Tor Browser Now Bypasses Internet Censorship Automatically

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: The Tor Project team has announced the release of Tor Browser 11.5, a major release that brings new features to help users fight censorship easier. [...] The updates in Tor Browser 11.5 focus on circumventing censorship, a process that started a year ago in version 10.5 with improving the Tor connection experience. In the new version, users no longer have to manually try out bridge configurations to unblock Tor.

Tor Browser version 11.5 comes with a new feature called "Connection Assist," which assigns automatically the bridge configuration known to work best for the user's location. "Connection Assist works by looking up and downloading an up-to-date list of country-specific options to try using your location (with your consent)," explains the release announcement. "It manages to do so without needing to connect to the Tor Network first by utilizing moat – the same domain-fronting tool that Tor Browser uses to request a bridge from torproject.org." Since Connection Assist is still in an early stage of development (v1.0), the Tor team welcomes user feedback and reports, which would help them iron out any kinks and improve on the system.

Another important new feature in version 11.5 is making 'HTTPS-Only Mode' the default browsing mode, so that the connection is through a secure tunnel. This ensures that all data exchange between the user and the server hosting the website will be encrypted, to defend against man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks and to protect users from SSL stripping on malicious exit relays. [...] The third significant improvement in Tor Browser 11.5 is a heavily revamped Network Settings menu, now called "Connection Settings," which should make it easier to find and understand specific settings. Most notably, bridge configuration and connection options have been redesigned to enable quick and easy review and management. Using emojis on the saved Bridges, the new interface offers visualization for the configuration for the first time, making it easy to identify the right bridge and select it when needed. You can download the latest Tor Browser from the official download portal.

No Republicans, not like that

[Powercntrl]

This browser won't do anything to prevent your social media posts from being taken down. It's not for bypassing that kind of censorship.

Now that you put it that way

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this an admission that someone else controls the political narrative?

Before anyone thinks they are anonymous

[LondoMollari]

It is important to point out that, for quite a while now, it has been known that major governments have become tor nodes in order to map and trace traffic. Not sure how safe people are getting around the great Chinese and Russian wallsâ¦

Re:

[test321]

Where one way to fix the problem is for as many good people as possible to run an exit node. Assuming I'm a good person ready to help freedom activists in dictatorial countries, should I run an exit node? I'd love to, but according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] 56,8% of onion can be classified as illicit (where illicit refers to traffics, hacking, some kinds of pornography, shady finance), while for obvious reasons it's not clear how many freedom journalists I would be helping. So I have mixed feeli

Re:

[test321]

According to the same source, Iran, Syria and Moldova are top places of use, potentially there are people there one would help. But there are also quite a lot in Italy, Israel, Spain, France, and those are possibly in traffics as they don't need much an anonymous access to news websites.

Re: Before anyone thinks they are anonymous

[oldnuskeet]

Spain? What the hell are you talking about donâ(TM)t even compare Spain to the rest.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

Where one way to fix the problem is for as many good people as possible to run an exit node. Assuming I'm a good person ready to help freedom activists in dictatorial countries, should I run an exit node? I'd love to, but according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ [wikipedia.org]... 56,8% of onion can be classified as illicit (where illicit refers to traffics, hacking, some kinds of pornography, shady finance), while for obvious reasons it's not clear how many freedom journalists I would be helping. So I have mixed feelin

No need to exit when there's good stuff inside

[virtig01]

Assuming I'm a good person ready to help freedom activists in dictatorial countries, should I run an exit node?

You could, but another way to help is to make more and better onion services [torproject.org]. This eliminates the need for running an exit node (and the annoyances that come with it) since users access onion services without exiting the onion network. Examples include BBC News [bbc.com], ProtonMail [proton.me], and ProPublica [propublica.org].

Running a relay also helps by expand the network, even if you don't host an onion service.

Re: No need to exit when there's good stuff inside

[Plugh]

I run a stand-alone Snowflake Proxy on a high bandwidth VPS. IMO this gives the most censorship resistance to those who are most censored (China) https://snowflake.torproject.o... [torproject.org]

Re:

[willkane]

Tor is such an anonymous service that you can even know who is using it and how is being used for.

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

> So I have mixed feelings.

What do you think of the ethics of running an ISP that let's just anybody get Internet? Even Very Bad People that use it to plan atrocities?

The ethics are quite similar.

Re:

[test321]

What do you think of the ethics of running an ISP that let's just anybody get Internet? Even Very Bad People that use it to plan atrocities? The ethics are quite similar.

Car analogy: A. It's ok to be taxi driver even though some customers might be criminals; I would collaborate with police when asked about a fugitive and where they asked to go. B. However I would have a moral concern running a taxi cab designed so I can never the face of customers nor keep any logs or memory of the destinations, and knowing that I drive in the area of the city where 56.8% of the local addresses are known drug houses (that the police can never manage to stop thanks in part to efficient taxi

Re:

[Deal In One]

If alot of governments are running tor nodes, wouldn't that imply that the governments have to cooperate for them to get a fuller picture of the tor traffic?

Maybe some of the governments may cooperate, but I don't see all of them doing so. So each government may get a partial picture but not able to recreate everything needed to match someone and their activities.

I could be wrong if a single government has a big chunk of the total tor nodes.

Automated Malicious Host Injection?

[pimpsoftcom]

I'm sure a lot of treat actors are going to be running nodes with the express intent of farming data.

Old saying

[Malays2 bowman]

The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

Tor might be safer but VPN is faster

[DavidRedford]

Since I don't think that Tor fully protects the privacy of users, I prefer to use VPN, which is faster. Some VPNs like NordVPN [nordvpn.com] are very fast. However, I preferer to create my own VPN using a cheap VPS [cloudzy.com].