5 ms·

The fact that you are afraid of a free and open internet is depressing.

user7261 7y ago
I'm sorry, it's was not my intention to depress you. Actually, the fact is I what to be able to advocate for Tor to friends and family in the future. Too much? Viable?
- mkl 7y ago
  You seem to be a bit confused about what Tor and the Tor Browser are. Tor Browser is just a web browser with extra anonymity and tracking avoidance features (in the browser itself, and because it sends traffic through the Tor network). You visit sites you like and avoid sites you don't like, exactly like any other browser. It's not guaranteed to be anonymous: any sites you visit can record and track much of your behaviour there (just like with normal browsers), but third parties can't as easily snoop. Websites with .onion addresses are more resistant to tracking, as your traffic doesn't need to exit the Tor network to get to the destination, but Tor Browser can access most normal sites too. I suggest you just try it. It depends how much your friends and family care about anonymity online, because individual people's browsing behaviour can be unique and trackable - a browser cannot magically hide that. To really be confident of hiding successfully you need to do a lot more, and few people really need to or can be bothered. E.g. I sometimes use the Tor browser at work to check whether local pages are accessible from outside the local network. There I don't care about anonymity, I just want a connection appearing to come from outside.
  - Thorrez 7y ago
    > any sites you visit can record and track much of your behaviour there (just like with normal browsers) Tor Browser hides some of your information. For example it hides your IP address (that's the whole point of Tor). There are some other anti-tracking things built in. > Websites with .onion addresses are more resistant to tracking Tracking you or tracking the site? The point of .onion isn't to give the user any more protection, it's to give the website protection. With a .onion site you are unable to find the website's IP address.
    - mkl 7y ago
      >> Websites with .onion addresses are more resistant to tracking > Tracking you or tracking the site? The point of .onion isn't to give the user any more protection, it's to give the website protection. With a .onion site you are unable to find the website's IP address. True, but that's not why the BBC, Facebook, etc. have .onion hosts. I was thinking of the user, since the traffic between a Tor exit node and an open web server is exposed (modulo HTTPS).
chx 7y ago
Baloney. You are mixing up free and open internet with total and utter lawlessness. If someone posts CP as spam on the open web then I have reasonable surety the owners will swiftly deal with it because it is in their best interests to do so but on an onion site who cares. So I do have a reasonable belief I can't stumble accidentally on CP on the open web while I lack this belief with the Tor network. Well moderated discourse is better than not because it filters out the trolls. It's not less free and open.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  If someone posts CP as spam on a random onion site, it's reasonably going to get removed there too because it's disgusting and nobody wants to see that. Moreover, knowing the passport numbers of the moderators is not a prerequisite to a site being well-moderated. It's possible to build and care enough to maintain a reputation under a pseudonym. Meanwhile you have no actual guarantee that people won't post whatever they want on the open web. Anyone can host anything they want from any computer on the internet, including a compromised one when they don't want anyone to know who put it there. In other words, if you're willing to break the law then you can already be anonymous, so the thing Tor is enabling is for people who don't want to break the law to have anonymous communications.
  - chx 7y ago
    It's like doing extreme sports or visiting North Korea or some such. There's risk vs benefits in every activity and browsing the "darknet" has extremely little benefit compared to the life ruining risk of CP finding its way on your laptop.
    - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      That's like arguing that going outside is too risky because you could be struck by a meteor. The probability that you accidentally stumble across CP and that somehow comes to the attention of law enforcement and they're unreasonable enough to prosecute you for it even though the evidence indicates that it was an accident, is lower than the probabilities of equally bad things happening as a result of equally innocuous things that people do on a regular basis. Meanwhile you can still be struck by a meteor indoors. Go visit Facebook as the first person to view an image posted by a troll before it gets flagged, or on a day when Facebook was hacked but they don't know it yet.

I'm sorry, it's was not my intention to depress you. Actually, the fact is I what to be able to advocate for Tor to friends and family in the future. Too much? Viable?

mkl 7y ago
You seem to be a bit confused about what Tor and the Tor Browser are. Tor Browser is just a web browser with extra anonymity and tracking avoidance features (in the browser itself, and because it sends traffic through the Tor network). You visit sites you like and avoid sites you don't like, exactly like any other browser. It's not guaranteed to be anonymous: any sites you visit can record and track much of your behaviour there (just like with normal browsers), but third parties can't as easily snoop. Websites with .onion addresses are more resistant to tracking, as your traffic doesn't need to exit the Tor network to get to the destination, but Tor Browser can access most normal sites too. I suggest you just try it. It depends how much your friends and family care about anonymity online, because individual people's browsing behaviour can be unique and trackable - a browser cannot magically hide that. To really be confident of hiding successfully you need to do a lot more, and few people really need to or can be bothered. E.g. I sometimes use the Tor browser at work to check whether local pages are accessible from outside the local network. There I don't care about anonymity, I just want a connection appearing to come from outside.
- Thorrez 7y ago
  > any sites you visit can record and track much of your behaviour there (just like with normal browsers) Tor Browser hides some of your information. For example it hides your IP address (that's the whole point of Tor). There are some other anti-tracking things built in. > Websites with .onion addresses are more resistant to tracking Tracking you or tracking the site? The point of .onion isn't to give the user any more protection, it's to give the website protection. With a .onion site you are unable to find the website's IP address.
  - mkl 7y ago
    >> Websites with .onion addresses are more resistant to tracking > Tracking you or tracking the site? The point of .onion isn't to give the user any more protection, it's to give the website protection. With a .onion site you are unable to find the website's IP address. True, but that's not why the BBC, Facebook, etc. have .onion hosts. I was thinking of the user, since the traffic between a Tor exit node and an open web server is exposed (modulo HTTPS).

chx 7y ago

Baloney. You are mixing up free and open internet with total and utter lawlessness. If someone posts CP as spam on the open web then I have reasonable surety the owners will swiftly deal with it because it is in their best interests to do so but on an onion site who cares. So I do have a reasonable belief I can't stumble accidentally on CP on the open web while I lack this belief with the Tor network. Well moderated discourse is better than not because it filters out the trolls. It's not less free and open.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
If someone posts CP as spam on a random onion site, it's reasonably going to get removed there too because it's disgusting and nobody wants to see that. Moreover, knowing the passport numbers of the moderators is not a prerequisite to a site being well-moderated. It's possible to build and care enough to maintain a reputation under a pseudonym. Meanwhile you have no actual guarantee that people won't post whatever they want on the open web. Anyone can host anything they want from any computer on the internet, including a compromised one when they don't want anyone to know who put it there. In other words, if you're willing to break the law then you can already be anonymous, so the thing Tor is enabling is for people who don't want to break the law to have anonymous communications.
- chx 7y ago
  It's like doing extreme sports or visiting North Korea or some such. There's risk vs benefits in every activity and browsing the "darknet" has extremely little benefit compared to the life ruining risk of CP finding its way on your laptop.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    That's like arguing that going outside is too risky because you could be struck by a meteor. The probability that you accidentally stumble across CP and that somehow comes to the attention of law enforcement and they're unreasonable enough to prosecute you for it even though the evidence indicates that it was an accident, is lower than the probabilities of equally bad things happening as a result of equally innocuous things that people do on a regular basis. Meanwhile you can still be struck by a meteor indoors. Go visit Facebook as the first person to view an image posted by a troll before it gets flagged, or on a day when Facebook was hacked but they don't know it yet.