We need your good Tor stories

by phobos | August 17, 2011

What do you use Tor for? Why do you need it? What has Tor done for you? We need your stories.

We have plenty of practice explaining how Tor works, from technical specifications, design documents, academic papers, and popular presentation. And of course, the code is all open-source.

But explaining why Tor is important is more of a challenge. We can speak in the abstract about the importance of free speech and privacy on the internet, but no abstract statement is quite so persuasive as a real-world example.

We know these examples are out there. We regularly hear from vulnerable populations and people who need to cope with surveillance. We are approached by people who need Tor to stay safe at work, whether they are going after criminals on behalf of their governments, or going after the criminals who run their governments, or just regular people trying to preserve their privacy.

But naturally, most of these stories are ones that we don't have permission to share. After all, it would hardly be in keeping with our pro-privacy beliefs to publish tech-support requests!

Similarly, because we don't gather sensitive data on our network, we cannot (as some networks do) publish regular reports on what kinds of uses we are seeing. (We do not collect this data because we believe that a privacy network should put privacy foremost, and that the best way to protect people's information is not to collect it in the first place.) This is fantastic when it comes to protecting users against advertisers, censors, miscellaneous snoops, and the secret police of authoritarian regimes. But it isn't working out so well when we are asked by donors and other potential allies who want to know what supporting Tor means in less technical terms.

Furthermore, we work on Tor because everybody has the right to their own voice. So while this is on the one hand a plea for information we can use to tell the world about the importance of what we're accomplishing (and try to get donations to do more of it), it's also a request born of the notion that nobody is more qualified to tell your own story than you are.

So, please send us your stories so we can share them with the world. If email works, you can send it to tor-assistants@torproject.org, subject line "Why I Use Tor". And of course, you can just post a comment here.

We won't use names, but if too many details can reveal who you are, please err on the side of caution. There is no point in responding to our request if it puts you in danger. That said: why do you use Tor? Whether you use it to look at cute cats or political blogs, we'd like to know. And since we designed Tor with privacy in mind, we can't know unless you tell us.

Thank you!

Comments

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August 17, 2011

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ROFLZ..
I imagine something like:
"tor safed my freedom!! No more 4chan fed! .onions has cp!"

I can't comment on this. I will say my failure to use Tor could get me killed. I put the blame directly on the United States and some of its citizens. The media and politicians fuel the fire. This has spread globally. People can't comprehend the danger of draconian legislation or persecution of minorities. They can't comprehend that you should not harm those who harm others. Doing so is revenge, uncivilized, and the exact opposite of justice. The bad people we see most often in the media being tried and convicted have been abused by society and are the real victims.These are the people who never had a chance to live a good life. Most of us are selfish assholes who could care less about our fellow man. We are unwilling to fund social programs for the sick or solve the real problems through compromise. We listen to people who claim to do good and are not impartial. These are people who seek revenge or seek political gain. Many just can't accept a new social order or society.

Jesus, come down off the cross, liberal sissy. Elaborate as to how YOU help your "fellow man," other that to say that others don't? I work hard as hell for what I earn, and for sure don't want it wasted on lifetime welfare recipients. Since you liberals all DEMAND cradle-to-grave bennies for them, then put your money, not mine, where your big, whiny mouths are.

Uh, "shouldn't harm those who harm others"?!?? WTF? Molester gets caught, he *SHOULD* be put down for the extreme harm that he's done and *WILL DO AGAIN* if society doesn't. That's Justice, plain and simple. Cutting hands off of thieves (like the towel-heads do) is revenge. Liberalism is a mental disorder that clouds the mental faculties from distinguishing between the two!

We know this fool is a liberal because he expresses across-the-board sympathy for convicted criminals as if they're all innocent. I worked as a corrections officer for many years and I know that this is NOT the case. Many of the scum inside where I worked were f*'ing child molesters.

Yes, the US govt has turned America into a police state and the lamestream media has aided and abetted them, providing disinformation, misinformation, non-information and fluff to keep the masses ignorant to the elites like Bilderberg. The elites want to destroy America for their damnable 'New World Order' global regime, and they're winning if the US economy is any indication. And THIS fool thinks we're not spending ENOUGH on welfare! Here's an idea: How about the govt return responsibility for welfare back to the churches and other charitable organizations, and END THE FED along with inflatable fiat money so we can return to an honest money system. THEN EVERYONE WILL BE WEALTHIER just by getting to keep the full value of their labor, and encourage savings.

