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Facebook is Blocking Connections from Tor Network
- rcavezza 13y agoIf this isn't political, the timing of this is terrible for Facebook.
- rayiner 13y agoWhy the hell would someone using TOR use Facebook?
- aetimmes 13y agoSocial activism? Did you not even finish reading the headline?
- wyck 13y agoWell you can start your education here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring#Social_media_and_the_Arab_Spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring#Social_media_and_t...
- unreal37 13y agoBefore the downvote brigade comes out in full force, stop and think a second. The US government is building its own map of all our social connections for everyone worldwide, not just suspects but everyone. It will know the names of everyone you know, how well you know them, even down to the date that you met them and dates that you were in the same location together. Why WOULD anyone who cares about their anonymity use Facebook? I am wondering why I use Facebook even.
- diminoten 13y ago> I am wondering why I use Facebook even. Because, as much as you shout and holler about your privacy being violated, and as much as you act like you value said privacy, you're more than willing to give it up for a modicum of convenience. You, me, and everyone else. Anyone who still uses a 3rd party to handle unencrypted data they expect to remain private is simply uninformed. Period.
- unreal37 13y agoThere needs to be a way to have a foot in each world. Total online privacy and anonymity when you want it, and ability to use facebook, twitter, hacker news, and other sites where you know and expect to be tracked. Like Chrome's "incognito mode" that extends beyond cookies to an anonymous network identity. Like using Tor through a VPN tunnel, I guess.
- diminoten 13y agoI think we should separate the things which aren't so important to protect (FB conversations, Reddit comments, Netflix traffic, etc.) from the things which MUST be private and secure (bank data, classified data, misc. data which you want guarantees about security on). Different sandboxes for different things. There's no reason my Pinterest account needs to be as secure as my government's troop deployments.
- yuvadam 13y agoThe privatized 'public' space makes an inevitable move. Facebook can no longer stake any preposterous claim to "help people connect better". It is a business entity - always has been - and does not give half a damn about "making the world a better place", or whatever corporate marketing catchphrase they use right now. Related to recent events or not, the privatized internet is continuing to backlash with severe consequences for anyone dependent on Tor to ensure that their tyrant government doesn't come knocking on their door just for speaking their mind.
- hammerzeit 13y agoCan you elaborate on a few of your claims here? First, you seem to imply that a privately-owned public space is a bad thing. What alternatives do you envision? Wouldn't a space regulated and controlled by governmental entities or NGOs be just as liable to abuse? Second, when you speak about "Facebook," what do you mean? Do you mean that the people who work there don't care about helping people connecting there? That Mark Zuckerberg personally doesn't care? Or that the corporate entity of Facebook has some sort of conscious will of its own separate from the will of its employees? Third, you seem to imply there's an obvious reason why Facebook blocked TOR that furthers their business interests. Can you elaborate on what that is?
- extra88 13y agoThe alternative is a federated model where you can one of many platform providers (or set up your own) and they can all "talk" to each other to create a "space" which is owned by no single entity. An open standard, defined by many participants, creates the "space." This is the way email works. It's the way XMPP works for messaging (and which has been stabbed in the back by Google by dropping their support of it in crucial ways). The Diaspora Project has the same concept for social networking in a Facebook-ish way. I didn't RTFA but use of Tor can impair Facebook's tracking of people, thus making the data about people less valuable commodities to sell to their advertisers. Using Tor may also increase Facebook's network usage a bit by making less use of cached data, locally and remotely.
- patrickaljord 13y ago
- gesman 13y ago"Activist" + brains != relying on middleman's platform
- betterunix 13y agoWrong. If the majority of potential supporters are on Facebook, an activist needs to be on Facebook.
- gesman 13y agoThen VPN access paid for by bitcoins will do. Tor is not the only game in town.
- betterunix 13y agoYes, because a public record of all transactions could not possibly be used to track anyone down.
