[Roark]

So while watching the latest episode of Morgan Sperlock's Inside Man, on CNN of all places, I was surprised to learn about "the rest of the story", as far as what the internet is actually comprised of and how it works. TOR (The Onion Router) is freeware that allows people to chat, search, transact business, and generally communicate over the internet's Deep Web, which actually constitutes about 80 odd percent of the web that most of us typically never touch. The really cool part of this is that it allows you to maintain a level of anonymity and layered encryption that even the NSA admits it can't handle.

THIS is where we all need to be. Right now it is estimated that there are about 4 million users world wide, and because of its exclusive use of Bitcoin for mercantile transactions it has been targeted by law enforcement and national security agencies for hacking and monitoring, but so far they have supposedly been pretty well excluded. The FBI has tracked down some serious drug dealers and kiddy porn servers, but for the most part these scum were victims of their own hubris, greed, and character of the people that they choose to deal with. For normal law abiding citizens, where there is no call for the NSA to attempt breaking into your home to hack your physical terminal, we've nothing to fear. Personal privacy restored! Halleluiah, NSA's PRISM defeat. At least that's what it looks like from here.

All new news to me, and I am by no means a tech guy, but ya better believe I'm going to run this by everyone that I know for vetting just as soon as I possibly can. The Wiki is interesting in its own right, and the television episode was good as well. Just thought that this was probably old news here, but when I searched here for "TOR" I got bupkiss, much to my surprise.

So what say yee? Take a look and share what ya know and/or think. This looks very interesting.:thumb:
... and did I mention it's all free?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)

https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html

 

[America's Patriot]

There have been several posts about it. In all honesty, as an IT professional, normal users don' need to and shouldn't use TOR.

BTW, you do realize that the NSA has a campaign against it right? It's just going to put people on another list they don't want to be on and the potential for trouble later.

 

[Optimist]

It's a valuable tool for some specific tasks, Roark, but it's not a good general purpose gadget for browsing. Too many sites (including this one) don't work well with onion routers, and will not allow trouble-free access. And sites that weren't a problem six months ago have developed access problems in the recent past.

 

[Unbelievable]

the main reason i use TOR is to watch videos on youtube that are blocked in the US....


i was able to watch the whole "CITIZENFOUR" movie through my tor browser on youtube... its blocked in the US and thanks to the TOR browser, youtube believed i was in switzerland so i was allowed access to watch that GREAT documentary about the NSA....and a small glimpse into how it all started

 

[Roark]

Kinda weird isn't it that the TOR project receives the bulk of its funding from our own State Department. The supposed reason being that they see it as an important path for foreign dissidents to be able to safely communicate and get their message out... you know, part of that whole freedom and democracy thing that we're always sending our best and brightest off to get killed spreading... or is it defending, I can't keep up. Whatever the case, wouldn't that be ironic, that it's okay for foreign dissidents but if we use it we get pushed to the top of a "No Fly" or "Requires Close Scrutiny" list of some sort. The truth is they probably only maintain it for the CIA's use and enjoyment, and so Congressmen can download torrents of porn.

The NSA already has you on a list if you've ever written an email or a post that uses the word freedom, Constitution, or truth, so who cares if they have another reason to sneak into my house while I sleep? That kind of thinking smells just like the bit about why we aren't supposed to mind the NSA spying on us on-line or by flying drones past your bedroom window; if you're not doing anything wrong you've got nothing to hide and no reason to complain.

That is straight up insane.

I did search first though and found not one single result for TOR. Maybe it's just me?

 

[hawk55732]

Roark, the search engine doesn't work for three letter words.

I'm in tapatalk, so I don't know how many pages it would be on a browser but if you go back to jan 15th on this subforum, there is a post on TOR.

 

[Roark]

There have been several posts about it. In all honesty, as an IT professional, normal users don' need to and shouldn't use TOR.

BTW, you do realize that the NSA has a campaign against it right? It's just going to put people on another list they don't want to be on and the potential for trouble later.