Mr. liberal, you can take your New Social Order (NWO) and shove it! Everyone else, visit infowars.com for your news, join your local citizen militia, and take America back!

I'm sorry the overwhelming and unimaginable situations in our world that cause you to suffer and endure. I want you to hear that people still exist who care and work to help in many ways. These people often do not seek attention for different reasons, I know many who help at personal risk to themselves as do many who try to make difference in the world.

August 17, 2011

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I recently began to use Tor again (having quit a couple of years ago), because the United States government just passed a law requiring Internet service providers to store and provide a lot of intrusive information, including almost everything about your bank account. To compound this issue, I live and work on a university campus with its own ISP that happens to snitch every little BitTorrent "incident" to the media industries. Tor allows me to access my sensitive and undesirable accounts (like my bank, pornography, and Demonoid accounts) without the university logging the information and potentially letting it be against me some day.

How so? if what you download cant be connected to you then it IS anonymized. now, if you have several downloads and use tor and bittorrenbt that may deanonimize you, as a draconian hostile government might actually monitor all tor connections liink them wit torrent stats etc...

if you mean the client bittorrent is unsafe, I don\t know about it, but there are many others that have options to use tor.

anyways I use tor for my daily stuff, I have (almost) nothing to hide, but I have nothing to show!

August 17, 2011

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Even though I live in a nordic country I use Tor for writing blogs online. My views are not very popular among my peers and I could easily loose my job.
Freedom of expression is not guaranteed even in a democracy. It's something we have to work for every day. Tor helps to ensure we can speak our minds without fear.

August 17, 2011

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I don't use or particularly need Tor, at least not yet. But I run a relay node because I believe in being a "net positive", i.e. leaving the world a better place than I found it.

I used to run an exit node, but too many services began to block my static IP address, so I dropped back to just being a relay.

August 18, 2011

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Hi, I'm from China.
Some of you may know, we've got motherfucking GFW(Great Firewall of China) here. It blocked a few famous websites and people in China can't access these sites directly using their web browsers. The Chinese government do not want people in china to talk freely on websites that they can't control, such as twitter, facebook.
So some kind of network tool is needed to bypass the GFW and access the websites we want to use.
Some Blocked sites in china:
twitter.com
facebook.com
youtube.com
some services provided by Google,such as google+

Some forums are censored here, political issues will be censored, or deleted. Even worse, some people who made a post or sent emails concerning political topic was arrested and sentenced to several years in prison, for example: Hu Jia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hu_Jia_%28activist%29). So we need safe tools which are hard to be censored in China.

We've got some methods to do that. We use VPN, ssh tunnel, freegate, TOR and some other tools to get past GFW and send political sensitive topics on forums in China. For me, I like TOR more. Two reasons why I use tor more than other tools:
1. It's free, you need to pay some money for VPN and SSH accounts.
2. It's safer, it can protect my anonymity on internet, so I won't care about being arrest just because I've talk about polical topics.

At last, thanks to all developers, testers of TOR and people who provide their computers and network resource to build a TOR relay or bridge.

It would be a beautiful thing if the Chinese people could use the free internet to promote freedom. Maybe put an end to communist rule so they can really be free. People won't know how many of their countrymen feel as they do unless they can talk about it, and they can't do anything about it until they know how many of their countrymen share their views. The free exchange of ideas is essential to throwing off tyranny, however slow that process may be.

August 18, 2011

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I live in a very small and remote community. A company owns the community and lets the residents share internet via their satellite system.

The only problem with this scenario is that the manager likes to follow us around on the net. He has a record of computer names and mac addresses and who owns them. Mac address filtering is used for access and he can and has deleted mac addresses of those he deems to be abusing the system.

I have used Tor for years to thwart him. He has even deleted my mac address on occasion.

I have resorted to cloning his personal mac address and computer name. Delete that sucker!

Thankyou Tor for giving me some degree of privacy.

August 18, 2011

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As a net activist I use and recommend Tor several times a week. It is a crucial and easily installed tool that can be used to circumvent censorship and avoid detection. And it runs on windows, the operating system that most people use (even though it sucks concerning privacy).

As a Linux user I have set up .onion sites, and I use torify on applications very smoothly. Sometimes just to get around a filtered network connection, sometimes to access and send information that is too sensible for a plaintext network.

Tor, along with the smaller but equally interesting I2P-project, have defined how anonymity and distributed networks do work, and can work in the future.

Big ups to everyone making Tor work!

