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I use the Tor Browser to access the internet, but when I log into my Facebook account it has been locked and shows a security message from Facebook informing me that someone has tried to log into my account from Portugal. I am living in Sri Lanka.

What would be the issue? Did someone try to hack my Facebook account via Tor Browser?

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2 Answers 2

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You probably logged into your Facebook account over Tor.

Facebook sees you exiting the Tor network in Portugal, or what it thinks is Portugal and so it flagged up your own login attempt as suspicious.

In future you might consider using Facebook's own Onion Service at https://facebookcorewwwi.onion/.

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  • My PC is Windows 10 . But security alert says suspicious login attempt done by Windows 7 machine using Firefox browser. i Did not even try FB using Firefox
    – chaminda
    Commented Feb 28, 2018 at 8:20
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    Yes, that is normal. Since Tor Browser has a user-agent that is the same for all users, to Facebook a Tor Browser user will look like a Firefox user on Windows 7 no matter what platform they are really on. You can confirm this yourself by using Tor Browser to visit a site like ifconfig.me and checking the reported User-Agent, which will state that it is NT 6.1, which is Windows 7.
    – cacahuatl
    Commented Feb 28, 2018 at 8:21
  • @cacahuatl Yes, if they just use the user agent. Despite the developers’ efforts, there may be other ways of distinguishing platforms, such as available fonts (that source is out of date though; it is not clear what has happened since then).
    – Brian Drake
    Commented Mar 4, 2021 at 14:44
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What would be the issue?

Logically, there are three possible answers:

  1. Facebook incorrectly recorded your logins. This seems unlikely; I am not aware of any reports of this.
  2. Facebook detected one of your logins as coming from Portugal, despite you not being in Portugal. This was addressed by cacahuatl’s answer: the most likely answer is that you logged in via a Tor circuit that exited in Portugal. To follow up on the comments on that answer: Tor Browser tries to make all users look the same in every respect, not just disguise their IP address, so other information, such as the user agent, may also appear incorrect.
  3. Facebook detected (correctly or incorrectly) someone else’s login as coming from Portugal. This leads to the second part of your question, discussed below.

Did someone try to hack my Facebook account via Tor Browser?

Based on your question, it is possible that someone tried to “hack” your Facebook account, but there is no reason to suppose that they used Tor Browser to do so. But as I write this, you have already accepted cacahuatl’s answer; hopefully that means answer 2 above was the correct one.

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