- ArabGeek 13y agothis means that facebook do not care about the fat of its users, as now thousands of activists in tyrant regimes might risk their identities be found and that means they will go to jail.
- hnha 13y agowhat exactly forces them to use Facebook instead of something remotely private and secure?
- scrapcode 13y agoTraffic/Audience is everything.
- weland 13y agoThe hive mind, unfortunately.
- itsallbs 13y agoBecause if you are trying to reach a mass audience, you have to go where the audience is. If no one sees your message, you are wasting the time and effort used to communicate that message.
- vy8vWJlco 13y agoAh, the "if you don't like it - move to Russia" doctrine. Rather than racing to the bottom, why shouldn't the glaring problems simply be addressed? Being grateful for health and freedom is one thing - being so grateful as to not put them to use, or let them slip away, is another. If Facebook has made a change for the worse, it's worth talking about.
- alan_cx 13y agoPopularity. If activists want a potential mass audience, facebook is an essential part of of that. Something private will not get to most people. Its the exact same reason it is hard to compete with facebook. Its is a virtual monopoly. "Force"? No. But by using that word you are in the same disingenuous camp the "what have you got to hide" people. I mean, why bother about privacy at all, no one is "forced" to use the internet. Why bother about anything facebook does, no one is forced to use it. I could go on, but I'm not forced to....
- mooism2 13y agoHas anybody tried asking Facebook why they've done this? Possible reasons: 1. One or more governments (which ones?) have told Facebook to block Tor or else. (Or else what?) 2. A manual security review revealed more hacking attempts via Tor than legitimate use, so Facebook decided to block Tor. 3. After a sustained hacking attack via Tor, an automated Facebook security system automatically blocked Facebook access from Tor. Further questions: When did Facebook start blocking Tor? Any idea when they might stop? It's a pitifully poor article.
- alan_cx 13y agoThe article simply states the issue. Its not up to the writer to come up with excuses for facebook, which if you are really hot on bad journalists you would rightly write off a mere speculation. Its up to facebook to explain their position. If their excuse turns out to be a reasonable reason, then lets hear it.
- eli 13y ago"Its up to facebook to explain their position." Uh, yeah. That's why the parent comment suggests asking Facebook what's going on NOT guessing about it!
- k-mcgrady 13y agoIt's up to the journalist to investigate and find out why Facebook is doing this so he can write a more complete story.
- aetimmes 13y agoNot necessarily - if their goal is to get Facebook to reverse the change (which I imagine it is based on the fact that the website is based in an area with a lot of civil unrest), then providing reasonable rationalization in the article isn't what you want to do.
- theg2 13y agoIn that case this isn't journalism but propaganda (even if its the good kind). Lobbyists do the same thing yet we all hate them for it, these guys shouldn't get a free pass and get to call it journalism if they aren't portraying both sides. Edit: fixed mobile typos
- throwaway10001 13y agoGoogle, IIRC, does not let you search from TOR either. If they can't track you, you're no good to them.
- thejosh 13y agoBecause a lot of spammers/SEO Scrapers (such as Scrapebox or xrumer, or even sites with private databases such as SEOmoz or SEMrush-like databases could) use TOR to bulk-scrape Google. So you are told that the IP you are using is rate limited.
- gbrindisi 13y agoLast time I checked it asked for a captcha
- kakashi19 13y agoi have the same problem here.
- kevination 13y agoThat's not true. It redirects to https://encrypted.google.com/ https://encrypted.google.com/ and works just fine.
- serf 13y agoTrue, sorta. In my past experiences, if you're on tor (or proxy'd through a known portal), and have Javascript disabled entirely, Google will sometimes (not always) give you an error stating that your IP is a known abuser. If you DO have JS enabled, I have encountered the "Your IP is known to be abusive, so type in this captcha in order to continue" and then it forwards to encrypted.google.com. I get similiar behaviour with VPNs & Google.
