4 ms·

I keep saying this, but the inescapable fact about Tor is that its traffic patterns make you stand out prominently. Just the fact you’re using it automatically

I keep saying this, but the inescapable fact about Tor is that its traffic patterns make you stand out prominently. Just the fact you’re using it automatically makes you interesting and worthy of a closer look. All well and good if you’re just maintaining a cookie recipe site on the dark web, but it’s rarely ever that, is it?

xnorswap 4y ago
Is your intention in repeating that to keep Tor usage below the critical threshold where that remains true?
- notyourwork 4y ago
  I interpret op to be suggesting Tor isn’t as anonymous of one who conducts illicit activity would assume. That seems to be the trend time and time again.
- likpok 4y ago
  Tor has a lot of pretty gnarly trade offs that will naturally keep usage low outside of people who really need it. The latency is nontrivial, exit nodes are congested and lots of sites don’t want to deal with Tor because so much abuse flows through it. Tor definitely has a similar problem to like voat or gab: a community with a strict no-witch-burning philosophy ends up filled with witches.
- DougN7 4y ago
  Realistically, what would need to happen for it to not be the case? How many millions or billions of people would have to use it before the government would give up and stop looking at you if you use it?
  - noirscape 4y ago
    In order for that to happen you first need to convince people to either accept the hit in connection speed (which is terrible over TOR) or you need to significantly increase the amount of nodes on the network, the latter of which isn't going to happen because of the legal risks, which act as a chilling effect.
- wrycoder 4y ago
  Yeah, I think the FSF/EFF suggestion is for people to use TOR as much as possible. But that’s completely impractical day to day from my POV. I recollect a case a few years ago, where they tracked a guy down on a campus through traffic analysis in a fairly quiet environment Torwise, and both endpoints were on the campus.
- noirscape 4y ago
  No offense but TOR is just too sluggish to be really useful unless you're a gay pirate assassin (or one of those three components)[0]. It has basically all the drawbacks a VPN has (most sites will distrust you on recaptcha, speed bumps, sometimes a connection gets timed out or dropped) whilst having a shitton of latency on top of that because y'know, it's free. There's always been more people willing to use TOR than the server space needed to prevent overburdening the network (in no small part because running the server space needed usually incurs significant legal risks since congrats, you've now become a target for law enforcement to bust your door down and ask why an IP you own a machine on is being used to upload CP to the clearnet - few people want to deal with this scenario for blatantly obvious reasons). This isn't really something you can fix, it's just kind of an inherent issue with the protocol. [0]: https://youtu.be/WVDQEoe6ZWY https://youtu.be/WVDQEoe6ZWY
  - from 4y ago
    Have you used Tor recently? I don't find it to be very slow. It's obviously not Gigabit but for just reading web pages it is more than enough. See https://metrics.torproject.org/torperf.png?start=2012-01-01&end=2023-01-01&server=public&filesize=1mb https://metrics.torproject.org/torperf.png?start=2012-01-01&... - and that recent spike in latency only exists because of some DDos attack (I think).
    - noirscape 4y ago
      It's about the same it's always been from roughly 2015. I've used it maybe 6 months ago to get around a YouTube geoblock? What this graph doesn't really unveil but is so crucially important is that webpages have gotten a lot heavier over the years. In the past, you could visit most websites at a half-decent speed with a regular landline connection. Nowadays you need to download several megabytes of content before you can even load a page in properly.
  - HackerNCoder 4y ago
    > in no small part because running the server space needed usually incurs significant legal risks since congrats, you've now become a target for law enforcement to bust your door down and ask why an IP you own a machine on is being used to upload CP to the clearnet - few people want to deal with this scenario for blatantly obvious reasons It only does if you set it up as an exit node.
0xblood 4y ago
none of your business what dark web cookie recipe websites I maintain
warinukraine 4y ago
[flagged]
- eat 4y ago
  Perhaps that's why the person you're replying to prefaced their comment with: > I keep saying this, but...
  - warinukraine 4y ago
    [flagged]
Der_Einzige 4y ago
The fact that the three letters do more than spying on possible threats/terrorists, in particular, their practice for trying to cultivate future "agents of change" should send chills down the spine of any well paid and well educated tech workers. I do believe that most people on HN qualify as "interesting" to these forces.

