It takes about 2 minutes to load a basic web page! I care about privacy but this doesnt seem practical for daily use.
Shouldn’t be that slow. Like 30 seconds max for an average web page.
Thats the tax you pay for anonymity, if you only need a tunnel, vpn is worth the money.
This is a good spot to remind people that the Tor network depends on people donating bandwidth to keep the network fast and healthy.
Tor Browser Bundle has made privacy very user friendly; but unless we have the nodes to take in the new traffic, it’ll will constrain the adoption rate.
So… people’s with money, please consider hosting a decent exit/relay node:
Should also note, for those who pushing their anonymity, adding noise to your signal makes your anonymity stronger. As a minimum it adds a layer of plausible deniablity. So highly recommend people always run at least as a relay node.
As a meta, we’re seeing new moves for privacy invasion in the west and some feel that this is waste of Tor’s bandwidth; and in comparison even most occupiers are in a less dangerous place than Iranian democrats. However, western consumers are generally richer in bandwidth compared to their brothers in Iran. If we can get the culture right; with a lot of westners donating fast high bandwidth connections with the Tor network, it would actually expand Tor’s usability in those places where Tor means life or death. Something to consider.
(Imagine Kansas City becoming a hub of thousands of independent Tor relays because of the possibilities opened up by Google Fiber?)
am I doing something wrong?
Probably yes, in a way - along with most others in the network.
You(tor users collectively) are not contributing enough bandwidth back by running your own relays (pretty safe) or exit nodes (read a little before you do this); so the network doesn’t quite have enough bandwidth for everyone to have a good experience.
I kinda think the tor client software guys would be more like the bittorrent guys at showing how much bandwidth each user donated vs used.
I bet a lot of people would like to be bandwidth-neutral if only the clients shoved that information in their face.
It’s ridiculously slow. That’s the risk you take for wearing a tinfoil hat. You have to realize if you were to be totally 100% privacy awesome, you’d be changing phones every few months, with a VOIP front end. You’d be using a browser through PuTTY → some proxy → TOR → something else effectively forcing you to a 56K modem. The best way to take privacy seriously is just don’t use the internet, devalue it, and use cash for everything.
sup pal
Tor provides great privacy for your location, but if the performance hit is too much for you to trade, there are lots of ways you can balance your privacy with the speed you want. for instance
browser: disable 3rd party cookies (this is like facebook cookies from the like button, even if you’re not logged into facebook). Clear cookies after closing the browser (this can be done automatically).
lots of browser plugins, play around to see which ones seem worth the trade-off for you. Adblock, Noscript, Ghostery, Better Privacy (haven’t tried that one myself).
also a lot of it depends on the websites you visit. If you’re using a lot of Google services (gmail, search, calendar, docs, google+, . . . ) then Google will have a very detailed idea of who you are and how you behave. Just use fake names and such, and possibly accounts that are not connected to each other. ie, Twitter lets you use a fake name, and so does reddit. these simple steps can prevent eavesdroppers (the NSA, FBI, Facebook, Tumblr, Google, even reddit, any website with Google Analytics, YouTube, fill in the blank) from building an accurate profile on your life and your behavior online.
does that help?
To be honest- a VPN far better serves always-on needs then tor. The uses of Tor these days tend to be of the illegal variety, not the day-to-day privacy desire. I don’t even have it on my machine anymore.
according to this website: very slow with tor and VPN how do i improve speed and security please? - Tor Stack Exchange the “solution” is to use TOR but dont use VPN mode. I use Netguard (sometimes) https://netguard.me/
In fact, we can usually spot people who haven’t read any of our website (and have instead learned everything they know about Tor from news articles) by the fact that they spell it wrong.
classic!
I broke my shoulder, forgive my typing impairmenr
if you only need a tunnel -
what does tor give that vpn doesnt?
an interesting point is that, by running a relay, the traffic moving from your IP address to Tor could be either your traffic or the traffic of someone else on the Tor network. In this way, running a relay marginally increases your anonymity.
fyi if you are interested in running a relay, either to help your own anonymity or just to donate bandwidth to a worthy cause, it’s pretty simple. When running the Tor Browser Bundle, on the Vidalia panel, there is a nice little option to “setup relaying.” Click on that, select “run as a (non-exit) relay,” and restart the Tor Browser Bundle. Probably something will need tweaking, so Google your error messages. If everything goes OK, then congrats, you are running a Tor relay!
also, the issue of “mandatory” relays has come up in various blog posts and videos I’ve seen. Basically, some users cannot safely run relays (like in Iran or China or somewhere where there the govt prosecutes political dissidents). The increased bandwidth to Tor is a hint that the user might be up to something that might upset the powers that be.
Also, with that being said, I wouldn’t use Tor for any serious browsing. Like, I wouldn’t do any transactions over it, especially.
I disagree - people constantly use Tor around the world to circumvent censorship.
As for a VPN - VPN’s log, VPN’s usually aren’t as secure as you might think they are. The PPTP standard for VPN’s has long been broken (encryption wise).
VPN’s are nice if you have the money, but in the long run they aren’t going to enhance your privacy if you belong to one that keeps logs.
can u explain to me how to get started using a vpn? sorry for the crappy spelling but i broke my shoulder (it fucking hurtsd!)
A VPN provides you an encrypted tunnel out on to the internet, the ISP cannot see within it.
The IP the VPN represents you by is still linked to your subscription with the VPN (if they keep records, they might turn over that record to the authorities).
Tor provides a tunnel PLUS IP anonymity, the frequently changing IP you are represented by belongs to the Tor network, and you didn’t register any details to use this Free network, so no hostile agency or law-enforcement (think Syrian journalist as much as terrorist, etc) can track the IP to your personal information (so long as you dont go sharing personal info while on Tor).
It’s free.
And because its free, no one has your billing info on file. With a VPN, if you’re using a host that doesn’t value privacy, it would be possible for law enforcement to request your records.
If you decide to go the VPN route (I highly recommend it) I’d go with one outside of your home country just to throw more barriers in place. As an American, I like using PRQ. Founded by the creators of The Pirate Bay, it hosted Wikileaks for some time. Not the cheapest VPN… but I guess it depends on how much peace of mind is worth to you.
Torrentfreak did an article on VPN’s that may be worth looking into as well.
I2P looks like it’s picking up new momentum lately; both from Reddit and somewhere unknowns from Russia… I know it has it’s complete darknet potential; but it also makes a perfect set with Tor. Where you use Tor for browsing and I2P for filesharing.
Some useful links for I2P in particular:
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Torrenting with I2P: The why and how of secure filesharing using the I2P network
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This week’s top 10 most downloaded movies are now available on I2P
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/r/I2P
Misc:
Why not? Evil exit nodes?