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Does pointing a ".onion" url to a clearnet site benefit TOR users? (mander.xyz)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by Sal@mander.xyz to c/tor@lemmy.ml

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When a website can be accessed via a clearnet and a .onion url, is there a benefit to making use of the .onion url?

Context:

I am considering pointing a ".onion" url to my instance (mander.xyz).

I did some tests with and it seems like mlmym works well with JavaScript disabled. Since JavaScript is often disabled in the tor browser, I could make the .onion url point at that front-end instead.

This would be fun to do, but I wonder if there is a practical benefit to the ".onion" url as opposed to simply accessing the clearnet url via the tor browser.

EDIT: I went ahead and created an onion URL to try out, but I would still like to know if there is an actual advantage to .onion urls:

http://mandermybrewn3sll4kptj2ubeyuiujz6felbaanzj3ympcrlykfs2id.onion/

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[–] 12510198@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I think staying inside the tor network helps reduce the load on exit nodes, which helps all tor users who need to access the clearnet. I think there is even a HTTP header that can be put on the clearnet site that will put a button on the tor browser that tells users that there is a onion available.

[–] Sal@mander.xyz 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Ah - does the exit node participate at all when accessing a .onion? Or is it skipped altogether?

And the HTTP header thing is very cool, I did not know about that!

I have added the header to the site and it works!

I just added the following line to the location / {} block in the https server section:

add_header Onion-Location http://mandermybrewn3sll4kptj2ubeyuiujz6felbaanzj3ympcrlykfs2id.onion/$request_uri;

[–] 12510198@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 4 months ago

I think its just the non-exit nodes that are needed as long as the traffic stays inside the tor network, I dont think an exit node gets involved at all, but I'm not 100% sure