Other than your cautions about instigating my own government into harassing me, why shouldn't we all be using the heaviest encryption we desire. I'd like to turn it around on the NSA here... if they truly aren't spying on innocent citizens, then why in the world do they care what kind of encryption we use. Sounds like their PRISM denials are all a load of hot steaming crap if ya ask me. And no, I don't EVEN begin to buy any of this bull about protecting me from terror. Sorry... I looked under the bed a long time ago.

They have no legal reason or acceptable excuse to lie to us, but that's all that they do, so my stuff needs to be protected from the liar liar pants on fire bunch.

 

[Roark]

Roark, the search engine doesn't work for three letter words.

I'm in tapatalk, so I don't know how many pages it would be on a browser but if you go back to jan 15th on this subforum, there is a post on TOR.

ahhhsoo
Thanks. I did not know that. I will be headed there momentarily. :thumb:

 

[Roark]

Thanks Hawk. No point in gilding the lily, or would that be beating a dead horse? I'll take my business elsewhere to get some edgakatin'. Seriously, thanks again.

 

[escape]

I mostly use a VPN, but sometimes have used TOR.

 

[maintenanceguy]

All someone has to do to track you when you're using TOR is to own a significant number of the TOR nodes that you hop through.

I bet there's an arms race between nations to see who can own the most TOR nodes. If they cooperate and share data, you might as well just put your information on a billboard.

In the early years of the internet there were "anonymizers". These were websites where you could type in an email message and the website would send the email on to your recipient without them knowing the message came from you. The IP for several of these sites was the same as several sites owned by the FBI.

 

[KaBar67]

Just to correct; there is no "list". We are under tel/mail/internet surveillance all the time. Young people are well aware at what our generation had done to their America and are pushing back as they can.

We are the most spied upon people in the history of mankind. The nazi's, the communists, had no such equivalent even at the height of their power.

Of course, the criminals easily avoid this multi billion dollar program, but the honest folks live in fear.

 

[BingoFuelUSN]

I have used TOR only to get a sense of the environment and potential value. I haven't gone looking for any of the '80% dark matter' on there and don't plan to. I keep my TOR browser open most times but rarely use it.
It is interesting that TOR was started by my/our USN to create a safe network overlay on which to communicate important information. Like the good and free country that we are, they made it open to other users as well, in part to legitimatize it and to debug it. It wasn't expected that it would become such a dark place, although I think that is overstated. So far I believe that the NSA and other organizations find it 'challenging' but I doubt it will remain as secure from those types of folks as its been in the past. But even if not, providing a non-searchable network that interferes with a lot of the privacy violating techniques dispatched by more average hackers and scammers is worthwhile.
But for those who are considering either using or switching, there is a combination of limitations and 'good user behavior' that are important parts of the environment. Limits to downloading certain file formats, pointers to other files and URL's, web execution of certain interpreted code are all parts of the implicit and explicit limits of TOR. And most will find the performance to be a bit frustrating as all of the network/web content gets disassembled, separately routed, received and reassembled in another location. It is that process, along with encrypting the info that helps to define TOR.
B

 

[Roark]

Had some time to mull this over, as well as to read up on the previous TOR threads, and I think I have a starting point. EVERYBODY should start encrypting everything. Every stupid ass cat picture, every "Hey Mom" email, every weather update, cake recipe, and bad joke. I don't know entropy from tripe, but I'm guessing there's a limit to just how many terra-flops of computing power the data farm can muster. If there's four million sometime users how about what happens when 40 million start encrypting every damn thing? Maybe after filling Utah with data storage just to decode and house copies of every encrypted RSS feed and *****ian check scam they'll just spontaneously combust?

Here's the thing. If the NSA and whatever idiot that happens to be POTUS at the time are honestly not spying on Americans (what they claim), then it shouldn't matter one wit what kind of encryption or protections we decide to use. If they slime by with this ridiculous "if you're not doing anything wrong then you've no reason to complain about being spied on", then we can certainly turn the tables and demand that they explain why we can't encrypt the crap out of everything. Supposedly their authority was expressly limited to FOREIGN traffic, not domestic, but everyone seems to loose sight of that little factoid. Especially our gov't. They're not allowed to look, so what does it matter how we wrap it?

