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Recommending to host an exit node in Switzerland in the context of TOR feels like reading an article of someone who thinks they are anonymous by using TOR. Swi

Recommending to host an exit node in Switzerland in the context of TOR feels like reading an article of someone who thinks they are anonymous by using TOR. Switzerland is even more privacy invasive than German laws, and that is the case since 2010 when automated connection tagging was introduced for VND and VÜPF.

GekkePrutser 6y ago
I wasn't aware of that :( Which country would be best in your opinion? It seems it's becoming quite hard to find one that doesn't do this now.
- qayxc 6y ago
  There are none. Full stop. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just delusional.
  - rhn_mk1 6y ago
    This is a useless reply. There is no black and white, and the parent is asking about the shades of graay.
    - qayxc 6y ago
      There are no shades of grey here - state actors have access to every internet node, fibre optic cables, operating systems and hardware. So unless you take your time to build your own CPU, main board and modem and only use our own private direct fibre connection, you're a potential target for being spied on. It's as simple as that. You can make things harder by encrypting your traffic, but that's possible regardless of were your Tor relay is located at. And even then some crypto algos are known to have been deliberately weakened by intelligence agencies so you best be a crypto expert as well if you're really that paranoid. The irony is that most (not all!) people who are ever so concerned about these things still use their smartphones (even though EVERY GSM/UMTS/4G protocol has been hacked at this point and is thus insecure), use cloud computing (either directly or indirectly via 3rd party services like Uber) and post on social networks. The only computer that is safe from attacks is not connected to any network and only ever used in a windowless room surrounded by reinforced concrete walls. The only information that is truly private is information you don't share in the first place.
      - rhn_mk1 6y ago
        You say "There are no shades of grey here" but then you contradict it by saying "You can make things harder by encrypting your traffic", so obviously you don't mean it. By dismissing the imperfect possiblities of making yourself safer, you seem to be saying "there only needs to be one gunner to shoot you when you look out the window, so either you never leave your bunker or may as well live in a war zone", while dismissing those who ask "which country is the most peaceful and stable, so that I can settle there?". People can be well aware of weak crypto, compromised CPUs, TEMPEST, Tor compromises, state actors and legal problems, and yet still choose which of those to defend against, and to what extent. In real life, people take tradeoffs, because it's almost never an all-or-nothing situation.
        qayxc 6y ago
        There is no place in the world that is both technologically capable of reliably hosting servers and at the same time inherently safer with regards to the privacy of your data than others. If it's not the domestic government that will raid the server or monitor traffic, it's foreign actors or (in case of monitoring) the country that packets are routed through. Yes, there are possibilities to make yourself safer, but they don't depend on where you place your data. The question wasn't "can I be safer", the question was "is there a specific place that is safer" and the answer is no, for the reasons I gave. That's not saying "encryption is useless anyway" or "you might as well give up" - no! I'm saying that if the privacy of your data depends on where your server is located, then you're doing it wrong.
        rhn_mk1 6y ago
        I'm not sure I'm convinced that location doesn't matter at all. The attack routes are different between countries: local culture determines attack surface inside the company, local law determines attack surface due to the local government. There are probably more factors at play due to technical reasons, like the closeness to internet exchanges and the difficulty to sniff packets in secret by foreign spies. Unless those are uniformly the same everywhere, I don't think your agrument holds.
      - 6y ago
  - nix23 6y ago
    Tzzzz, look up sealand ;)
- nix23 6y ago
  Iceland is the best country for free information (leaks etc), Romania the best for potential copyrighted stuff (torrent etc)
nix23 6y ago
>Switzerland is even more privacy invasive than German laws Why even more? Germany also do's connection tagging, and additionally always thinks about to hold the transported data too (vorratsdatenspeicherung). The problem described here is that the possibility to have a entrance node and a exit node in Germany is really high, because Germany is the biggest provider in tor bandwidth.

GekkePrutser 6y ago

I wasn't aware of that :( Which country would be best in your opinion? It seems it's becoming quite hard to find one that doesn't do this now.

qayxc 6y ago
There are none. Full stop. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just delusional.
- rhn_mk1 6y ago
  This is a useless reply. There is no black and white, and the parent is asking about the shades of graay.
  - qayxc 6y ago
    There are no shades of grey here - state actors have access to every internet node, fibre optic cables, operating systems and hardware. So unless you take your time to build your own CPU, main board and modem and only use our own private direct fibre connection, you're a potential target for being spied on. It's as simple as that. You can make things harder by encrypting your traffic, but that's possible regardless of were your Tor relay is located at. And even then some crypto algos are known to have been deliberately weakened by intelligence agencies so you best be a crypto expert as well if you're really that paranoid. The irony is that most (not all!) people who are ever so concerned about these things still use their smartphones (even though EVERY GSM/UMTS/4G protocol has been hacked at this point and is thus insecure), use cloud computing (either directly or indirectly via 3rd party services like Uber) and post on social networks. The only computer that is safe from attacks is not connected to any network and only ever used in a windowless room surrounded by reinforced concrete walls. The only information that is truly private is information you don't share in the first place.
    - rhn_mk1 6y ago
      You say "There are no shades of grey here" but then you contradict it by saying "You can make things harder by encrypting your traffic", so obviously you don't mean it. By dismissing the imperfect possiblities of making yourself safer, you seem to be saying "there only needs to be one gunner to shoot you when you look out the window, so either you never leave your bunker or may as well live in a war zone", while dismissing those who ask "which country is the most peaceful and stable, so that I can settle there?". People can be well aware of weak crypto, compromised CPUs, TEMPEST, Tor compromises, state actors and legal problems, and yet still choose which of those to defend against, and to what extent. In real life, people take tradeoffs, because it's almost never an all-or-nothing situation.
      - qayxc 6y ago
        There is no place in the world that is both technologically capable of reliably hosting servers and at the same time inherently safer with regards to the privacy of your data than others. If it's not the domestic government that will raid the server or monitor traffic, it's foreign actors or (in case of monitoring) the country that packets are routed through. Yes, there are possibilities to make yourself safer, but they don't depend on where you place your data. The question wasn't "can I be safer", the question was "is there a specific place that is safer" and the answer is no, for the reasons I gave. That's not saying "encryption is useless anyway" or "you might as well give up" - no! I'm saying that if the privacy of your data depends on where your server is located, then you're doing it wrong.
        rhn_mk1 6y ago
        I'm not sure I'm convinced that location doesn't matter at all. The attack routes are different between countries: local culture determines attack surface inside the company, local law determines attack surface due to the local government. There are probably more factors at play due to technical reasons, like the closeness to internet exchanges and the difficulty to sniff packets in secret by foreign spies. Unless those are uniformly the same everywhere, I don't think your agrument holds.
    - 6y ago
- nix23 6y ago
  Tzzzz, look up sealand ;)
nix23 6y ago
Iceland is the best country for free information (leaks etc), Romania the best for potential copyrighted stuff (torrent etc)

nix23 6y ago

>Switzerland is even more privacy invasive than German laws Why even more? Germany also do's connection tagging, and additionally always thinks about to hold the transported data too (vorratsdatenspeicherung). The problem described here is that the possibility to have a entrance node and a exit node in Germany is really high, because Germany is the biggest provider in tor bandwidth.