It gets my goat that people think it’s a good option. There are plenty of articles explaining some of the many issues with it, but a few are:
- It’s run by anti-LGBTQ+ crypto bros.
- It has ads right out of the box.
- It collected donations towards people who never signed up for them - then held them to ransom in exchange for the kind of information you should never share on the Internet.
- They’re a for-profit advertising company. “Privacy-centric” my elbow.
I’m surprised to read the whole thread and nobody mentioned that TorBrowser is the goat for daily anonymous browsing.
That you’re even suggesting this tells me that you don’t use tor regularly. Many clearnet sites dont want to be accessed through tor and will just block you. If you encounter any recaptchas thats basically a dead end. The time from opening the browser to having a fully loaded site is minutes.
If you don’t plan on doing serious crimes and your not an opposition leader in a totalitarian state, tor is not a good default browser.
I missed that part
I think it depends on the region. To me, full browser restart with reconnect is maybe 10 seconds tops, usually less. I use Tor Browser as a default one on my phone, and it opens random links quite okay.
For me, the main issue is exit node blocking, then I need to restart the browser 1-2 times.
You are correct that Tor is not as convenient. I use Tor Regularly but I use another browsers if I need to login. Sometimes I have to restart Tor Browser because of blocks.
Tor is ridiculously slow for daily use.
It worth okay for me.
I thought people gave up on Tor years ago when it was revealed that it wasnt as anonymous as people expected due to the number of entry and exit nodes controlled by governments and spy agencies.
The NSA wasn’t able to break Tor fundamentally, even with spanning numerous exit nodes to intercept traffic, and high-scale traffic correlation between enter and exit nodes
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/04/nsa-gchq-attack-tor-network-encryption
Do we trust a 12 year old article sourced from the government to be honest about current/past capabilities? Genuinely asking.
This question is unironically very deep. As it’s privacy we’re talking, you decide what to trust on your own.
My understanding is that Tor provides anonymity for my threat model (ad-tech corporations).
But trust need to be placed somewhere. Do we trust Mozilla? All their emploees? Do we trust OSS? Does anybody actually review open-source code? What about supply chain attacks?
I am, a nobody, was personally invited to a Contagious Interview (a person, pretending to be a client for consulting was trying to place a rootkit on my machine via GitHub repo).
What about AI-assistet coding that actively tries to eliminate security gates?
In this case I would. Its from the Snowden leaks and from the government for the government, never intended for our public eyes.
Also if you don’t fully trust tor, just add another layer (e.g. VPN). If the government dissuades you from secure open infrastructure and gets you to use closed ones, they have won because companies can always be forced to comply. Algorithms on the other hand, can’t.
who and what is your threat model? as @macros@feddit.org pointed out this article was probably rather accurate.
if you just want to browse anonymously - it is likely, that even the biggest tech corpos can’t de-anonymise you.
if you do small time crime, like buying and selling contraband - likely law enforcement would try to catch you in the real world. you have more vertices and vulnerabilities there, different enforcement agencies are experienced exploiting these.
if you paint a big ass target on your back and get the interest of the CIA or similar - you are probably fucked one way or the other. they may have the ability to de-anonymise you. but if you listen to people that did get caught or do the catching (e.g: darknet diaries), most of the times it is a small mistake. if you only ever play defence, that is enough to loose the game. but what are your options if your adversary is a national agency?
You should never use TOR as a daily driver.
Why not? If more people use onion router the network only becomes better.