Roger Dingledine, one of the three founders of the Tor Project, castigated journos for mischaracterizing the pro-privacy system as a bolthole exclusively used by drug dealers and pedophiles to hide from the authorities.
In fact, he said, only three per cent of Tor users connect to hidden services, suggesting the vast majority of folks on the network are using it to anonymously browse public websites for completely legit purposes. In other words, netizens – from journalists to activists to normal peeps – use Tor to mask their identities from website owners, and it's not just underworld villains.
Dingledine even went as far as saying the dark web – a landscape of websites concealed within networks like Tor – is so insignificant, it can be discounted.
Interesting article. I hadn't known that Facebook supports TOR.“There is basically no dark web. It doesn’t exist,” he told his DEF CON audience. “It’s only a very few webpages.”
If you care about Internet privacy, should should RTWT.
4 comments:
Really interesting perspective. I just wish I knew if it was right.
When I switch on my computer and log-in, my second action is to start up my TOR browser. All my email is via TOR, all my browsing, all my on-line purchasing ... all my internet activity is via TOR.
My first action is to log in to my VPN which not only allows me to choose from which country I am operating, it also encrypts everything to and from my computer. And I am still very careful about what information I release. I have one credit card for internet purchasing and every couple of months I 'lose' that card. One phone call and I have a new card with different numbers in hand, free of charge to me.
So far, so good as far as I am concerned. Thanks TOR.
I don't really believe that there is anything that the NSA can't and hasn't cracked. So expecting anything to protect me from government spying is not something I do.
As for credit cards, meh. The banks are on the hook for that. I take reasonable precautions like reasonably complex passwords and reconciling my statements but I don't worry too much. Debit cards, however are dangerous and should only be used in controlled circumstances.
Um... there is a "dark net". It is accessed via IP tunneling (VPN) over ports that some firewalls don't close by default, or via packet interception/transmission code on modified systems (catching a packet with a specially-constructed header and pulling it out of the network stack before sending it on to the designated port, or injecting a "legitimate" packet with a modified header directly into the output stream at L3 or L2).
Some "black hats" aren't script kiddies playing in their parents' basements. Some are damned good engineers... and they know every bit about what they're doing.
I'm sure Mr. Dingledine knows this, and he's using naive journalists (is there any other kind?) to hide the existence of the dark net.
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