FancyMancy said:
AgainstAllAuthority said:
Anonymity is provided by Tor.
Some people believe Tor is a completely anonymous, private, and secure way to access the Internet without anyone being able to monitor your browsing and trace it back to you – but is it? It’s not quite that simple.
Tor isn’t the perfect anonymity and privacy solution. It has several important limitations and risks, which you should be aware of if you’re going to use it.
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Tor isn't a magic solution that grants you anonymity. It achieves anonymity by cleverly passing encrypted traffic through a network, but that traffic has to emerge somewhere - which is a problem for both Tor's users and exit node operators.
Code:
https://www.howtogeek.com/142380/htg-explains-is-tor-really-anonymous-and-secure
Tor Browser offers the best anonymous web browsing available today, but that anonymity is not perfect. We are currently witnessing an arms race between researchers seeking to strengthen Tor, or even develop a next generation anonymity tool, and governments around the world studying how to break Tor's anonymity properties.
Code:
https://www.csoonline.com/article/3287653/what-is-the-tor-browser-how-it-works-and-how-it-can-help-you-protect-your-identity-online.html
Tor itself is very safe and provides a high level of anonymity. But it’s definitely not perfect, and can leave you vulnerable to a range of security threats if you’re not careful. In some cases, it may be possible for people to identify your IP address and to see that you’re using Tor (even if they can’t see what you’re doing on it). These dangers can easily be avoided with the addition of a VPN, which covers Tor’s main security faults.
Code:
https://www.vpnmentor.com/blog/tor-browser-work-relate-using-vpn
There is a growing chorus of people who blindly recommend Tor to anyone looking for online anonymity. This recommendation often ignores mountains of evidence suggesting that Tor is not the “privacy tool” it’s made out to be.
Code:
https://restoreprivacy.com/tor
The darknet, especially the TOR network, can be hacked, or the information of the people using it can be extracted in the plain text.
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Law enforcement and intelligence agencies consider “de-anonymization” of Tor users a primary goal.
Authorities try to implement techniques to break the encryption used to anonymize the traffic or exploit vulnerabilities in one of the software modules that anonymizes the user’s online experience.
This is what happened in one of the most significant operation called Operation Onymous.
More than 400 darknet servers were taken down, including the most notorious drug marketplaces like Silk Road, Hydra, and Cloud9, along with many money laundering and contraband sites.
In this operation, the LEA exploited a vulnerability in a tor network and got the real IP [addresses] of the operators.
Code:
https://www.ehacking.net/2020/10/policing-the-dark-web-tor-how-authorities-track-people-on-darknet.html
Mouse movements are enough to track down Tor users
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What we can tell you in a nutshell is that, if you don’t want your movements to be tracked- stop using Tor unless it is REALLY necessary.
Code:
https://www.hackread.com/tracking-tor-users-with-mouse-movements
VPNs pretend and allege to not keep logs, but we know they do, just like Protonmail, etc. Buying services/packages can leave trails. There may be DNS leaks and all sorts of other things. "Why is X customer using Tor? I wonder. What do they have to hide? What are they up to?" Any number of government agencies have their own entry nodes and exit nodes... People must do a lot of research before accepting blindly and ignorantly that it is the be all and end all of online safety.
If you want an anonymous Protonmail account, just buy one on the darknet.
Yeah, that's trustworthy! /sarcasm Everything is about trust.
This is true. No tool is perfect, and Tor is no exception. I like to view this as a statistical problem:
Let's say you have a 10% of being tracked if you use Tor.
Let's say you have a 20% of being tracked if you use a VPN.
If you use a VPN + Tor, then you have a 10% x 20% = 2% chance of being tracked.
And then as SS we have Satan's protection on top of this. As long as we don't do stupid things, Satan's protection is 100%.
However, I think one fact is clear. Using only Tor is better than nothing. Perhaps it attracts attention from ISPs, but the people to be concerned about are at the other end. For example, consider the article Stromblood posted about ProtonMail releasing the IP of one of its users. Consider both ends:
On your end, your ISP can see you're using Tor and might be curious. If they spend the effort to track you, they'll find that you're using ProtonMail, and possibly flag you as "of interest". That's all.
On the exit end, ProtonMail turned over the user's IP address to the government. However, if the person had been using Tor, this would have presented another barrier to get through, thus decreasing the probability of success.