Tor -

[Holdek]

I'm possibly interested in using my Internet connection as a Tor bridge.

Even more so since tomorrow is the 25-year anniversary of the Tienanmen Square Massacre but I'm hearing reports like this: "For Many Of China's Youth, June 4 May As Well Be Just Another Day."

The short of it is, out of 100 Chinese university students the reporter interviewed, only 15 could identify the following photo:

Spoiler

(This is even with withholding the students' names, but even if we are liberal double that, that's still 70% who wouldn't know what the photo is from.)

This is in large part due to government censorship, including of the Internet.

Tor is a program that allows users to bypass these censors. However, it has also been used for other illegal activities, as this story indicates: "Anonymous takes down darknet child porn site on Tor network."

I understand that anything that can be used for good can also be corrupted for bad purposes. My question to anyone familiar with Tor is: on balance, is the network mostly used for stuff that I would be horrified to know has passed through my connection? Or does it hold up to its promise of increasing access to the truth by letting people in China, Iran, etc. get onto the uncensored Internet?

 

[The Knife]

I would think that furthering access to information in and out of places under government blackout is a pretty noble cause, especially right now. I'd say that balances out.

I'm not familiar with how Tor works, but are there safeguards you can take if someone uses your bridge for something shady?

 

[Marvin]

Tor is solidly used by pedophiles and political dissidents. You're going to get both of those groups.

It used to be used for more practical purposes by people buying drugs on silk road, but silk road is gone and bitcoin is in shambles, so that's gone.

I would think that furthering access to information in and out of places under government blackout is a pretty noble cause, especially right now. I'd say that balances out.

I'm not familiar with how Tor works, but are there safeguards you can take if someone uses your bridge for something shady?

Nah, you don't have access to any of the specific content. That's how tor works. (Or, well, if your machine is an exit node, then I guess you can read the traffic before it goes out of your machine.)

 

[Holdek]

I'm not familiar with how Tor works, but are there safeguards you can take if someone uses your bridge for something shady?

There are some settings, I think at least for exist nodes, maybe for bridges too, where you can cut down on certain kinds of traffic (like bit torrent), but as Marvin alludes to above, the content is encrypted until it leaves the network.

I'd be more comfortable if they kept a running blacklist of CP websites and forums that exit nodes can't connect to. Although, I guess those sites are mostly secret in the first place?

Tor is solidly used by pedophiles and political dissidents. You're going to get both of those groups.

It used to be used for more practical purposes by people buying drugs on silk road, but silk road is gone and bitcoin is in shambles, so that's gone.

One of the other things that causes me reservations is that most Tor traffic originates from countries without censorship, so I think a lot of it is people using it for CP, sharing pirated movies, and people overly-paranoid about law enforcement (like that dude who told you he only reads the CWCki through Tor ).

 

[Marvin]

There are some settings, I think at least for exist nodes, maybe for bridges too, where you can cut down on certain kinds of traffic (like bit torrent), but as Marvin alludes to above, the content is encrypted until it leaves the network.

I'd be more comfortable if they kept a running blacklist of CP websites and forums that exit nodes can't connect to. Although, I guess those sites are mostly secret in the first place?

I cannot imagine any CP website running today that isn't behind a .onion address. It's not really possible to keep a public website involved with seriously illegal content up, especially because people have this easy alternative of tor.

One of the other things that causes me reservations is that most Tor traffic originates from countries without censorship, so I think a lot of it is people using it for CP, sharing pirated movies, and people overly-paranoid about law enforcement (like that dude who told you he only reads the CWCki through Tor ).

Everyone uses bittorrent in the open nowadays, no one cares, I don't think. But yeah, the existence of .onion sites means that you can't really make good estimates about what people are doing with tor, based on the source of the requests.

 

[Connor Bible]

Ah, Tor. Never will you find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. You must be cautious.

 

[Watcher]

Every time I see a Tor icon on someone's desktop I get a little suspicious and think they hoard cp on their harddrive

 

[Dark Mirror Hole]

My friend went on it once and all he found were forums of people going "OMG we're in da deep webz, how cool and edgy is dat???".

 

[Yog-Sothoth]

This has been my experience with Tor.

