• shapesandstuff@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    So when I first learned about TOR almost 10 years ago in uni, it was said to be compromised to a significant extent by secret services holding entry and exit nodes.

    Is that not true anymore?

    • worfamerryman@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      I’ve hear something similar. I think I read that the US Air Force has a bunch of nodes or something.

      Additionally I don’t really understand what I would use it for if I already have a vpn and how it might put me a risk of legal trouble if I’m using it and someone routes something bad through me while I’m using it…

      I’m not even sure how to talk about it.

      I am decently technical, I just don’t know this tech.

      • NateSwift@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Disclaimer that I haven’t used Tor in a while, do your own research, etc

        The US navy designed and open sourced the Tor network. If all the traffic meant to be anonymous was coming from the US navy it doesn’t work well as an anonymizer. There’s been various claims that they have backdoors over the years, but to my knowledge none have held water.

        Unless you’re running an exit node (which requires different software than the Tor browser) other people’s traffic isn’t getting routed through you so you’re fine legally.

        VPNs are not very good at protecting you from the websites or services you connect to. They’re best used to hide where you’re connecting to from your ISP. Modern fingerprinting using things like browsing habits, installed software, web browser size, cookies, etc is barely effected by VPNs and the Tor browser takes care of an minimizes lots of those tools.

        The biggest issue for day to day use for me is how slow it is. Because your traffic is being routed through 3-5 nodes before getting to its destination overall speed and latency suffer a lot

        • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          The biggest issue for day to day use for me is how slow it is. Because your traffic is being routed through 3-5 nodes before getting to its destination overall speed and latency suffer a lot

          That’s why I never continued to use it after the times I experimented with Tor.

        • worfamerryman@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          Thanks for summarizing this for me. I think I could just use a vpn and librewolf to accomplish what you are talking about with the tor browser.

          Librewolf wipes everything once it’s closer and it pretty basic if you use the default settings.

          Are people using it to casually browse Lemmy and stuff?

          • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            I use librewolf, but for me the first thing to change was to do not delete things on exit. I’m looking for a better firefox, not a lighter tor browser

        • sudo@lemmy.today
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          1 year ago

          Modern fingerprinting using things like browsing habits, installed software, web browser size, cookies, etc is barely effected by VPNs and the Tor browser takes care of an minimizes lots of those tools.

          But can’t you just spoof most of that if you really want to? If you’re putting in the effort to be concerned with anonymity.

    • Cambionn@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      I also heared that bit about the secret service owning nodes a few years ago. It was trough a teacher that’s also really in the stuff outside of teaching, and has a network of non-teaching proffesionals in the field.

      It’s something to keep in mind, at the very least. Tor already has some weaknesses anyways. You shouldn’t trust it blindly just because it’s Tor. If anything, I think it more has a false rep for how strong it is over struggling with a stigma.

      • shapesandstuff@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        Iirc holding both the entry and exit of a routed connection, you can in theory match traffic going through, which would let you connect a user to the server/site they are connecting to. It might still be encrypted at that point, idk the details anymore.

    • itchy_lizard@feddit.it
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      1 year ago

      I don’t think a single credible source has shown this to be a vulnerability. You’re talking about an attack that would cost, what, millions of dollars to run per day?