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TheNewKing wrote (edited )

I use the Tor browser a lot these days for certain information. I just hope certain individuals or groups don't hold a lot of guards and exit nodes. I think some of the arguments on that page also apply to Tor.

When I send and receive information over the regular web, I do not use a VPN for most of the reasons listed in that page.

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49492093097198310931 wrote

I just hope certain individuals or groups don't hold a lot of guards and exit nodes.

Anyone can run relays that's why it's difficult and expensive for a single entity to have enough consensus on the Tor network to conduct such attack. Also, since the Tor Browser gives you a different circuit for each different website that means that at best they can de-anonymize a single circuit of yours, but with significantly higher consensus they may hit more of those. However, you can be sure that no single entity in a circuit controls both the guard node and the exit by running your very own relay or bridge and then connecting to it.

I think some of the arguments on that page also apply to Tor.

No they don't because of Tor's 3-hops (and in the case of normal onion services: 6-hops) design.

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TheNewKing wrote

Anyone can run relays that's why it's difficult and expensive for a single entity to have enough consensus on the Tor network to conduct such attack.

This is a bit misleading. Anyone being able to run a relay is indeed a good thing, but it also enables bad actors to easily setup malicious nodes. The consensus you speak of is, as far as I can find, based on bandwidth. So setting up a high bandwidth node will make it easy to have enough consensus on the network. For agencies with big budgets it would be trivial to set up multiple nodes with high bandwidth. And because stable high bandwidth nodes are preferred, they see a lot of the traffic.

Good tip on running your own relay though, that would make it significantly difficult since you'd never rotate out your guard relay.

No they don't because of Tor's 3-hops (and in the case of normal onion services: 6-hops) design.

The page makes the argument that VPNs can mess with your traffic, which is definitely true for exit nodes. It is well documented that bad exit nodes have been caught and blocked by the network.

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49492093097198310931 wrote

This is a bit misleading. Anyone being able to run a relay is indeed a good thing, but it also enables bad actors to easily setup malicious nodes.

There's simply no better alternatives.

The page makes the argument that VPNs can mess with your traffic, which is definitely true for exit nodes. It is well documented that bad exit nodes have been caught and blocked by the network.

Again here there's no alternative, with all networks you must pass through some "exit" and at that point, if there's no SSL, then you're not secure.

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