This guy is a complete nutjob that has been put in an insane asylum twice,in Finland.

It tends to attract insane people more than people with good intentions.
Honestly I thought the same way you did about Tor until I used for a month.

 

[Null]

"It should be ILLEGAL then!"
- Gabe Navarro, in response to my explanation of how Willow Giovanna uses Tor to bypass IP ban.

 

[EDFHemlock]

Tor is useless nowadays since there are many vulnerabilities to it.

 

[x.eight.six.systems]

I cannot imagine any CP website running today that isn't behind a .onion address. It's not really possible to keep a public website involved with seriously illegal content up, especially because people have this easy alternative of tor.


Everyone uses bittorrent in the open nowadays, no one cares, I don't think. But yeah, the existence of .onion sites means that you can't really make good estimates about what people are doing with tor, based on the source of the requests.

The Child Pornography websites on the W3 would be self hosted websites or FTBs that aren't discoverable by google

 

[Quote Me Now]

Anyone fortunate enough to be living in a country whose government doesn't block basically everything on the Internet ever has no need of TOR unless they're doing some seriously shady stuff. However, there's a good case for using it.

Yes, there's some pretty messed up stuff on TOR. Welcome to the Internet. But if the only people using TOR to access the Internet at large (rather than the hidden services on TOR, decidedly dodgy things) are people in countries with oppressive governments, then it's incredibly easy for said governments to use TOR to try to de-anonymise these people - they can pretty much guarantee that anyone they successfully de-anonymise is someone who is breaking their censorship laws.

If lots of people use TOR, it becomes more difficult. De-anonymising a user takes work. If its highly likely the person you're targeting isn't even doing anything wrong and isn't even in your country breaking your censorship laws, it becomes much harder to crack down on and weakens your censorship control.

All in all, TOR isn't moral or immoral. It's entirely amoral. Like all tools, it can be used for noble or vile purposes.

If you run a node, you will enable people to access dodgy stuff sometimes. You can't control that, the connections rotate at random. But you will also be enabling people to access information that their government would deny to them, and be helping to weaken the censorship of certain countries.

If you're okay with that, run a node. I would warn you though: don't run an exit node, run a guard or relay. If you run an exit node, it's you that the police will come to first if they're tracking someone dodgy who went through your node. You likely won't be convicted for anything, especially if you explain what TOR is and how it works in court, but it's incredibly inconvenient.

 

[Judge Holden]

Tor?

Nah, it couldnt be.....

 

[KatsuKitty]

Don't run an exit node unless you want the FBI raiding your house regularly.

Your IP address will be the endpoint for at least three different illegal activities.

 

[Duke Nukem]

Don't run an exit node unless you want the FBI raiding your house regularly.

Your IP address will be the endpoint for at least three different illegal activities.

That's why you set up the server at a friend's house instead.

Apart from that, though, Tor is basically useless now in the US because the NSA has decoded it. Or at least it was for a while, maybe they changed it.

There are some interesting things on TOR though, that aren't necessarily illegal or shady. A lot of the sites I've seen look a lot like they were created with Geocities in the 90s. Excessive use of neon colors and GIFs in some, yet some were 80s plain text adventure style in their appearance.

Don't knock TOR because of a few no-gooders exploiting it. That's like saying cell phones are bad because drug dealers use them.

 

[Marvin]

Apart from that, though, Tor is basically useless now in the US because the NSA has decoded it. Or at least it was for a while, maybe they changed it.

Tor is an open source project based on the same cryptography that everyone uses. If it was broken, the NSAs systems would be broken too.

Tor can only be broken if the fundamental algorithm it's based on is broken, and that'd be detected when a PhD paper pointed out how the mathematics it's based on are broken. And then the project would be over, and possibly replaced.

 

[DeagleDad420]

Apart from that, though, Tor is basically useless now in the US because the NSA has decoded it.

That's not quite how it works bro

The NSA is spying on exit nodes, that's all they're able to do, and the only things they can actually retrieve from exit nodes is unencrypted information. AFAIK literally all you have to do is put https instead of http and you can download as many of Tyce's analchest cookbooks as you want without getting drone striked by Big Daddy Barry.