/chrisk

August 18, 2011

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I have a question on Tor's security network with encrypted data transter. It is said that Tor is extremely slow. But in my case Tor works too fast. When I log onto Facebook or any other IP Checker sites, it shows the masked IP. Since my speed in Tor is quite fast, I have a doubt on some sort of technical snag which may be sending my traffic and complaints against the ills of society without encryption. Is there guarantee that it routes all traffic through atleast 3 nodes?

George D'Costa

Yes, you can see which relays you're using with the network map in Vidalia. As long as you're using a Firefox browser that has been configured with Torbutton and check.torproject.org says you're using Tor, you're all good.

Update from my side:
I wish to know something on mixing Tor relays with those of JAP/JonDo (JonDonym). We face two situations:
When we configure TOR through JAP and
when we configure JAP through Tor.

I think it is better for secure/double anonymity. In the method TOR TO JAP (i.e. OUR ISP ---> 3 NODES OF TOR --> 2 NODES OF JAP'S NODES --> internet.

This method works well to access websites or to submit comments, but it is not possible tto log into any website/facebook, perhaps due to double encryption.

I have yet to try another method, JAP TO TOR, i.e.
OUR ISP --> 2 NODES OF JAP --> 3 nodes of TOR --> internet.

Can someone guide me if it will be all more secure or not.
GEORGE D'COSTA

August 18, 2011

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well, I'm confused, since you switched to tor-browser-bundle only...

If I unzip the archive I don't know, which version of TBB I'm running - and don't getting noticed if I have to upgrade.

I have a local tor-instance running for chat and irc - it's a hassle to rewrite the configs of TBB to use other ports and don't check for other tor-processes running on my machine...

It's confusing and not as trustworthy as before. Tor does not support the modern browser-versions of firefox with torbutton anymore - I have to live with an outdated fork with limited abilities.

Before, I'd have written a positive story - but since your switch to a 'portable-app-only' I'm disappointed and confused what this fork does.

Help me understand this situation. We haven't switched to TBB only. All of the packages are still on the download page. At some point in the future, we may simply offer TBB, an expert tor-only package, and the source code.

You appear to have a custom configuration and the skills to change everything around. The TBB is a portable bundle of Vidalia plus Tor. And we ship a browser with torbutton in it. Tor inside TBB runs on port 9050, just like before. Vidalia talks to Tor on port 9051, just like before. There is nothing radically different.

Firefox is releasing versions faster than we have the ability to review the source code changes and adapt. There is exactly one person working on torbutton. He could use the help.

Sorry Tor doesn't work for you any more. Good luck with whatever you find as a replacement.

August 19, 2011

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I'm using TOR to all me to expose criminal activity at my company without being identified in any way. Without absolute confidence that I would be completely anonymous I would not be able/willing to do this, so, this lets me out the criminal executives and related persons w/o exposing myself to possible retaliation or more.

And being anonymous for this works because one I tweet or post various facts they can then be independently checked and verified, eventually by some 'arm of the law' and it won't matter who initially leaked it.

August 19, 2011

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Thank Tor Berlin Wall and the world did not fight, but has become increasingly difficult to address where I see the outside world, the government blocked foreign friends and I in the normal contact know, cross-border telecommunications costs between the average person is not affordable. hope to upgrade the look of your open source project, the bridge can no longer communicate properly in China, if you can!:) ~[By:Google translate]

August 20, 2011

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I run a blog on a hidden server.
there I share my thoughts on various subjects,
security,hacking, bitcoin, piracy, censorship and so on.

The things I write about is not something I want on the clear web.
This is because I can be easily identified.
Not all around me knows what I'm doing, and none knows that it's me who runs this site.

I also use it because some laws that enables them to log all activity.
So all my computers are on a secure VPN service + tor.
Great way for me to give the government the finger.

August 20, 2011

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Megaupload.com
TinyURL.com
Bitjunkie.org
Some YouTube.com videos that cant be viewed in some countrys
And mixed sites that are blocked for no reason

August 20, 2011

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Hello world, greetings Tor and Tails programmers :-)

I have been using Tor with linux for a couple of years but the last to months i'm running Tails either native or from Vbox (not so safe because of win7) +never on VMware (it's crap and no open source).
I really like tors anonymity. Using it for login to fb, mail, uploading videos on the bigest spy of the world Google and because i dont want my provider know personal details, net activitiy and whats with my personal netlife.
I will keep using Tails forever. A big thanks to all people who are programming testing and making Tor a reality to users around the world, especialy in depressed countries.