xnorswap 4y ago

Is your intention in repeating that to keep Tor usage below the critical threshold where that remains true?

notyourwork 4y ago
I interpret op to be suggesting Tor isn’t as anonymous of one who conducts illicit activity would assume. That seems to be the trend time and time again.
likpok 4y ago
Tor has a lot of pretty gnarly trade offs that will naturally keep usage low outside of people who really need it. The latency is nontrivial, exit nodes are congested and lots of sites don’t want to deal with Tor because so much abuse flows through it. Tor definitely has a similar problem to like voat or gab: a community with a strict no-witch-burning philosophy ends up filled with witches.
DougN7 4y ago
Realistically, what would need to happen for it to not be the case? How many millions or billions of people would have to use it before the government would give up and stop looking at you if you use it?
- noirscape 4y ago
  In order for that to happen you first need to convince people to either accept the hit in connection speed (which is terrible over TOR) or you need to significantly increase the amount of nodes on the network, the latter of which isn't going to happen because of the legal risks, which act as a chilling effect.
wrycoder 4y ago
Yeah, I think the FSF/EFF suggestion is for people to use TOR as much as possible. But that’s completely impractical day to day from my POV. I recollect a case a few years ago, where they tracked a guy down on a campus through traffic analysis in a fairly quiet environment Torwise, and both endpoints were on the campus.
noirscape 4y ago
No offense but TOR is just too sluggish to be really useful unless you're a gay pirate assassin (or one of those three components)[0]. It has basically all the drawbacks a VPN has (most sites will distrust you on recaptcha, speed bumps, sometimes a connection gets timed out or dropped) whilst having a shitton of latency on top of that because y'know, it's free. There's always been more people willing to use TOR than the server space needed to prevent overburdening the network (in no small part because running the server space needed usually incurs significant legal risks since congrats, you've now become a target for law enforcement to bust your door down and ask why an IP you own a machine on is being used to upload CP to the clearnet - few people want to deal with this scenario for blatantly obvious reasons). This isn't really something you can fix, it's just kind of an inherent issue with the protocol. [0]: https://youtu.be/WVDQEoe6ZWY https://youtu.be/WVDQEoe6ZWY
- from 4y ago
  Have you used Tor recently? I don't find it to be very slow. It's obviously not Gigabit but for just reading web pages it is more than enough. See https://metrics.torproject.org/torperf.png?start=2012-01-01&end=2023-01-01&server=public&filesize=1mb https://metrics.torproject.org/torperf.png?start=2012-01-01&... - and that recent spike in latency only exists because of some DDos attack (I think).
  - noirscape 4y ago
    It's about the same it's always been from roughly 2015. I've used it maybe 6 months ago to get around a YouTube geoblock? What this graph doesn't really unveil but is so crucially important is that webpages have gotten a lot heavier over the years. In the past, you could visit most websites at a half-decent speed with a regular landline connection. Nowadays you need to download several megabytes of content before you can even load a page in properly.
- HackerNCoder 4y ago
  > in no small part because running the server space needed usually incurs significant legal risks since congrats, you've now become a target for law enforcement to bust your door down and ask why an IP you own a machine on is being used to upload CP to the clearnet - few people want to deal with this scenario for blatantly obvious reasons It only does if you set it up as an exit node.

0xblood 4y ago

none of your business what dark web cookie recipe websites I maintain

warinukraine 4y ago

[flagged]

eat 4y ago
Perhaps that's why the person you're replying to prefaced their comment with: > I keep saying this, but...
- warinukraine 4y ago
  [flagged]

Der_Einzige 4y ago

The fact that the three letters do more than spying on possible threats/terrorists, in particular, their practice for trying to cultivate future "agents of change" should send chills down the spine of any well paid and well educated tech workers. I do believe that most people on HN qualify as "interesting" to these forces.