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I actually think that Tor should deemphasize exit nodes and trying to provide access to the clearnet, in favor of better hidden services. Nearly every major si

I actually think that Tor should deemphasize exit nodes and trying to provide access to the clearnet, in favor of better hidden services. Nearly every major site ends up either totally blocking anything that comes from a Tor relay, or applying massive numbers of weird CAPTCHAs and restrictions, so it's getting to be basically unusable anyway.

genpfault 2y ago
> I actually think that Tor should deemphasize exit nodes and trying to provide access to the clearnet, in favor of better hidden services. Isn't that I2P[1]? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2P https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2P
beefnugs 2y ago
There really is a fundamental difference between : secure end to end messages of willing participants. VS arbitrary anything-illegal from someone else's public ip.
amy-petrik-214 2y ago
This gets back to AnthonyMouse's argument (above) that (1) TOR exit node operators are buffers to protect people from being hacked. A hacker would more easily use TOR than need the effort to runa scan for vulnerable routers, root one, and hop between various routers. Which implies (2) if TOR had no exit nodes and/or clearnet service blocked TOR ranges, hackers will just resort to hacking routers / other systems / botnets to make their own proxy. Now the block doesn't work, someone(s) got hacked, TOR is gone. Basically TOR as a "containment" system. Seems to me that would be preferable for law enforcement, particularly because some state actors (https://www.infosecinstitute.com/resources/general-security/german-intelligence-first-developed-attacks-tor-network-advises-not-use/ https://www.infosecinstitute.com/resources/general-security/...) are putting great effort into unmasking TOR, making it a great honeypot. Ironic that Germany prosecuted a German exit node when they were the same ones investing heavily in unmasking it!
costco 2y ago
The new Cloudflare captcha has changed this and it's a lot better now. There's no more Recaptcha hell. I read the Ben Collier book about Tor recently and in his interviews he found that some Tor contributors actually feel the opposite, because they feel the negative attention that the "dark web" mythology brought on has been bad for Tor. According to the book the archetypal Tor user is someone in a censorship heavy country like Iran visiting facebook.com or nytimes.com, so they don't get much out of hidden services.
- saagarjha 2y ago
  I don't even use Tor (this is literally stock Safari) and Cloudflare will not let me through as of last week or so.

genpfault 2y ago

> I actually think that Tor should deemphasize exit nodes and trying to provide access to the clearnet, in favor of better hidden services. Isn't that I2P[1]? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2P https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2P

beefnugs 2y ago

There really is a fundamental difference between : secure end to end messages of willing participants. VS arbitrary anything-illegal from someone else's public ip.

amy-petrik-214 2y ago

This gets back to AnthonyMouse's argument (above) that (1) TOR exit node operators are buffers to protect people from being hacked. A hacker would more easily use TOR than need the effort to runa scan for vulnerable routers, root one, and hop between various routers. Which implies (2) if TOR had no exit nodes and/or clearnet service blocked TOR ranges, hackers will just resort to hacking routers / other systems / botnets to make their own proxy. Now the block doesn't work, someone(s) got hacked, TOR is gone. Basically TOR as a "containment" system. Seems to me that would be preferable for law enforcement, particularly because some state actors (https://www.infosecinstitute.com/resources/general-security/german-intelligence-first-developed-attacks-tor-network-advises-not-use/ https://www.infosecinstitute.com/resources/general-security/...) are putting great effort into unmasking TOR, making it a great honeypot. Ironic that Germany prosecuted a German exit node when they were the same ones investing heavily in unmasking it!

costco 2y ago

The new Cloudflare captcha has changed this and it's a lot better now. There's no more Recaptcha hell. I read the Ben Collier book about Tor recently and in his interviews he found that some Tor contributors actually feel the opposite, because they feel the negative attention that the "dark web" mythology brought on has been bad for Tor. According to the book the archetypal Tor user is someone in a censorship heavy country like Iran visiting facebook.com or nytimes.com, so they don't get much out of hidden services.

saagarjha 2y ago
I don't even use Tor (this is literally stock Safari) and Cloudflare will not let me through as of last week or so.