August 20, 2011

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My Tor story is that I as Joe Average been able to use the Internet
to learn and communicate without the fear of having my online history
misinterpreted or misconstrued by people who like to further their own
twisted agenda.

From the moment a Joe Average is looking to participate in politics
there are less scrupelous people who are using whatever at hand to
secure their position of influence.

Snooping mail-, phone- and library records and recording private
communications have often been used by powerful groups in all modern
societies regardless of their boilerplate.

Tor makes it more difficult to abuse these powers for controlling
people and information on the Internet.

August 23, 2011

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I use Tor because there's only one ISP where I live and they have a bad reputation for snooping and I don't like the idea of anyone having a list of every website I visit, especially when I like to frequent forums for fiction writers that often send my inquiring mind off googling random and slightly suspicious things like how long it would take a decent graverobber to dig up a body.

August 27, 2011

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I am an Internet user who cares about personal privacy. Today, privacy on the Internet is something which is slowly being eroded into non-existence. Behavioral profiling by advertisers, and mandated data retention laws (among other things) are a hot trend. I use Tor to protect myself against these abuses of trust.

August 28, 2011

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Showing the emperror has no clothes can be hazardous in the world of respectable photography in a former communist country. Although a lot has changed in the last two decades or so, half the players are the same as before. My writings are mostly my thoughts and my take on public events with a touch of less known facts. Given the context, I believe the moment my identity is revealed I should start looking for something else to do in order to pay the bills.

***

A few years before the Tor project was initiated, a friend, than a socilology student, started on a bold enterprise: to get a glimpse into the newly founded world of online dating and marriage. She used the local and national websites and created an account on each. The profiles were tempting and declared openness to the unknwon without being sexual. The paper soon changed subject to male aggresivity in the virtual world.

All conversations were made public on a blog along with the declared profile information of the men. The blog got some attention which lead to most of them declaring the discussions were a fake and some threatened to go before a judge. Some even started harrasing her so the project was dropped. If Tor would have been an option than I think the final paper would have been an interesting read.

***

Thanks to tor a journalist I know can soon start to make public and publish his investigation into the world of far right christians. Given these groups have a history of litigation and are good market for lawyers when it comes to religious rights or perceived libel he risks high damages and even prison time if his identity is discovered. For a while he was one of them so he also might face assault and property damage like others before him.

***

Because of Tor a young doctor can start writing about things witnessed from his first year of intership. She can start making public the mafia in the health system, especially some of the family relations in some of the Faculties of Medecine. The facts are there and all interns face them on a daily basis so her identity is somehow protected. If exposed she is risking her medical licence.

September 04, 2011

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I use Tor because my isp has misused my misplaced trust i should never have had in the first place. This isp singed a treaty for web filtering. To think they could see my every activity until then makes me hate them. My fucking government is just as dumb. My? They don't belong to me and i don't approve of them to say the least.

Tor lets me see their moves so i can react correctly. To hell with them, they seize Tor-servers because they think they have the ip then they have the person they are looking for. To rob Tor-servers is to rob freedom of speech and they are robbing freedom in general where they can. May they burn in hell forever.

September 29, 2011

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I use Tor to assist others in "iffy" circumstances. My own on-line activities, while not subversive, betray a mind willing to consider all the facts before arriving at my own conclusions. This, I believe, is not acceptable in some quarters.

A right undefended becomes a privilege to be withdrawn at the granters whim. Hard-won rights, once lost, usually require the shedding of much blood to regain. The right to privacy is one right that can be successfully defended simply by exerting it. Exerting it is the less-violent road. Not non-violent, because the opposition will not forever permit that, but less-violent.

I use Tor because I believe that I have a right to privacy of thought that exceeds the perceived rights of others to know what those thoughts are. Tor is one of several technologies / steps that I use in defending that right.

I use Tor because I still can ... and using Tor is one of the ways to retain that option in an increasingly totalitarian world.

Frankly, I am tickled to see that thousands of others are choosing to relay Tor, too. The more servers there are, the more routes there are available and the harder it becomes to compromise any particular one and compile worthwhile data on any individual or group. There is safety in numbers ... and the greater the size of the group, the greater the safety for each individual.

Now, if we could just get PGP / GPG off the ground and into common use!

October 09, 2011

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I have some questions, i`m new in Tor.. and yes, i know this is not a forum to this kind of questions but i cant find the answers looking by myself.. so here it goes:
Does downloads uncovers me?

i'm using firefox + foxyproxy + "Tor toolbar" (in checktorproject.org it`s says that i`m in) but abou dns.. once and for all, does it leaks by any means??

