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I like not having to "Right Click File -> Save As..." images and files and instead usually drag them from the browser page to my desktop. Does this mean I am circumventing Tor security / anonymity or does that save go through Tor?

Thank you,

Sandy

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The download still goes through Tor.

Keep in mind that many of the warnings regarding downloading files with Tor and opening them in another program are associated with what that program will do. For example, if you download an mp3 file through Tor and open it in a music player, will it fetch metadata like song title, artist, etc. from the Internet without Tor? Can that somehow be linked back to you? What if you download an image that is somehow crafted to exploit a vulnerability in the popular image viewer you use?

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  • I've looked around, but couldn't find anything definitive. Where does the responsibility for downloading on drag-and-drop lie: on the operating system or Tor Browser? If it's the latter, then you're 100% correct, and I'm fairly sure it is, but a source for this would bring some peace of mind.
    – ndm13
    Dec 2, 2017 at 4:34
  • @ndm13 If nothing else, you could try dragging an image from a .onion. If you aren't doing fancy whole-system transparent proxying (like on Tails or Whonix), then Tor Browser should be the only thing on your computer capable of downloading the image.
    – pastly
    Dec 2, 2017 at 13:23
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    I (actually @canonizingironize) was able to verify that Tor Browser performs the download when dragging an image from TB to the desktop. He tested this by dragging an image from an onion service on a system that doesn't do transparent torification. Thus the download must have happened over Tor in Tor Browser.
    – pastly
    Dec 8, 2017 at 15:53

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