55
The blog post is still accurate. Please don't do it.
Sending your BitTorrent traffic through the Tor network would overload it even more. It isn't designed to handle such things -- the Tor network has much less capacity than it has users wanting to use it. And since it's zero-sum, every person trying to BitTorrent over Tor means many more people in Syria ...
32
In this case, Google is not interested in the fact that you are using Tor. Google runs some analysis on search queries and they sometimes produce this result.
The background is that Google has to deal with all sorts of abuse; for example, some people send lots of queries in a short timespan to overload the servers. Google checks for this and presents the ...
22
There are several anonymity concerns when you use your main machine for communication. Running a separate secured OS will give you advantages when you use other software with Tor than just the Firefox in the Tor Browser Bundle which is considerably secured. The separate secured OS can also help you against possible information leak vulnerabilities in Firefox....
21
As others have said, this is something you shouldn't do. However, for the purpose of actually answering the second part of your question, you can do it fairly easily. In your Torrent client's configuration screen, look for a section called "proxy" or "network connection" etc. and set it up like the following example (using Deluge here):
The important part ...
21
Browsing different websites
At the moment, it is not advisable to browse two different websites at the same time when you don't want your activity to be linked. The Tor client can't tell which tab/window you are using for each request so might send requests for both sites over the same circuit. The exit node operator could then spot the correspondence.
...
17
Although Tor is made to handle any TCP traffic, the majority of applications are not designed with anonymity and/or privacy in mind. Thus, torifying an application can be tricky. You have to make sure that there is no leak i.e connections routed outside the Tor circuit. A pretty usual example is DNS leaks.
If you want to use other applications apart from a ...
17
So, does Google already know that I am using the Tor Browser?
Google (and any other website) has the ability to know that you are a Tor user because the list of Tor exit relays is public.
Google (and any other website) has the ability to know that you are using Tor Browser because of it's browser fingerprint.
Should I do something at my end.
No. Nothing ...
15
It is easy for any website owner to know you are using Tor because the list of Tor exit nodes is publicly available. Google has said they are not specifically targeting Tor users by making them solve captchas. Rather it is because each exit node sends so much traffic to Google that the traffic patterns seem similar to those of a bot, which would also send a ...
13
Some advantages and some concerns to point out, partly in reference to pabouk's answer:
Good Stuff
When you run a Tor VM, chances are high that the VM software is based on some operating system other than Windows. Because Windows still has a huge market share, most publicly-known software vulnerabilities target Windows, and most man-hours spent researching ...
13
No. Or at least, there aren't supposed to be any ways for the interaction to hurt your anonymity. If you find any, please let us know!
That said (and because there are always exceptions), check out the paper "Website Detection Using Remote Traffic Analysis" from PETS 2012.
If your non-Tor traffic is interacting with the adversary (which might be more ...
13
I believe that all of your questions can be answered by explaining the underlying threat when running any relay on the same Tor as a hidden service:
Relays publish bandwidth information about their usage and availability to enable the Tor network to efficiently route traffic and provide bandwidth where it is needed. Given that I see bandwidth information ...
12
As Roger Dingledine wrote, please do not do it.
He also described good alternatives.
Basically some torrent clients allow to communicate over a socks proxy so they can be redirected to a Tor client acting as a socks proxy. In fact in many cases there could be a lot of information leakage as described in this paper: Compromising Tor Anonymity
Exploiting P2P ...
12
Your question is quite hard to answer, because as far as I know the special capabilities of the agencies in this field are yet unknown.
However you can first look into Tor's design document. Section 3.1 states:
A global passive adversary is the most commonly assumed threat when analyzing theoretical anonymity designs. But like all practical low-latency ...
11
As Roger and pabouk have said, just don't do it. It would hog too much of Tor's bandwidth, and probably for something that doesn't require that much anonymity. Just use a VPN, or (if it really matters) two or three chained/nested VPNs. It's easy to chain two VPNs with just one Linux VM (one in the host, and another in the VM). With good ISP speeds and good ...
10
Tor can handle all TCP-based connections. This is browsing, email, chats and others. The wiki has a howto for torifying applications. This explains how you set up software so that it works with Tor.
In general you should not use BitTorrent with Tor. Because on the one side it puts a high load on the Tor relays and the network will slow down for all users. ...
10
It's prudent to use open-source software, given the greater risk of backdoors in closed-source products. You want to thoroughly lock down remote access to the server. In my experience, servers are constantly hammered by login attempts. It's crucial to disable password-based ssh logins, allowing only key-based logins.
I've also seen thttpd recommended for ...
9
If you want to do this you should really try I2P. It comes with Bittorrent built in and I2P has many similarities with Tor.
https://geti2p.net/
9
Nodes in circuits are chosen randomly. (Selection is weighted by a way-too-complex function of capacity, roles, etc, but it's still a random selection.)
Sometimes, two random choices will actually be the same, just like sometimes a coin toss will indeed be heads-up twice in a row.
That means that every once in a while a new circuit will exit from the same ...
answered Oct 1 '13 at 19:27
weasel - Peter Palfrader
5,1081 gold badge19 silver badges37 bronze badges
8
In addition to Jens' answer, from the front page of Tor project website:
For most uses, Tor provides the best available protection against a
well-resourced observer. It's an open question how much protection Tor
(or any other existing anonymous communications tool) provides against
the NSA's large-scale Internet surveillance. On its own, Tor can't
...
8
Tor normally tends to prefer fast relays anyways, so I wouldn't worry about that. The following settings from the Tor Manual can speed things up a bit when tweaked:
ExcludeSingleHopRelays 0|1
This option controls whether circuits built by Tor will include relays
with the AllowSingleHopExits flag set to true. If
ExcludeSingleHopRelays is set to 0, ...
8
Maybe think of it as a defense in depth idea. If you only have two hops, and your adversary owns or watched your exit node, they immediately know which other node to compromise to get you.
That single node is a particularly high-value target since you'll be using your guard node for a while, so maybe it's worth investing some resources to be able to watch ...
answered Oct 13 '13 at 7:02
weasel - Peter Palfrader
5,1081 gold badge19 silver badges37 bronze badges
8
I'm the maintainer of HTTPS Everywhere, which includes SSL Observatory (off by default though). I'm not sure where the other commenter got the idea that we're sending anything to Google; we don't.
When you enable SSL Observatory, we POST a copy of the certificate chain you saw to an EFF server, along with the time, server domain, and server IP address. We ...
8
Being ignorant about whenever the question is about Tor itself or Tor Browser Bundle, by answering both versions.
Tor
Tor itself does not store any application level data, like browsing history.
TorBrowser
It shouldn't unless you configure it to do so.
Quoting from the Design Document of the TorBrowser.
Here is what's one of the goals of TorBrowser.
The ...
8
If you use your ISP's default DNS servers then it's practically guaranteed that they'll know you've been on the Tor website. If you make a connection to the Tor website that just happens to download the exact same amount of data as the Tor Browser Bundle then it's possible for them to tie the two together.
If you're in a region where they're likely to care ...
8
In regard to the server requirements, there are a few important differences between a hidden FTP service and a regular FTP service. Also, you should check your ftp server software to make sure it doesn't leak your IP address.
Force the client to use passive mode, not active/port mode. In passive mode the client initiates both the control and the data ...
8
When running an exit node, it is highly recommended to make it as clear as possible that it is an exit node. This helps the operator deal with DMCA notifications and abuse reports and the like.
Further more, it is impossible for any relay, exit or non-exit, to hide the fact that they are a relay. The list of all relays and their flags is publicly available....
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