time or cost'.

3 points by ColanR 8y ago

For some more details: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2018Rome/Notes/FusionProject https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2...

forapurpose 8y ago

What will Mozilla do about the Tor network's usability problems? Advanced users can workaround them and because they understand the benefits and engineering, accept the frustrations as a cost for a worthwhile (and free) technology. But what will non-technical users do? Many public Internet websites filter connections from the Tor network, many other websites are very slow, yet others impose extra obstacles such as multiple rounds of captchas (even 5 or more) or degraded service (including high suspicion of payments), and of course you often will receive webpages in the wrong locale or language - which can trigger regional filters. Currently, workarounds requires resetting the circuit (few non-technical users will even understand what the circuit is), lots of patience and reloads, and often just giving up. If that's the experience of typical Firefox users, they won't use it and they will have bad associations with Tor and Firefox.

jerheinze 8y ago
Wouldn't more Tor 3rd party integration (soon Brave, Mozilla in the future, ...) lead to greater incentive for website operators to allow Tor? (FWIW Cloudflare captchas are mostly a thing of the past now as they've been allowing Tor users as long as they come from the Tor Browser)
- forapurpose 8y ago
  > Wouldn't more Tor 3rd party integration (soon Brave, Mozilla in the future, ...) lead to greater incentive for website operators to allow Tor? That seems like a long game. Tor is starting with a minuscule marketshare; Fusion will only be used by users in a special mode, afaict - again, probably very few; and if Brave's marketshare is higher or lower, the difference is immaterial. There are even websites that aren't compatible with Firefox itself, or so I'm told; it will be a long time before anyone cares about Tor users. Also, users whose personal data is harder to access are less valuable to the website; websites have an incentive to make it harder to use Tor. Finally, many associate Tor with criminality; that's not an attractive market and it's very easy for the CSO to say, 'just block it; it's not worth the time or cost'.