E-mails, where can i find secure ones to use and logg in forums etc..?

How do i search the web for information that, let`s say, i would not be able to find on a standard google search? Im talking about alternative blogs, discussions, info...

About instant messenges i find the pidgin and it seems that i have configured it right...

(An anticipated thank you very much for any good person with any good answer)

And finally i`m usig Tor because i don`t want to have my thoughts, habits and anything else that may give any information about myself to any third party personal from anyplace on the universe!!! Im tired to see everything that i do or think having the HUGE possibility to be analayzed and used in one or either way!
If someone wants to know something about me, my habitis or anything that is MINE, first of all, they should ASK ME FIRST, and i (WE) should have the right to decided if i (WE) give any information, answer or the finger!

Thank you.

October 30, 2011

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Several websites as forums blocked my IP because of a virus on my computer which was sending span and with TOR, I can go on those websites without being blocked.

October 30, 2011

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I started noticing that I was under surveillance when I noticed anticipatory actions being taken based on what I was doing online.

100% of job searches are done online nowadays, you can effectively blacklist an employee nationally by monitoring their internet traffic. If corporate or government entity wanted to take things further, they could utilize this surveillance to block you from getting multiple offers that could push wages up. If you do this to multiple employees, you can increase your profits substantially at your expense!!!

I lived in company towns and cities and have experienced accidents that were intentionally done at slow speeds.

You can even interfere with their activities on dating websites, a date could approach you based on the website monitored, and perform infiltration type activities to obtain information.

I haven't determine if TOR has been effective at blocking their surveillance, I will know very soon.

November 12, 2011

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As an activist for transgender rights I'm frequently contacted by trans people globally.
In particular, for some reason my name has become known among trans people in the middle east and south asia.
I frequently encourage my contacts to use tor to protect themselves.

December 04, 2011

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After reading these mine is kinda weak :P but I work at Office Depot and while I completely understand why they block what they do I do not understand why I, as one of the few techs there, have to deal with this on our machines. Everyday I receive between 30-60 questions from people who most of the time don't know enough to even explain their question properly and i'm blocked off of the internet around answer number 15 or 20. From there its such a hassle trying to find a computer in the store that will let me access google or anything to answer the question. Other times people bring their pc/laptop in for repair and even though we aren't allowed to do much at the store (they have us connect them online and some other company remote desktops in to do most work because they don't want any liability from mistakes) I do like to try and fix it before we have to use that route to save people money and time. But most of the time I end up needing to download something that I can't because of websense. So ty Tor for helping me provide better customer service, which OD says its all about, and save people money by allowing me to do my job.

December 30, 2011

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There may be a new bill that may pass soon that will make it so the government can block websites like how they can do in china, if this bill passes Tor is going to be the app that saves me ass, i hope it doesn't though as tor is slow from time to time, but its still amazing software.

January 09, 2012

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I am a citizen militia commander in the United States. Netizens keeping track of civil liberty issues in the USA are well aware that there is a huge disconnect between what the media says about individual liberty in America versus what the government here is actually doing. The US federal government, and many state governments, are dismantling the freedoms that too many Americans still take for granted. People in the freedom movement have been directly threatened; the commander of militia in Indiana (http://www.indianamilitia.org) was visited by federal agents and told that if he didn't stop his activism, his family would be brutally murdered. I witnessed this communication; so I know that threats like these are happening...which is why I use Tor. I strongly urge all militia activists to use Tor and all other forms of digital security that they can get their hands on!

I have no doubt that with the current state of things happening in the USA, it is only a short matter of time before the US government and its state subsidiaries openly go the way of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia. I need Tor to maintain my privacy because not only am I a militia leader, I am also a public safety officer who takes his oath to the Constitution seriously. I know there are other public servants out there like myself who would be out of work (or worse) if our privacy were compromised. If we fail to fix things from the inside, the USA could experience another civil war within the next few years, and internet security / privacy / anonymity / circumvention will all become matters of life & death! Even if I'm wrong about the future, the US government is already treating freedom activists as though they are enemies of the state, terrorists, whatever. That's all the reason why I need Tor and why I use it daily!

January 20, 2012

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Tor is and ok program but it also sucks becauses there are some hackers and assholes that send there attack programs throu tor to attack other sites and chats and it looks like that every ip in tor is attacking us and that sucks ...... tor should try and stop this use tor for good is ok but useing it for bad things make tor look bad and tor should realize this soon ...... Madashell

January 27, 2012

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Fishing for good-press worthy quotes, I see.

