Strength in Numbers: Usable Tools Don’t Need To Be Invasive

The upload of popcon results is not plaintext, it is encrypted with GPG. There is also work in progress to move to using HTTPS instead of HTTP (https://bugs.debian.org/880121) for the upload. One issue is that this creates a dependency on ca-certificates which a user may not want to have installed because they actually don't want to trust the CAs. An Onion service would solve this issue as the address is self-authenticating, but would require a dependency on tor.

Some things in Debian already use tor if it is available. One application is dirsrv from GnuPG which will fetch keys over Tor if a client is available. It would be cool to see popularity-contest do something similar.

If everyone installs tor to upload their popcon results but then doesn't use it again, this is a lot of clients that are trying to keep their consensus up-to-date but without actually using the network which would be another thing to consider.

Some suggestions from another Tor user:

If you have an older computer which runs M$ but want to use Tor, provided that your computer uses a 64 bit CPU and will boot from a DVD or USB drive, you can download (and verify) the Tails ISO and use that to burn a live DVD (see tails.boum.org). If your computer is a tablet which does not have a DVD R/W drive, provided that it has a USB port you can buy an external DVD R/W drive and use that to burn the DVD.

If you boot your computer using the DVD you can then use Tor Browser (Tails uses latest version available from www.torproject.org). You can store downloaded files on an encrypted data USB (you can make a LUKS encrypted volume on a USB using a simple utility which comes with Tails).

After booting your computer from the Tails DVD, you can create a bootable USB using a provided script you can create an encrypted "persistent volume" on the USB and store documents, and you can also install software from the Debian repositories and have it available the next time you boot from the USB. The USB is also easier and faster to update to the next Tails edition (if the USB update script fails, you can just repeat the process with the latest Tails ISO burned to a new DVD).

Tails comes with many useful utilities including libreoffice and anonymization tools, so you can use it to prepare anonymized documents or videos. It also comes with OnionShare and Pidgin with OTR, so you can share documents anonymously.

When you boot from the USB, you have the choice of mounting or not the encrypted volume (by providing the passphrase). For surfing it is safest not to mount it. Rather the idea is that you can mount the encrypted volume when you are working offline, for example preparing a document you intend to publish or share anonymously. When you are surfing with the persistent volume not mounted, you can store downloaded files on a separate data USB if your computer has a second USB port; when offline you can boot again with the encrypted volume enabled if you expect to use the item often.

I find that switching between on-line and offline Tails sessions and using encrypted data USB drives as an everyday activity is much easier than it might sound.

Tails is working an a "Tails server" which will apparently be separate from Tails as it presently is formulated. I believe the next edition will feature the much improved current version of OnionShare. In future more secure onion technologies will likely be introduced (unless USG outlaws encryption and/or Tor).

It would be wonderful if Tor Project could find funding to resurrect Tor Messenger or a new encrypted anonymous chat engine. The creation of Tor Browser was a major landmark in the development of the Tor community and I believe that the creation of a successful Messenger would have an even greater impact in terms of growing the Tor user community worldwide. While Sukhbir was frank in discussing thorny technical problems which prevented TM from getting out of beta, I worry that an undisclosed issue may have been that TP received an NSL with gag order requiring TP on pain of life in prison to put in a backdoor. That certainly could explain the very unfortunate demise of TM. EFF is involved in a lawsuit which might enable TP to safely divulge such an NSL, if EFF wins the case.

Extended support for Windows XP ended on April 8, 2014 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP) and extended support for Windows Vista ended on April 11, 2017 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista). Therefore, both no longer receives security updates from Microsoft. Using Tor in such system is like locking your window but keeping your door wide open, aka pointless.

Tor can't protect you if you're using a system that reached end-of-life years ago, doesn't get security updates any more and could be easily exploited. If you're using hardware that doesn't work with newer versions of Windows, you could get some lean Linux distribution aimed at legacy hardware.

FirefoxESR dropped support for XP and Vista. Therefore, many migrated to liveUSB and Linux. Many government institutions and schools around the world did for other reasons. Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Linux Mint (Xfce), elementary OS, Zorin OS Core (Lite or Education), Linux Lite, Ubuntu MATE -- take your pick. These are a handful of free or pay-what-you-want distributions based on Debian (good support) but designed for beginners or old hardware and run as a bootable liveUSB or liveDVD in RAM without touching your hard drive or SSD unless you tell it to install. "Search" on Distrowatch on the top right page header or scroll down the right side to see the popularity ranking.