- jonknee 13y agoTo be fair it's quite likely your IP has been abusive. There aren't that many exit nodes and it doesn't seem unlikely that a lot of Tor users have suspicious or malicious behavior.
- runn1ng 13y agonews.ycombinator does this too. edit: at least for me, it's impossible to log in to HN and when I occasionally succesfully log im, everything I post while being on Tor is instantly dead.
- conductor 13y agopg described here [1] why HN sometimes can block Tor users. [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5864439 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5864439
- miguelindurain 13y agotyping news.ycombinator.com seems to work in the latest tor browser. maybe news.ycombinator.com/news works if the former doesn't.
- darxius 13y agoNot for me, I can login fine.
- jtome 13y agoI've noticed this too in the past week, for me HN won't even load so i need to either use a regular browser or read another news site. Personally I think its shameful if this is being done intentionally EDIT: Right now it seems to be fine
- untog 13y agoThis point might be more important than anyone gives it credit for. Six days ago PG said that someone was running an "abusive distributed crawler" through Tor. Quite possible that Facebook would ban for the exact same reasons.
- celticninja 13y agokind of pointless using Tor to access a site that has all your personal information on it.
- darkarmani 13y agoWhat personal information exists in facebook?
- superuser2 13y agoAssociates. Thoughts. Articles you liked. Articles you didn't like. Private messages. Contact information. Photos. Location check-ins. Causes you support. The whole point of Facebook is to share some private information with a selected group of friends.
- talmir 13y agoThat might be the "whole point" but that is not how everyone uses it. I have a facebook account myself which contains nothing but a username, a generic artsy avatar and a list of popular facebook pages I like to keep tabs on. I dont share any personal information and I dont have "friends" on facebook. This is all purely out of convenience. If I wanted to go full on stealth mode I could have used Tor at which point my account would not give facebook any information apart from a couple of "like" clicks from a super generic gray faced account. Activists can create these accounts and have a place where they can tell the world about their experiences without risk of being found out. They dont need to give out their IP addresses, they dont need to give out addresses. All they need is a cause and a way to speak and, given luck, people will start listening. Now at least one small avenue of communication has been closed.
- user24 13y ago(and the NSA)
- sidcool 13y agoIt's probably a government request. But let's give them benefit of doubt. My guess is that there's a business reason behind it. Probably they want to track you.
- bpatrianakos 13y agoI really doubt they care about tracking you that much. Tor is so infrequently used that it's not worth the trouble to force you to log in without it just to track you. Maybe if teenage girls were using Tor I might be inclined to agree but right now it's just not worth the effort for a few nerds.
- forcer 13y agoIsn't HTTPS connection enough to protect from snooping regimes? If the foreign government won't block FB access completely, user can go to https://www.facebook.com https://www.facebook.com and will know that their data can only be seen by Facebook? Of course if government is blocking FB access, then I understand the need of TOR.
- wyck 13y agoYou're missing the point TOR isn't about encryption, it's about anonymity. If you're in a situation which can threaten your life, the latter is clearly more important.
- untog 13y agoBut in that context, using Tor to sign into Facebook kind of removes that 'anonymity' angle.
- lambada 13y agoYes, unless the Facebook account has only ever been accessed via Tor, and the personal information (name, age etc) faked. I'm unsure if Facebook blocked signups from Tor however.
- wyck 13y agoNot really. You wouldn't use TOR and have a sign saying "hey I live here", that obviously defeats the purpose. Imagine you're in Egypt and you lead a political party that is targeted by other parties or even the government. People will still follow your stream and information (facebook also has pages) it doesn't matter if you filled out a "profile". Or maybe you just want to follow that political page without anyone finding out. Create an account with fake information, it's simple and useful.
- gregd 13y agoWhen I worked for Netscape.com (the social news site) and later Propeller.com, we made a conscious decision NOT to ban known TOR IP addresses, even though a metric shit-ton of spammers used it.
