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As a person who has, over the years, been recommending Tor and defending it against people claiming it's backdoored and useless, I'm disappointed. Can anybody

by sanqui 6y ago

As a person who has, over the years, been recommending Tor and defending it against people claiming it's backdoored and useless, I'm disappointed. Can anybody here on HN give information on how some Tor alternatives and projects with similar goals are holding up?

ColanR 6y ago
I'm not sure there is a good alternative. Most of the alternatives are built with Java, which (considering tor isn't considered safe with Java enabled) doesn't seem like an improvement. Is there an alternative that's performant and built with a decent language? Or do the good ones just get snuffed out?
- ragnese 6y ago
  Java is not the same thing as JavaScript
  - core_dumped 6y ago
    People always say I'm being pedantic when I point that out, but I think it's a really important distinction to make to someone who's not aware, especially in the context of their security.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
      There's a line about pedantic meaning "you're right but I don't like it", but Java vs JS isn't even close! They're both OO programming languages in the C-like family with garbage collection, but they have completely different execution models, runtimes, usecases, and implementations; their close naming is a bug.
- zelly 6y ago
  Java is significantly safer than C which Tor is written in.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
Moru 6y ago
I'm not realy using it much but i2p[0] has been around for a while. It's Java though as all other projects like this in case you have anything against it. [0] https://geti2p.net/en/ https://geti2p.net/en/
- Ajedi32 6y ago
  IIRC the main issue with I2P is that it doesn't natively offer access to traditional websites the way Tor does. You can configure your browser to connect to a remote HTTP proxy over I2P and access the web that way, but that requires you to find such a proxy first (preferably several such proxies, each with multiple users, so that your traffic across multiple sessions can't be correlated by using the outproxy IP), and setting it up is a lot more complicated than Tor's method of "download Tor browser, click run".
  - nix23 6y ago
    Don't forget: https://i2pd.website/ https://i2pd.website/
mirashii 6y ago
There's really no reason to be disappointed. The post above both isn't about any real vulnerabilities in the service, and does not have any real solutions to the problems posed.

by sanqui 6y ago

ColanR 6y ago

I'm not sure there is a good alternative. Most of the alternatives are built with Java, which (considering tor isn't considered safe with Java enabled) doesn't seem like an improvement. Is there an alternative that's performant and built with a decent language? Or do the good ones just get snuffed out?

ragnese 6y ago
Java is not the same thing as JavaScript
- core_dumped 6y ago
  People always say I'm being pedantic when I point that out, but I think it's a really important distinction to make to someone who's not aware, especially in the context of their security.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
    There's a line about pedantic meaning "you're right but I don't like it", but Java vs JS isn't even close! They're both OO programming languages in the C-like family with garbage collection, but they have completely different execution models, runtimes, usecases, and implementations; their close naming is a bug.
zelly 6y ago
Java is significantly safer than C which Tor is written in.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Moru 6y ago

I'm not realy using it much but i2p[0] has been around for a while. It's Java though as all other projects like this in case you have anything against it. [0] https://geti2p.net/en/ https://geti2p.net/en/

Ajedi32 6y ago
IIRC the main issue with I2P is that it doesn't natively offer access to traditional websites the way Tor does. You can configure your browser to connect to a remote HTTP proxy over I2P and access the web that way, but that requires you to find such a proxy first (preferably several such proxies, each with multiple users, so that your traffic across multiple sessions can't be correlated by using the outproxy IP), and setting it up is a lot more complicated than Tor's method of "download Tor browser, click run".
- nix23 6y ago
  Don't forget: https://i2pd.website/ https://i2pd.website/

mirashii 6y ago

There's really no reason to be disappointed. The post above both isn't about any real vulnerabilities in the service, and does not have any real solutions to the problems posed.