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I'm curious why you seem to think that Tor is more legitimate to block than those behind CGNAT. There's been plenty of research showing on a per-connection basi
by tga_d 3y ago
I'm curious why you seem to think that Tor is more legitimate to block than those behind CGNAT. There's been plenty of research showing on a per-connection basis, Tor is no more prone to malicious activity than connections from random IPs, and that it's only on a per-IP basis malicious activity is more likely. I.e., it's the same phenomenon as why CGNAT causes collateral damage. You could argue that Tor is opt-in and therefore less worthy of protection, but saying "users who want extra privacy deserve to be blocked, even when we know (as much as one can know) that they're not using it for malicious reasons" seems like a fairly dystopian premise.
I'm actually kind of glad more people are becoming aware of this problem, and hope it finally spurs more interest in mechanisms that divorce network identity from IP addresses -- including the work Cloudflare is doing on Privacy Pass!
- Brian_K_White 3y ago"I'm curious why you seem to think that Tor is more legitimate to block than those behind CGNAT." Who said that? I don't see anyone saying that.
- tga_d 3y agoHow else would you interpret "I see them using some VPNs and using Tor, but that makes sense, because that's super close to the type of traffic that these filters were designed to block"? They seem to be implying that Tor is a form of acceptable collateral damage, but the likely problem here, i.e. the CGNAT instantiation of collateral blocking, is not.
- Brian_K_White 3y agoThat only says why it might be blocked, not that it's right.
- tga_d 3y agoI never said they claimed it was right, just that it was more acceptable. Again, I don't see how one could interpret it otherwise?
- Brian_K_White 3y agoThey didn't suggest it was acceptable or more acceptable either, or any other equivalent words for ok, or agreeable, or understandable, or justified, or proper, or reasonable, or...
- tga_d 3y ago... I am saying they are clearly making a comparative statement, not an absolute one. Again, how else am I supposed to read that sentence? I feel like I'm going crazy here, this isn't some nuanced point, it's literally what they seemed to be trying to say. Can you please tell me what you think the point they were making with the "but" in that sentence?
- Brian_K_White 3y ago"I see them using some VPNs and using Tor, but that makes sense, because that's super close to the type of traffic that these filters were designed to block." All this says is "This explains why I get blocked while using tor or vpns", It does not say they agree with it or accept it etc. It only says they are not suprised that it happens, that they understand the mechanism by which it happens, not that they accept or agree with it. They might or might not also think it's fine and reasonable. I can't say they don't approve any more than you can say they do.
- jeroenhd 3y agoIn my opinion Tor is as good a privacy-preserving technology as VPNs and should be treated very similarly. I use Tor sometimes and I'm annoyed as you are with all the CAPTCHAs and outright blocks when I just want to read an article on a website. However, the sad fact is that Tor is abused for a LOT of malicious traffic, much more so than any VPN provider, let alone normal ISPs using CGNAT. The anonymity combined with its free nature make it very attractive for bad people to use Tor for bad things without any reasonable fear of getting caught. An outright block for Tor traffic is definitely out of the question, but adding CAPTCHAs to sensitive things (like account signups, expensive queries, etc.) is sadly a requirement these days. Blocking exit nodes does nothing to protect your website's security, but it sure as hell cleans up the logs and false positives in your security logs. It's not just Tor, though, there are also some home ISP networks that don't seem to care about the botnets operating inside their network.