Memes @lemmy.ml lemmesay @discuss.tchncs.de 12 mo. ago

Is this what people think about Tor browser?

image transcription:
a YouTube screenshot of a community post, which is a meme regarding incognito mode. it has two panels with an animated figure(person) and chrome logo (chrome) with limbs. in first panel, chrome is asking "which website would you line to see?", to which the person replies " I don't want you to know. " in second panel, chrome has become a ventriloquist, holding a masked muppet with sunglasses and a fedora(symbol for incognito on chrome). it is asking the person "what about telling Mr. incognito?", to which the person joyfully replies "okay."

the screenshot has a main comment with several replies. the main comment(by Paula_Amato) reads, "And then there's Tor browser e CD Catching my brother Scrolling through Tor was the second worst secret I know about him... The first is the website he was using."

replies to the comment:

[30 Pranay Pawar • 1 day ago] May God bless and have mercy on the bro's life. I would knock myself out for eternity if anybody i know found that out too.
[FArid ch. • 1 day ago] what onion website your brother access... out of curiosity
[Griffin McKenzie • 1 day ago (edited)] Tor is literally just a browser like any other but better.

55 comments

personally I don't care if google knows about my femboy hentai I just don't want it popping up in my search whenever i type "f"
- Back in 2002 my manager was hosting his own little site on his home webserver. Shared it with all of us, and the company's managers who were our sole source of income.
  
  "So Jay, the Google search widget is pretty cool, but when I stary to type "a", "Angelina Jolie porn" comes in the results. Who all you share this with?"
  
  "Oh shit! Are you fucking serious?!"
- Press f to pay respects...wait what's that...
- What about: fornicating men in a feminine fashion
- At least e621 isn't an obvious name
- I'll suggest the same thing I always suggest:
  
  Pick a favorite browser to use for every day
  
  Pick least favorite browser for porn Set up least favorite browser to remove cache, cookies, history, everything on close
  
  That way you can safely F without search suggestions
  
  Or you could just use private mode, profiles, sandboxed browser etc
The stereotype of pedophiles using the dark web is absolutely true. I hosted an exit node and not even a day later got a call from my ISP. I told them I was hosting an exit node and they instantly understood the situation, went to close the node and have never hosted another one since.
- It is not worth the risk. Do not do it. "Freedom" assholes do not care about abusing said freedom or being responsible with it, to not waste it on watching fucking child porn.
  
  Tell me about it. A disturbing amount of people only care about free speech for that one sole reason, and it shows.
- I am also thinking about hosting my own but that outch
  
  Do it with a VPS provider not your own network that is plain silly
... Tor is just a modified Firefox though lmfao.
- It's based on Firefox, but those modifications do have a rather large impact in terms of privacy.
I don't think 'people' think about Tor. Most would not know what that is...
I don't know anything about Tor and at this point I'm too afraid to ask.
- It's a heavily modified firefox browser designed to work with something called "the onion network". It's called this because there are several nodes on the network designed to obfuscate your Internet traffic by wrapping a layer on your Internet traffic, creating an "onion". All of these layers mean that each node only knows what the previous and next nodes are. The most vulnerable nodes are the starting and exit nodes, because they can identify you and potentially trace back your IP. You also can't choose your starting or exit nodes. It's well known that the US federal government controls some of these exit nodes.
  
  I still know incredibly little about the Tor browser and how it works, but I appreciate your response!
  
  I guess I don't understand what the difference is between using the Tor browser and just using a VPN. I've also got very little idea what a "node" is so that's probably my issue haha.
  
  Just don't login to anything. Easy.
- It seems like Tor is just super-incognito mode. Like the for real one
  
  Tor is incognito mode except that this time it isn't fake
TOR is just a browser, using Firefox as the base, and heavily modified and the special ability to access, but not required, what's colloquially known as the dark web. What you choose to visit and do is on your, not TOR, or Firefox, or anyone else involved.
Biggest issue with Tor is the 1Mbps speeds it gives me on my 1.5Gbps connection.

Also, I decided to go to an onion link for the first time last month, typed in "best onion websites" on Google, clicked the first Reddit link, found the top comment and typed in it first address.

Child porn.

I know onion addresses can be anything, but God damn. Comment is still up on Reddit, also. I believe it was posted a couple years ago.

So I definitely can understand where that idea of Tor comes from lol
- I remember when I first used Tor. I was like 14.
  
  Found the silk road when it was still up. Poked around for a bit. Cool.
  
  Next onion site I found was also cp. That image is burned into my skull forever. Uninstalled Tor and never went back. Hard pass.
  
  Thankfully the front page was not super graphic for me. Still cp, but it was a portal for logging into your account.
  
  Scary part was the photos that were shown, the girls looked very abused. Obviously cp is abuse, but I mean they looked VERY abused and used. Clearly some trafficking shit.
  
  I also immediately uninstalled Tor. I understand it has other uses, but I don't really need Tor anyway. I was just goofing around and found out.
I learnt over a decade ago never to trust anyone who thinks of Tor (or ) as a bad thing, terrorist tool or whatever. Worked pretty well against my blabbermouth family and friends.
- I get what you're saying, but for my daily protest comment against Reddit; there is no such thing as a terrorist tool. Tools aren't good or bad, but they can be used for good or bad. This has been another comment which added nothing to the conversation. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
I don't use tor but I would use it for piracy if I lived in a strict country
Honestly, I'd probably use Tor more if I knew which sites on the dark web were "safe".

Basically, I know how to use Tor, but I have no idea where to begin with it.
- Isn't there a directory for safe onion links anywhere?
  
  If there is, I'd like to know.
Besides Tor was (initially) developed by the NSA. I would be surprised if there wasn't a government backdown
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(network) Not NSA and no backdoor so far. It's not needed, control enough hops and you can trace a lot and even deanonymize clients. Tor has it's weaknesses, maybe implemented just for that. But afaik they're mostly caused by design.
  
  It is made and funded by DARPA, and NSA hosts some of the nodes on TOR network.
- Thought it was the navy that did.
  
  You’re correct
  
  In 2004, the Naval Research Laboratory released the code for Tor under a free license
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(network)?wprov=sfti1#HistorY
- It's open source, if there was a back door it would have been found years ago.
  
  It's open source, anybody can audit the code. Everybody can keep secret what they found and sell it.
- I'd argue its in their best interest for it to be as secure and widely used as possible. Can't have other govs peeking (every lock can be lockpicked yadda yadda) and can't have people instantly know its the US military when someone accesses Tor.
  
  Exactly. And if you want to catch bad guys, you can build honeypot websites (or take over bad ones, like law enforcement did with several dark markets) and work on deanonimyzing visitors there.

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