You might have heard of Tor already, yet never dared to try it yourself.

em0nm4stodon@infosec.exchange

You might have heard of Tor already,
yet never dared to try it yourself.

Despite being around for decades,
Tor is still a tool too few people know about. Tor is essential to journalists, activists, whistleblowers, dissidents, and people in vulnerable situations everywhere.

Thanks to Tor, activists have a safe way to continue fighting for human rights and resist censorship from oppressive regimes.

Here's how Tor works,
and why you should support it.

https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2025/04/30/in-praise-of-tor/

#Privacy #Activism #Tor #DigitalRights

layan2002@mastodon.social · 5/04/30/in-praise-of-tor/

@Em0nM4stodon I haven't heard of it, but I'm excited to try it; at a time when spaces are shrinking around us, we might find it a refuge.

plutarch@gotosocial.plutar.ch · 5/04/30/in-praise-of-tor/

@Em0nM4stodon

This is why I hate the term "dark web": AFAICT, what that term was originally supposed to mean was collectively everything that is not indexed by search engines or literally can't be. That's a lot of things and most of it boring, and most of it never should be indexed by search engines anyway. The portion of that that's available only via Tor—which, in all fairness, absolutely does exist—is a very, very small fraction. Financial institutions, for example, talk to each other by means that technically involve an internet connection at some point; that satisfies the meaning of "dark" in this context, AS WELL IT SHOULD. You don't want to run your credit card and have that transaction be visible to web crawlers: the bad guys who steal people's credit card information are capable of googling things just like anyone else can. None of that has anything to do with Tor. Also, Tor is not the only anonymous network that is publically available, although it is definitely the most common. So the stigma that affects Tor—which absolutely does exist as well, sadly—is born mostly from the omission of facts that are relevant when talking about it. That's still the case even if no one says anything about it that's false.

lil5@social.last.nl · 5/04/30/in-praise-of-tor/

@Em0nM4stodon have you tried i2p? What is your experience in it.

ninestonesclose@mastodon.social

@Sunny @Em0nM4stodon never underestimate how deep surveillance goes.

bhasic@mastodon.social · 5/04/30/in-praise-of-tor/

@Em0nM4stodon There's also https://freenet.org/
and
https://www.hyphanet.org/index.html

burritosommelier@techhub.social

@plutarch curious - what are some other anon networks? I’ve only ever heard of tor

disorderlyf@todon.eu · 5/04/30/in-praise-of-tor/

@Em0nM4stodon Mostly I don't use TOR because for every five websites I've wanted to visit via TOR, there seemed to be six things I was doing wrong that actually made me less anonymous than if I used a regular browser on clearweb only

shadowdancer@mstdn.social · 5/04/30/in-praise-of-tor/

@Em0nM4stodon
I operate a relay, and have been for years. Now, I'm wondering, given the choice between running a relay and donating to the tor project, which one would be more beneficial overall?

em0nm4stodon@infosec.exchange

@shadowdancer Both!

shadowdancer@mstdn.social

@Em0nM4stodon
Sure Alas, I'm no billionaire though, so I was thinking should I instead just donate the few € I currently pay for the VPS running the relay.

disorderlyf@todon.eu

@Drums_in_the_night @Em0nM4stodon "Do you know what an IP address is" sounds like I've said something particularly ignorant about how TOR works to the point where you expect me to not even know basic information about how the internet works, which is exactly my point. There's conflicting information about what best practice is for using TOR.

If what you're after is specific examples, do I need to give a shit about specific exit nodes or not? Does it really defeat the purpose of using TOR if you log into a site you browse from TOR? Are you actually automatically held under more scrutiny if you connect via TOR? Every time I've tried to settle what is true about TOR, the people I spoke to who use it on a regular basis descended into arguments, sometimes conflicting their own statements later on. I just stick with VPNs and extensions I've verified are trustworthy and call it a day.

em0nm4stodon@infosec.exchange

@shadowdancer That's a good question. I think asking the Tor Project directly what they prefer would be a good idea!

em0nm4stodon@infosec.exchange

@disorderlyf @Drums_in_the_night I'd recommend reading the article I wrote linked in the original post to answer these questions

utf_7@mastodon.social · 5/04/30/in-praise-of-tor/

@Em0nM4stodon then there is me, not possible to port forward due to cg nat and too greedy for a vps, so tor to access home via ssh

disorderlyf@todon.eu

@Em0nM4stodon @Drums_in_the_night So beyond my kneejerk reaction I usually give before I've actually read the article, this did address the issues I brought up. Had I not been preoccupied with what sure seemed like someone insulting my intelligence for daring to have seen misinformation and not yet had clarification, I likely would've gotten to this point sooner.

plutarch@gotosocial.plutar.ch

@BurritoSommelier

Off the top of my head, I2P. There might be more that I haven't heard of or can't remember offhand. I2P is the next most common after Tor AFAIK, although it's not a close second by any means. I don't know enough about (both or either of) them to be able to say if one's objectively better than the other.