I downloaded the Tor Browser a decade ago, maybe even longer, in an effort to be privacy conscious. I used it here and there but I never made the switch to using Tor by default. Some time later I remember reading the US government was tracking people, or had a list of everyone, who had simply downloaded Tor. I also vaguely remember reading about how using Tor could potentially expose you to legal risks because of the way the information hops between user computers. I don't really know much about networking or the nitty gritty of how Tor works so I uninstalled it.<p>I don't know if any of that was true and even if it was I'm sure a lot has changed with how Tor handles privacy and directs traffic. Are there any good resources for average Joe internet users to read about how the browser works so I can better understand the risks/rewards?
> For the first time, Tor Browser users on desktop will be able to opt-in for using onion sites automatically whenever the website makes them available.<p>Good. This is, in my opinion, one of the bigger pain points of the whole Tor experience.<p>I don't personally think the problem is with understanding how onion addresses work (I've explained them to my mother and she understands the concept pretty easily), it's just the user-experience that has always been kind of a pain - even for people that use Tor often and understand it well.<p>I don't use the Tor browser for a number of reasons, so I can only hope other browsers follow suit.
At a certain philosophical / high level, I don't like the idea of the 'human-memorable names' .onion feature.<p>It's politicising software. Open-source software should never have an official, hard-coded opinion about any of the content findable through it.<p>I've seen the Firefox org increasing do similar things when reading their email newsletter. It even stopped me donating to Firefox.<p>A core idea of Tor is to not censor. When you give special access to some sites, it feels like the opposite of net neutrality. That is on the censorship spectrum.<p>I guess it's not too bad if they never block any content at the protocol or software level, but at some point, giving certain content privileged features at the software/protocol level is a two-edged sword. It means you're forced to <i>deny</i> supporting other content.<p>Indeed, once Tor starts having an official opinion about online content at the browser level, who's to stop people starting to pressure Tor to block certain content, since they're basically starting to be in that realm now? It can be a slippery slope.<p>I'd prefer at the very least it be toned down to a third party add-on. It's great to make onion sites easier to access, of course. But it should be in a way that doesn't involve political or legal barriers for content creators.<p>---<p>BTW, I highly encourage anyone with a linux box at home just sitting there 24/7 to start an obfs4 bridge relay. It's not that hard, and low on resources. #tor-relays IRC extremely helpful in getting you set up.<p>I've been running one for about a year and it's provided tens/hundreds of GBs of Tor Internet to people hopefully in Asia, South America, and the Middle East - protesters who really, really need some help in anonymization or gaining access to blocked content.
"Onion Location" and "Onion Names" are very welcomed improvements.<p>Not having memorable names makes it tough for people that use a non-persistent OS for Tor. I'm all for creating more accessible URLs.
The Onion site autodiscovery has never worked for me when using Cloudflare's Onion routing. My sites (e.g. <a href="https://www.pastery.net/" rel="nofollow">https://www.pastery.net/</a>) include an alt-svc header, yet the browser never prompts me to switch to it. It does work for ProPublica, but not for my sites for which I have CF's Onion Routing enabled.<p>Has anyone else had this problem (or had this work)?
Anyone know what the HTML is for adding my onion address to my page for people visiting from the normal web entrance? I looked through the changelog for the bit about this auto-detection but didn't see it. Is it some sort of link tag thing in the <head> like,<p><link rel="alternate" title="my site but on tor" href="superkuhbitj6tul.onion" />
brave browser has a "tor private window". such a great idea, since most people dont realize a private window is only private to their own browser. anyone know how updates to tor affect brave? it seems crucial it is kept to to date
Has anyone had any luck or done any experiments using OnionCat with Multicast? I've heard people can get 200MB/s+ doing this but potentially sacrificing some anonymity.
For what it's worth, Tor has been my default browser for the past 5 years to 'surf' the net and the experience is incomparable from 3 years ago to today, so much improvement specially on news sites with the 'Toggle reader view' or Reddit, Twitter, etc.<p>Give it a go if your experience wasn't great a few years back.
wait! the most privacy centric iOS doesn't support Tor?! but Android does! I wonder is privacy is just Apple's PR but far from truth. The speech to text translation also they need to route via their servers. The contractors listen to recordings of Siri. Its time to unmask Apple's true face.
My main takeaway is that Tor is introducing a new domain names suffix: .tor.onion<p>For information, there was a similar initiative by Namecoin with .bit.onion: <a href="https://www.namecoin.org/docs/tor-resolution/ncprop279/stemns/" rel="nofollow">https://www.namecoin.org/docs/tor-resolution/ncprop279/stemn...</a>
I use Tor Browser for most of my day to day browsing to foil all the non-governmental corporate botnet spying. Of course I’m under no illusions that it secures you against the government. But I don’t do anything naughty so I’m not worried.
I understand the concept of Tor but since the government is actively watching, it doesn't really fit the usecase if I understand correctly.<p>From a privacy point of view, couldn't you use multiple VPNs?