- zackmorris 13y agoI find this a bit ironic because the future of the web is a free self-organizing darknet. Someday data that users wish to share will be stored cryptographically in a true "cloud" sort of like bitcoin, and I'm not really sure what the value of facebook will be in an environment like that. Maybe the ability to store things temporarily or delete them somehow? Facebook seems to connect you to anything except the future..
- redblacktree 13y agoOn what do you base this speculation? To me, the trend seems to be just the opposite. Internet use for the average person is increasingly non-anonymous. Only techies use Tor, PGP, etc.
- hobs 13y agoYep, your parent presupposes people get better at computers. Moore's law does not apply to people.
- drcube 13y agoI disagree. Only 20 years ago the GP would be saying "Only techies use email, web, etc." People get better at this stuff, but slowly. The current privacy issue is growing in the public consciousness, spurring action from "techies". Maybe 20 years from now easy to use encryption will be the norm, even among regular people.
- redblacktree 13y agoI hope you're right. Time will tell, I guess.
- hobs 13y agoThat's a fair point. However, I still see the contraction of skills being greater as the web caters to those without them, and people's skill atrophying. For instance, Facebook messaging vs instant messaging. For most standard users I know, they have literally lost any reason to use an alternate client, and many of them will probably never become familiar with one as a result. Anyway, its a wait and see situation, hopefully we are both around to see!
- Gonzih 13y agoSometimes I have issues with ycombinator from tor. Am I only one?
- Ixiaus 13y agoSomeone is aggressively crawling HN with TOR ips so they've banned TOR ips.
- SeanDav 13y agoHow about using TOR to connect to a VPN and then to Facebook, so Facebook only sees the VPN but you still "protected" by TOR. Is this possible/practical?
- gesman 13y agoYes, but will be very slow.
- VaibhavBehl 13y agowell facebook won't be able to see you(your IP loc), but VPN is not completely safe as they are required to keep logs + there's also Money trail(credit card) leading directly to you, negating the effect of Tor whatsoever.
- Meglis 13y agois it possible that fb got some heat from above, and forced to do that?
- tlrobinson 13y agoSlightly off topic, but I discovered yesterday Tor provides AMIs for running bridge nodes on EC2: https://cloud.torproject.org https://cloud.torproject.org It's really easy to set up, and only costs ~$3 a month if you have your free tier available.
- cpa 13y agoIt is not deliberate from Facebook. See: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/facebook-and-tor https://blog.torproject.org/blog/facebook-and-tor
- pronoiac 13y agoI'll quote it here. "A number of users have noticed that Facebook is blocking connections from the Tor network. Facebook is not blocking Tor deliberately. However, a high volume of malicious activity across Tor exit nodes triggered Facebook's site integrity systems which are designed to protect people who use the service. Tor and Facebook are working together to find a resolution."
- chucknthem 13y agoThis needs to be the top comment. Way too many wacko conspiracy theorists in this thread.
- Torgo 13y agoYour definition of "conspiracy theory" is way too low. Many sites block Tor, it is not even remotely out of the possibility that they could have blocked Tor exit nodes, or will in the future. I run a Tor exit node on a static IP address, I have firsthand experience with this.
- chucknthem 13y agoThat is a perfectly reasonable explanation, and not what I'm calling conspiracy theory. I'll quote one from a reply to the current top comment. >Google and Facebook are part of the military surveillance complex, it's as simple as that. They are privatized surveillance companies who serve the US government. source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5899813 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5899813
- Torgo 13y agoOk, thanks for the clarification, I missed the context. As a side note I think functionally they serve that purpose, but were never created to be so; they simply cannot resist the compelling power of the state under which they have been licensed as a taxable entity and are subject to its laws and leaders...
- nickpyett 13y agoJust tried loggin in to Facebook with TOR and it works (from the UK). Is this a region only thing?
- cinquemb 13y agoAre there better ways to retain network integrity that don't use ip address logging/monitoring ?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- kfcm 13y agoHas everyone made certain they're running the most current version of Tor?