Tor Project Sees Decline in Server Numbers, Will Offer Rewards for New Bridge Operators (therecord.media) 33
The Tor Project said this week that it has seen a drop in the number of Tor relays and bridge servers and is now offering various rewards to users who help bring the number back up. From a report: Rewards include the likes of hoodies, t-shirts, and stickers and are meant to provide some sort of meaningful gift to those who help keep the Tor anonymity network alive and resilient to censorship. More specifically, the rewards will be provided to those who run "Tor bridges," which serve as entry points into the Tor network for users located in countries that block access to Tor servers. "We currently have approximately 1,200 bridges, 900 of which support the obfs4 obfuscation protocol," said Gustavo Gus, Community Team Lead for the Tor Project. "Unfortunately, these numbers have been decreasing since the beginning of this year. It's not enough to have many bridges: eventually, all of them could find themselves in block lists. We therefore need a constant trickle of new bridges that aren't blocked anywhere yet," the Tor Project member said.
Of course there's decline (Score:5, Interesting)
Cloudflare is doing its damnedest to make TOR essentially unusable for accessing the ordinary internet, and the number of legit purely TOR services is pitifully low.
Yeah, TOR is dying because it's being actively killed by big data. Big data doesn't like anonymity. Expect TOR to disappear altogether at some point or other.
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What? You mean you're NOT Rosco P. Coltrane? Will the real person please post.
Re:Of course there's decline (Score:5, Informative)
I run a no-exit relay. Problem is that several financial institutions and several other web sites will even block IPs that run no-exit relays. And, it seems the company's customer service doesn't even know about it.
I remember when Capital One started blocking. I'd get a generic error message that there was an error with login. I debugged their login, and noticed the login request was returning 404. I call the bank customer service and they have no idea what is going on, and after several escalations they say something is wrong with my internet connection, and tell me to call my ISP and have them refresh my connection. I do this, and get a new IP, then I can login to the bank again for a short while, then I am unable to login again.
Then other web sites I was having issues logging in. After a while I made the connection that it was the TOR no-exit relay I was running. You'd think these login failures would be logged and customer service would be able to tell the customer that this is what is happening. I estimate that I wasted over three hours of my time and customer service's time at three different companies trying to figure out what was going on with failed logins, before I made the connection of what was really happening.
Now I use an automatic proxy switcher and run a Squid proxy on a free tier Google Cloud Compute Instance, and just use the proxy for those sites that block me.
Blocking when running TOR relays/proxies (Score:2)
Support Free-Speech! TOR reduces the chances of retaliation for exercising our right to free speech. Use it.
I run an exit and several relays plus use the snowflake RTC addon to help others connect. I have encountered the same blocking issues that you have.
Here's what I did.
$400 a year and tax-deductible in the USA.
(disclaimer: nothing to do with Calyx)
It is unlimited and unthrottled due to a previous agreement with the USA feds and Clearwire before Calyx got the bandwidth rights.
Calyx doesn't even have to k
Only asking for a friend, of course! (Score:2)
Surprised to see so little comment on this interesting topic, but this is a case of damned if you touch it. Even to admit that you know what Tor is basically constitutes a confession of having SOMETHING to hide.
But my (predictable) reaction is that "It's the economic model, stupid." However Tor is a special case because of the contagion effect already mentioned. What Tor actually needs is a way to separate the flow of money from the users who are motivated to use the system, and I frankly don't see any reso
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Expect TOR to disappear altogether at some point or other.
Probably should.. It's too easy to detect its use. We need something that blends in better with the noise
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There is a reason for that. TOR gets used a lot for password guessing and forum spamming. As usual, the idiots ruin a good thing for everyone else.
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Or perhaps CloudFlare is simply blocking abuse, most of which happen to come from TOR exit nodes for some reason. It's easy to tell - for every legitimate person trying to be anonymous, the
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"find themselves in block lists" (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, what a compelling argument to sign up to be a Tor relay. Gain instant visibility among organizations that are seeking to block you! Call attention to yourself! Be a part of transmitting legally dubious content anonymously!
To me, there is zero upside to signing up as a Tor relay and many many downsides, both in terms of bandwidth and any moral burden you'll encounter as you realize your connection might be used for drugs, arms deals or child porn traffic.
Re:"find themselves in block lists" (Score:4, Insightful)
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Ended up adding the tor exit list to my firewall because of brute force ssh attacks.
Uh Huh (Score:1)
Nothing I want to do more than aid drug traffickers, sex traffickers and pedophiles.
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Stop contributing to all public infrastructure then. It even helps political dissidents!
All the nodes are belong to them (Score:5, Insightful)
At this point most TOR nodes are probably run by law enforcement and nation states.
Is this problem crypto can solve? (Score:2)
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You prove that cryptocurrencies are a solution in search for a problem.
Yes, crypto does help here (Score:3)
One of TOR's main problems is that they rely on altruistic individuals to contribute resources to their network. Without an incentive, there's going to be a lack of nodes, and and the nodes you get are of varying quality. And hoodies probably aren't sufficient.
There are a few crypto-backed mixnets out there looking to improve on TOR. Lokinet [lokinet.org] is one such alternative. It runs on the Oxen network, which enforces QoS for participating nodes [docs.oxen.io]. Node operators are compensated with crypto for providing the service.
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The real problem is (Score:1)
they're not using blockchain.
Blockchain solves everything.
Fuck Tor (Score:1)
Fuck Tor. I trust my VPN provider more, and they also give me better service.
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The one in 2006? Applebaum? Link?
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Racism is more worth denouncing to them than child rape. Really says a lot about the kinds of people who work on the project.
Good, they deserve it for supporting censorship (Score:1)
No way I am going to contribute to The Tor Project ever since they started imposing an authoritarian, inquisitional Code of Conduct [torproject.org] on their developers. No thanks, I am not going to self-censor in order to satisfy their politically correct agenda. Neither am I going to snitch out my fellow contributors if they violate the CoC, something which is mandated by the CoC (see sections 5, 6).
Some excerpts from the Code of Conduct:
" The Commu
Re: Good, they deserve it for supporting censorsh (Score:2)
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Why be surprised? Leftists are literal fascists. They like authoriantarism. Have you read most slashdot comments? They are pro socialist pro fascists and anti democracy and anti free speech.
Trying for a "Big Lie" there? It takes a bit more skill than you have to make it work.
State College/Universities should run TOR Bridges (Score:3)
It would cost them negligible amounts. Would be good training and experience for both students, staff, teachers, researchers. There are tons and tons of state college/universities in countries with reasonable freedom laws.