I'm not a tech geek but I'm thinking I want to install the TOS, Tails OS on a USB drive and access that from a Windows laptop through a VM. Then I want to encrypt everything I search, read, or write after saving it as a screen shot jpeg. My thought is that even decrypted, it won't make any sense unless you physically open each one and literally read each picture. Not sure if that would actually work, and I don't have anything nefarious in mind. I just want to make them waste as much of these misapplied resources as I personally and possibly can. Call it passive aggressive civil disobedience.

Other than that, maybe I should consider moving to Russia? They seem to be enjoying all kinds of freedoms now. Corrupt, crazy, war mongering gov't and no jobs but hey... it'll be like I never left home.

 

[Optimist]

Some of us have been using PGP for a long, long time, Roark.

 

[Roark]

No doubt. Had been into other "tunneling" proxies, not TOR. My subsequent flawed, three letter search here kinda surprised me, and that's primarily what prompted the OP.

 

[Optimist]

You might find some kindred souls at TAILS.

 

[BJJ_Grappler]

There is nothing on the deep web that interests me.

 

[Optimist]

BJJ Grappler, you might feel different about it if you had kinfolks overseas.

 

[Roark]

You might find some kindred souls at TAILS.

There already.

There is nothing on the deep web that interests me.

It's not all drugs and ivory or whatever.

Consider that the really objectionable/dangerous part from our rulers' perspective is that it supports anonymous Bitcoin business. THAT scares the bagezzus out'a them 'cuz they depend on the Feral Reserve to keep giving them whatever they want for us to have to repay. The "free money" is used to buy votes that keep them in power ('cuz if they actually followed the Constitution and accounted for the money they spend they'd have to massively raise taxes continually, and that would end badly for them in short order). Any competing currency is a threat to their scam.

Bitcoin transactions are also fairly easily converted to cash and back again, so it is pretty simple to use (easier than trying to sub gold or silver), and best of all, the IRS gets nothing. No filings, reports, etc. Manager at my credit union told me a few years ago that the IRS or HLS or one of the ABC's had all of the banks working on a volunteer basis to report any and all large cash transactions, even if it was substantially less than the already well known $10k threshold. At the time I just wanted to send my kid about two grand to buy a book. She told me this 'cuz I'm always lecturing her and her tellers about their ignorance of the Feral Reserve system, and she has bothered to self educate (sad that she would have to really, but encouraging that she did). One of my kids was traveling abroad and happened upon a rare first edition book that I was interested in, so I wanted to send them the money without being forced to tell the gov't or anybody else wtf I was doing.

Wasn't anything nefarious involved, I just resent the hell out of being treated like some sort of scoundrel by an organization populated by slackers, bums and scoundrels, but I digress. Went to the Post Office to buy their money orders and the girl there (who I also proselytize Libertarianism to) warned me that she was expected to fill out a "Suspicious Activity Report" No crap. it's an actual gov't form with its own number and everything. I took care of it for her when she handed it to me to read and I tore it into little pieces. At first she wasn't sure that I was even allowed to see it?! So I finally paid cash for my $2,000 worth of money orders and managed to escape without being finger printed and DNA sampled. What a friggin' joke! The irony was that the book was a signed first edition from a very famous Libertarian economist. How unbelievably subversive an irony is that? All of this to read the ideas of a dead guy who believed in real hard currency. Most importantly, all of this reporting and attempts to manage or outlaw Bitcoin (which wouldn't even be of interest to anyone if we actually had a real currency) through legislation is all bull crap that is perpetuated to serve the owners of the Feral Reserve... not American citizens!

What a total load of crap!

I haven't used it, nor do I have a present need or desire to, but I certainly like knowing it's there and I want to know how to use it just in case...
It's a Prepper thing.

BJJ Grappler, you might feel different about it if you had kinfolks overseas.

Again... TOR is and was primarily funded by our own gov't. I would not be at all surprised if the CIA, et al, relied on Deep Web tremendously. I'm pretty sure that's why TOR was created in the first place.