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Tor project is US government op, true. It's good at hiding government employees using untrusted networks from hostile third parties. It is also good for foreign

Tor project is US government op, true. It's good at hiding government employees using untrusted networks from hostile third parties. It is also good for foreign whistleblowers releasing data to US government. Tor is NOT good at keeping you private from government. It is good at keeping you private from your ISP or employer however. Don't do anything illegal using tor and thinking you are safe.

AnaniasAnanas 7y ago
> Tor is NOT good at keeping you private from government This is a bold claim. Would you mind backing it up?
- cjbprime 7y ago
  I wouldn't agree with the claim, but it might be referring to Tor's weaknesses against country or global passive adversaries -- timing attacks correlating your requests with the site's responses. If you can log everyone's bandwidth and can get ISPs to tell you which human is using Tor, metadata anonymity goes away.
  - AnaniasAnanas 7y ago
    Isn't this true for pretty much every privacy tool (i2p, freenode, gnunet, etc) though? I don't think that any of them can protect you if an adversary can monitor the whole internet.
    - cjbprime 7y ago
      Yes. There are some research networks like Vuvuzela that add noise to resist timing attacks but they aren't common. The reason it's still a valid criticism is that people suggest that Tor has this resistance in threads like this one. :) (Of course, you don't need to monitor the whole Internet if it's intra-country traffic that you're interested in.)
- sbhn 7y ago
  All tor exit nodes. https://check.torproject.org/cgi-bin/TorBulkExitList.py?ip=1.1.1.1 https://check.torproject.org/cgi-bin/TorBulkExitList.py?ip=1... Tor is a beacon
  - AnaniasAnanas 7y ago
    Yes, what about it? This is a list of the IP addresses of the exit nodes, it is useful if you want to start blocking tor traffic in your site (though I am against that). This is not a list of the IP addresses of the onion sites nor of the users, in addition to that exit nodes are not used when you connect to an onion site.
dontbenebby 7y ago
How could Tor both be "good at hiding government employees using untrusted networks from hostile third parties" and "NOT good at keeping you private from government"?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- super_mario 7y ago
  This article sums up all the issues with tor https://restoreprivacy.com/tor/ https://restoreprivacy.com/tor/ In particular, silk road shutdown, and various pedophile rings successfully de-anonymized and operators arrested. There is good evidence that powerful enough entity (esp. entity spanning multinational geographic regions) can successfully de-anonymize tor traffic. If you keep low profile and just use tor to browse regular internet privately, you are fine. But if you do wide scale illegal activity, you most likely will pay the price.
  - dontbenebby 7y ago
    This sounds like FUD. Why would it be better to connect directly to a site, rather than force them to expend resources to deanonymize my connection?

AnaniasAnanas 7y ago

> Tor is NOT good at keeping you private from government This is a bold claim. Would you mind backing it up?

cjbprime 7y ago
I wouldn't agree with the claim, but it might be referring to Tor's weaknesses against country or global passive adversaries -- timing attacks correlating your requests with the site's responses. If you can log everyone's bandwidth and can get ISPs to tell you which human is using Tor, metadata anonymity goes away.
- AnaniasAnanas 7y ago
  Isn't this true for pretty much every privacy tool (i2p, freenode, gnunet, etc) though? I don't think that any of them can protect you if an adversary can monitor the whole internet.
  - cjbprime 7y ago
    Yes. There are some research networks like Vuvuzela that add noise to resist timing attacks but they aren't common. The reason it's still a valid criticism is that people suggest that Tor has this resistance in threads like this one. :) (Of course, you don't need to monitor the whole Internet if it's intra-country traffic that you're interested in.)
sbhn 7y ago
All tor exit nodes. https://check.torproject.org/cgi-bin/TorBulkExitList.py?ip=1.1.1.1 https://check.torproject.org/cgi-bin/TorBulkExitList.py?ip=1... Tor is a beacon
- AnaniasAnanas 7y ago
  Yes, what about it? This is a list of the IP addresses of the exit nodes, it is useful if you want to start blocking tor traffic in your site (though I am against that). This is not a list of the IP addresses of the onion sites nor of the users, in addition to that exit nodes are not used when you connect to an onion site.

dontbenebby 7y ago

How could Tor both be "good at hiding government employees using untrusted networks from hostile third parties" and "NOT good at keeping you private from government"?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
super_mario 7y ago
This article sums up all the issues with tor https://restoreprivacy.com/tor/ https://restoreprivacy.com/tor/ In particular, silk road shutdown, and various pedophile rings successfully de-anonymized and operators arrested. There is good evidence that powerful enough entity (esp. entity spanning multinational geographic regions) can successfully de-anonymize tor traffic. If you keep low profile and just use tor to browse regular internet privately, you are fine. But if you do wide scale illegal activity, you most likely will pay the price.
- dontbenebby 7y ago
  This sounds like FUD. Why would it be better to connect directly to a site, rather than force them to expend resources to deanonymize my connection?