As long as there are different cultures in the world, tor project will always be caught in a bind. It will face condemnation for permitting speech proscribed by 'us', and milk and cookies for enabling 'them' to get around blocks we deem unreasonable or evil. Few people will have the sense to question 'our' proscriptions, and they will be looked upon like enablers, fools or extremists. Makes defending tor tricky.

But this much we should agree on. Any minority that has no recourse to community outside of tor must be facing formidable forces. To be robbed of the right to assemble, freedom of speech, and the ability to be members of society is the greatest theft imaginable. And yet it happens, right under our noses. Tor, in a sense, grants a right not found in any constitution, the right to basic survival. As long as functioning anonymity systems exist, heresy can continue. And heresy is essential to the functioning of a free society.

February 18, 2012

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I use Tor to hide from hackers and stalkers on the web.
Some time ago someone started to follow me on the web, there was no place for me to hide because they hacked all my accounts.
I'm blogger and, I guess, someone doesn't want me to say what I think online.
I don't write about politics or infringe someone's copyrights. I write about conspiracy theories, but to find information about them on the web without being followed is impossible. So, I use Tor to not get followed around.
Jennifer

February 19, 2012

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I know there are other public servants out there like myself who would be out of work (or worse) if our privacy were compromised. If we fail to fix things from the inside, the USA could experience another civil war within the next few years... where to get backlinks

February 19, 2012

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But this much we should agree on. Any minority that has no recourse to community outside of tor must be facing formidable forces.

February 29, 2012

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Ah, maybe not so noble as many of the stories here. But, living in the EU, I am forever hearing about the internal market and how you should barely know that national borders exist when it comes to buying things. Ha! So many online retailers make the content you can access dependent on country.

If I go to the UK and want to find out what the current euro deals are on Steam? If I want to buy something using iDeal from outside the Netherlands, or use my German card outside of Germany? Fat chance!

Tor with country-restricted exit nodes offers a much neater and less frustrating solution than constantly transferring money between countries, at the cost of significant delays and endless commission (both of which the EU has also "abolished", yeah right); and for that I thank you.

March 29, 2012

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if we are using the tor any one can find our ip address and hack our systems?

I have proxy connections,If I am using tor can any one find me 'this boy using tor'?

April 29, 2012

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Tor could be useful in securely transmitting medical records, which are protected under Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the US.

Under HIPAA, medical records require appropriate administrative, physical and technical safeguards to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and security of electronic protected health information. (aka the security rule). Tor could be very useful in helping non-profit clinics and medical centers securely transmit and receive protected information. Potentially, if TOR worked with the EFF, it could ensure it meets HIPAA standards, create a simple non-profit set-up guide, and then have access to additional network resources.

This is just a thought. None of this has been actually achieved.

May 07, 2012

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What a clever onion! I am a new UK user because Virgin Media blocked The Pirate Bay and I was looking for a way around it (I was sure there would be one) and I happened across Tor Bundle. I have never heard of anything like it, I am not technical with computers but I had it downloaded, up and running and was surfing TBP in five minutes. If I can do it, anybody can. Virgina Media is NOT my nanny.

It was so easy I was surprised.

Thank you everybody for this - it's really helped and I will donate something for you guys.

May 08, 2012

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Would someone be able to give me a little technical advice?

I am NOT a programmer, but am fairly logical so if you spell it out I shld be ok.

I am going to be staying for a few months on a campsite at a time of the year when there are not too many people around. free wifi is provided. I want to take advantage of this. 95% of my browsing will be kosher and work related ( can work remotely), although I shall use TOR for social browsing as i have a paranoid hatred of facebook and google and their privacy violations... My questions:

*** WILL/CAN Tor hide my location from google and facebook Etc

I may want, occasionally, to watch a little "Gentleman's entertainment" while wife/kids are at the beach - all mainstream stuff - nothing that wld, in theory, necessitate Plod being involved, but which WOULD be embarrassing to my day job were it to come out AND I don't want the missis seeing I like girl-on-girl stuff (bless her, she just wldn't get it!)

*** CAN the bloke who owns the wifi router SEE what sites I'm on, even if I use TOR???

*** HOW do I disguise my MAC address? JUST so I have a chance to deny it's me! The site owner DOES do a bit of web development and is no mug as he himself mentioned "MAC address" which set me thinking

*** I have a personal laptop and a work one - I can do all the dodgy viewing on the personal one but IS it possible to hide the MAC. IF NOT, how would I find HIS MAC address so I can clone it - and HOW do I clone it?

