this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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[–] Eggyhead@kbin.social 58 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (42 children)

It's really worth reading the article.

Tor can be used for any internet browsing you usually do. The key difference with Tor is that the network hides your IP address and other system information for full anonymity.

The company behind a VPN can still access your information, sell it or pass it along to law enforcement. With Tor, there’s no link between you and your traffic, according to Jed Crandall, an associate professor at Arizona State University.

I don't know if it's even possible, but it would be cool if I could use the fediverse over TOR just for the sake of supporting TOR. Not sure if there would have to be specific .onion instances, if normal instances could just be mirrored with a .onion address, or if a .onion instance would even be able to federated in the first place. I just don't know how it works.

Other use cases may include keeping the identities of sensitive populations like undocumented immigrants anonymous, trying to unionize a workplace without the company shutting it down, victims of domestic violence looking for resources without their abuser finding out or, as Crandall said, wanting to make embarrassing Google searches without related targeted ads following you around forever.

I'm certain an all-out legislative war would be waged against TOR if it were to become popularized for most of those reasons, under the more convenient guise of "criminals and children!"

[–] astral_avocado@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Just download Tor browser and go to Lemmy. World

[–] Eggyhead@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

What effect would using Tor browser to access a non onion site have over using a different, privacy-focused browser? Honest question. I assumed Tor browser was no different than other browsers in that aspect.

[–] ctr1@fl0w.cc 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The difference is that your ISP doesn't know where your packets are headed, and the destination doesn't know where your packets came from. The ISP sees you connect to the entrance node and the destination sees you connect from the exit node, and it's very difficult for anyone to trace the connection back to you (unless they own both the entrance and exit and use traffic coorelation or some other exploit/fingerprint). Regardless, both parties are generally able to tell that you are using TOR if they reference lists of known entrance/exit nodes. Also the anti-fingerprinting measures taken by TB are a bit more strict than other privacy-focused browsers

[–] Eggyhead@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Thank you for the detailed answer. I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about using tor browser, considering how privacy-minded the community tends to be.

[–] astral_avocado@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It is confusing, Tor is an excellent privacy tool if used properly (don't log in to stuff), but I guess it's still a technical hurdle to most. Probably also from a lack of marketing.

I think in countries where the government is decidedly more authoritarian it's more known. On my relay right now I see a ton of russian and a smaller amount of German connections.

[–] ctr1@fl0w.cc 1 points 1 year ago

No problem! And yeah, it's good to see people talking about it over here. I think it's the best tool for online privacy OOTB (depending on your threat model), and it gets better the more people use it.

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