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The entire Internet is available via Tor but only via exit nodes, saying that it "doesn't make it any more available" to offer it directly within Tor shows a fu

by hnarn 5y ago

The entire Internet is available via Tor but only via exit nodes, saying that it "doesn't make it any more available" to offer it directly within Tor shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how Tor works. If you can access a service, any service, completely within Tor without having to exit to the Internet, this significantly improves your anonymity[1] since you no longer have to go through an exit node, and as such the amount of nodes you can "exit" from increases substantially. [1]: That is, the anonymity that Tor already provides. Obviously signing up for Twitter under your real name with your phone number will compromise your anonymity regardless, but that is not the problem that Tor solves.

mike-cardwell 5y ago
I'm pretty sure I'm right, and that I understand how Tor works. The existence of the Twitter onion service does not help a single person access Twitter that couldn't already access it anonymously without the onion service just by using Tor normally.
- MayeulC 5y ago
  An exit node (or multiple ones) could block twitter. Exit nodes are rarer than other nodes, as they're difficult to host. That limits the bandwidth. An onion adress doesn't rely on DNS at all. I think this should provide better bandwidth, availability, and anonimity.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    Also, if I understand correctly, exit nodes have vectors for attacking your security that are eliminated by an onion address.
    - MayeulC 5y ago
      Right, I didn't mention it explicitly, but that was part of the anonymity guarantees. A middle node has no way of knowing what your final destination will be. An exit node can see you're contacting twitter. Luckily, traffic is mostly encrypted these days, but not always, and there are ways to attack https (looking at packet length and traffic patterns can tell you what kind of activity is being done, researchers even showed that they could tell what movie someone was watching on Netflix).

by hnarn 5y ago

mike-cardwell 5y ago

I'm pretty sure I'm right, and that I understand how Tor works. The existence of the Twitter onion service does not help a single person access Twitter that couldn't already access it anonymously without the onion service just by using Tor normally.

MayeulC 5y ago
An exit node (or multiple ones) could block twitter. Exit nodes are rarer than other nodes, as they're difficult to host. That limits the bandwidth. An onion adress doesn't rely on DNS at all. I think this should provide better bandwidth, availability, and anonimity.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  Also, if I understand correctly, exit nodes have vectors for attacking your security that are eliminated by an onion address.
  - MayeulC 5y ago
    Right, I didn't mention it explicitly, but that was part of the anonymity guarantees. A middle node has no way of knowing what your final destination will be. An exit node can see you're contacting twitter. Luckily, traffic is mostly encrypted these days, but not always, and there are ways to attack https (looking at packet length and traffic patterns can tell you what kind of activity is being done, researchers even showed that they could tell what movie someone was watching on Netflix).