I am carrying TOR, along with CCleaner, Revouninstaller, Netgear (for a wifi dongle) and now REAVER (as I'm thinking about trying to learn how to hack wifi for future ref) around on a usb stick.

*** IS this effective - will TOR work as well with the USB plugged in as I'm doing at the moment?

** ANY OTHER BRIGHT TIPS, like how do I start encrypting stuff as well

ALSO

*** DO people use TORMAIL with/for REAL world interactions or down as a subversive?

*** Is it possible to set tormail up as an alias in some way - my point being, can I use hotmail or whatever but go into it THROUGH Tormail and back out to Tormail upon receipt so as to maximise privacy but also maintain effective REAL world interactionn where required

MANY THANKS FOR ANYONE ABLE TO HELP - new down here and am just at this stage hiding my online viewing habits but in due course may want to buy a few ounzes of something Etc

September 03, 2017

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Tor has allowed me to browse the internet with more anonymity than other browsers. To browse privately and feel more anonymous. It does make you feel more safe. As well as the more you learn about tor and how to "anonymize" yourself on the internet. Thanks.
-A long time user, Donor, and Relay operator.

September 14, 2017

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It is very nice to know that running a TOR node imakes good for everyone.
I like onions a lot, I put them in my food (wife does not really like it), I grow them, I help The Onion Router.
My latest project was a.... 3D printed Purple/green Onion! Inside the tor-logo-like enclosure is a tiny AMD Ryzen based PC and the leaves of the onion are the onion's antennas connected to a TP-LINK wireless adaptor.
The whole router runs openWRT configured to set up a new circuit for every device connected to it. It has 24 ethernet ports and a fiber optic Net card. the 1 out of 5 ethernet cards is reserved for connecting to other networks, while the 4 others are for the inner network, with all traffic going through the tor network. Its a REAL onion router. I saw hundreds of those devices being made by other IT specialists, just like me. Someone even used a beaglebone black!
Onions for everyone! set up a tor realay - grow an onion!

November 09, 2017

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Thank you for protecting people like me.
I crossed a very powerful organization in my country - in fact, two of them.I have a free blog whose dashboard can be accessed directly and also by logging in through the provider's website. I always logged in directly.
But as I was working on a page, the other stuff in that page would get garbled up - it was as though two or more people was working on that page - one of them malevolently. I realized that I was in trouble.
(I know that they are very unhappy with my blogging - I say nothing about them. It is just my own creative work. They want to paint a picture of me as inept and that is why I fell out with them. This blog of mine presents a different picture though. Anyway, I am not doing the blog work to disprove their slander. I prefer to live to my fullest potential - given the circumstances.)
And now that the blog was under threat I had to find a way to circumvent them. That is when I searched around and found Tor mentioned somewhere and gave it a try.
My blogging is trouble free now. Also I log in safely through the provider's website these days. I feel my blog is more safe these days - never can tell what they will do in the future.
Thank you once again.

November 30, 2017

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I discovered Tor a few years ago but hardly used it because I was concerned as well as cautious about the dodgy stuff, red rooms and other things like that, or opening a link which I would find too horrendous which don't interest me and never will for as long as I live. I was probably too cautious and have since realised that I was treating Tor like the dark web, which of course it is'nt. Now thanks to the comments on this site, I now have a more realistic idea of the benefits of Tor and hope to discover more.

I am curious about activism and human rights issues, as well as the great firewall of China and how people in China manage to jump over the great wall. I like to think that Tor will keep pushing the great wall of China down so much that one day it will become a bridge.

January 21, 2018

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Intellectual property law suits in the US allow the plaintiff to discover every access to literature and patents by the accused infringer in order to prove 'they knew!'. Using Tor, I maintain plausible deniability for myself and my employer.

I don't compromise the reputation of my employer when I (accidentally or purposely) access questionable sites or use search terms that are monitored.

Internal competitors (aka colleagues) won't see my search interests (through revealing personalized ads popping up on my screen) until I am ready to share them.

Nobody sees how much I forgot since leaving school because there is no record of me duck-duck-going the thermal expansion coefficient of stainless steel or checking Wikipedia for the properties of lactic acid.

February 20, 2018

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Why I use Tor ?

To me the question should be : why do I have to use tor and always hide in the dungeons of the human constrct to be able to be free ????
It's because the human society as we know it has and always have been a place constrcted by and for the schweinne that controll this world ....but the thing is ...you controll what ? nothing ....you yourself are drowning in an endless ocean of illusion and ignorance ....
tor is not only a site that you can surf anonnimus but it is a place where like-minded people share their ideeas,ideologies and construct of their imagination in creating a better world for the ones that are about to come after us ....
you havnet yet realised that tor or no tor we are all living on a sphere that has everything that the human being needs to survive but also to thrive ....And we treat it as if we all have a second earth in a drawer somewhere bought on sale on amazon.....if you do not wake up you will leave your children and the children of our children a world not that nice to say at least...But we where indoctrinated and our brains washed to be ignorant and selfish to the ones that will follow ....You cannot eat or breath money you stupid fucks ....wake up you are domolating piece by piece a world that it was not left yours to take but to use and to leave it behind as you found it ....What have you done with it ,,,,A big shopping mall like one of my heroes used to say ...Humanity makes me sick ....with their ignorance greed and over the head inflated ego.....

March 18, 2018

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Why I use tor: I've healed myself from Crohn's disease by doing my own research on pubmed and from medical texts. Not only is Crohn's disease completely curable, reversible, explainable, and preventable, but in the course of my research I've found clues to the underlying mechanisms of well over 30 other diseases, the parallels between them, and of some of them how they can be cured.

However, a lot of research is behind paywalls...you can often only read the abstracts, if you want to actually read the article you have to pay up till 60 dollars just to be able to read it. And often this is medical research that has been done using public money, from either university hospitals or national health grants.

To put this behind a paywall amounts to public knowledge being available to less than 0.01 % of the world population. And since I've experienced that the answers for dozens of diseases that affect millions of people world wide ARE ACTUALLY ALREADY IN THE MEDICAL LITERATURE....but aren't being recognized by the medical community as such, every single person on this planet has a basic human right to be able to access all the science on every single health issue.

It is a basic human right to have access to all the information that can make and keep someone healthy, yet this is perverted by putting medical research behind (outrageously expensive) paywalls. To deny someone access to information vital to their own health, is unethical and immoral beyond comprehension.

As such, I have no smaller word for it: Paywalls are MASS MURDER. These people should be put on trial for crimes against humanity.

Now, luckily there is scihub which totally acknowledges this, and many researchers in the field freely (and secretly) give their inlog credentials because they also believe in this.

However, these criminal publication houses, like Elsevier etc. etc... have filed suits in many countries to get ISP's to block scihub.

I use Tor browser to circumvent these blocks. I use it to find answers for disease that will heal millions, if not tens of millions, of people ...and explaining it to them how they can do their own research and find their own answers if they disagree with mine.

Paywalls are a full, blatant crime against humanity and they should be made 100% illegal worldwide. They are sheer murder.

April 02, 2018

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Hey people,

thanks for the Tor Project who give a lot of your time and knowledge to this project.
We are not professionals in speaking english whether we are trained to write reports.

First of all thank you to get all this knowledge to free and open work. Since we are a small group of paramedics from Europe fighting for the human right to live and safe lives in the fighting scenes of Northern-Syria and Iraq, we need Tails and the Tor-Bridges to get material to the western countries. While Tor is not always the best way to get informations through borders, the bridges works perfect.

Of course, it's not possible to explain details furthermore, but we thankfully apprieciate your work. Thanks for help us to defeat the darkness of injustice and inhumanity. Tor is a part of lighting the world against the darkest moments. Keep up! Greetings

April 10, 2018

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ok

May 12, 2018

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I lived my life to help others, without any other motivations. I never knew after a life dedicated to helping, that I now find myself in a situation that prevents vital communication. The damage to my life and others, resulted from a random event. I realize the isolation and lack of communication will cause additional detrimental issues. Situations that changed my life also happen to cause problems for millions. I hope using tor, I can reach those who can help.

May 23, 2018

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i use tor to protect my digital footprint dont want them fuckers snooping me! Hats off to the Developers keep up the Excellent work

July 26, 2018

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I used it for two years at my old school to use youtube to watch the educational videos they ironically blocked. Thanks TOR, you saved me from doing homework at home.

October 04, 2018

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I'm one of the happy ones (the priviliged ones?) who live in a free, democratic country in Western Europe with an open society where the protection of personal data is quite important, as in the EU as such, most certainly more than in other parts of the world. And yet I'm using Tor? Yes, I am. I cannot thwart Google's nauseating data collection rage, but I CAN hinder them from collecting MY data. Which might be a Pyrrhic victory, but it's at least a functioning countermeasure.