Talk:Tor (anonymity network)

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[edit] Requested move

Page now moved StephenHildrey 15:17, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Tor is not an "anonymous network" - it has a name. As a named network that provides anonymity, the page title is currently incorrect.

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one sentence explanation, then sign your vote with ~~~~
  • Support as original move proposer. StephenHildrey 17:55, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Support - correctness is a virtue. In my opinion, you could have been bold and moved without discussion, since the justification is indisputable. Haakon 19:22, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
    • It won't let me move the page because my account is too new :-( StephenHildrey 19:27, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
      • Oh, interesting, I didn't know of such restrictions :-) Haakon 19:58, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. The Tor developers also refer to it as an "anonymity network", not an "anonymous network". Victor Lighthill 23:20, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pre-move request discussions

I think "Tor (anonymity network)" would be a better title than the current "Tor (anonymous network)". Thoughts? --StephenHildrey 16:25, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

...Are you even allowed to use the word anonymity in that fashion? Regardless, I think "Tor (anonymous network)" is far more intuitive than your proposal. --Maru (talk) Contribs 17:37, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean by "allowed to use" - to me it makes more sense to say "anonymity network" than "anonymous network" because the network is not "anonymous", it provides anonymity. Still, checking Google ([[1]] vs [[2]]) suggests that most people agree with you.
I meant grammatically. Anonymity doesn't seem to work as an adjective describing the kind of network, to me. --Maru (talk) Contribs 00:08, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
The construction "NOUN Network" to mean "A network used for NOUN" is pretty common. "Communication network," "intelligence network," and so on appear regularly in the NY Times and other newspapers. Also, the usage "anonymity network" is common in the anonymous communications field (whose participants do anonymity research, not necessarily anonymous research). But in any case, "anonymous network" is certainly wrong, for the reasons given above. If you won't accept "anonymity network", "anonymous communication network" or "network for anonymity" could be accurate. --Victor Lighthill 17:14, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
Good point. Also, "anonymous network" means "network without a name", which Tor clearly isn't - it's "the Tor network".
Actually, the proper description is an "anonymizing overlay network". Afecks 10:31, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Organization

Anyone want to take a crack at organizing this article a little better??? As the Tor entry continues to grow, it will seem increasingly haphazard and disorganized.

I feel that the last part of the article, especially talking about specific lines to uncomment in Tor configuration files, is far too much detail for an overview article like this.

I've had a first attempt, though I think it still needs a lot of work to add useful information. Hopefully people will find it more cohesive now, anyway. --StephenHildrey 12:41, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Not supported?

"As of late 2005, the EFF no longer sponsors the Tor project..." What does this mean? Does anyone have any details on this?

See the second paragraph of "Tor: Donate!". b0at 11:25, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
The page now says "As of October 2005, EFF no longer has any money for supporting the Tor project.", so it was a money thing, not political support. Gronky 15:35, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
That doesn't mean it wasn't political: EFF could have made a political decision to divide their pot of money in a way that excluded Tor :) </pedantic> StephenFalken 19:09, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
EFF still provides webhosting and legal advice to the Tor project; just not cash. Naturally, all budgeting decisions are in some sense political (in that the EFF, presented with lower-than-expected funds, 'could' have decided to cut lawyers rather than Tor. But there has been no political break between the projects (or if there has, it does not seem to be documented anywhere. -- Victor Lighthill 20:57, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ban discussion?

Is there a discussion of why connections from some of the Tor exit nodes have been blocked from editing wikipedia content available anywhere?

I was looking for it somewhere. See Wikipedia:No open proxies. However, it appears that the decision was unilaterally taken by a very low number of people who are blocking those open proxies. I'm not sure all Wikipedians approve with this policy, I certainly don't! 212.112.231.83 18:15, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
what the internet needs is free, closed proxies, like requiring a password. [Unsigned Anon User]
I think it is horrible that Tor is outright banned. A better option would be moderation. But what bothers me the most about the banning is that I can still be logged in and get refused access. This doesn't make any sense. If I log in to my account, why ban me because of the IP? I prefer Tor for privacy reasons and it is helpful for free speech. About discussion, you might wish to check - I think it was the tor mailing list archives from a year or so back. I believe I recall discussion on the ban. Nisanu 15:33, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] On Portal:Free software, Tor is currently the selected article

(2006-09-02) Just to let you know. The purpose of selecting an article is both to point readers to the article and to highlight it to potential contributors. It will remain on the portal for a week or so. The previous selected article was GNOME. Gronky 14:35, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Tor's time has passed, the selected article is now PuTTY. Gronky 21:22, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Breaking news?

German police are apparently seizing TOR servers. - BalthCat 00:36, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

This is a tempest in a teapot. As far as anybody can tell (as discussed on the Tor list), the seizures are part of a kiddie porn sweep where dozens of hundreds of computers were grabbed. No Tor server operator has been charged, or seems likely to be charged. Current consensus seems to be that server ops will get their servers back once the cops realize the servers have no useful evidencce on them, and put them back up again (with different public keys, of course). Though many conspiracy theories are circulating about the cops' "real" motives for doing this, it doesn't seem that any of these are substantiated. -- Victor Lighthill 18:56, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

A lot of news is that they were in fact TOR Exit-Nodes which can show ip addresses in server logs. --- Allix Davis Mon Sep 18 16:29:13 BST 2006

How is that news? Wouldn't they be exit-nodes almost by definition? -- Gwern (contribs) 15:59, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

This i beleive is the main source of the news in english at least. http://itnomad.wordpress.com/2006/09/10/germany-crackdown-on-tor-node-operators/ I can of course speculate and defend tors anonymity, but it would worry alot of tor users confidence, especially in countries where legimate use of tor is needed, eg.. china --- Allix Davis Wed Sep 20 01:07:03 BST 2006

[edit] Thailand's ISPs block tor.eff.org website

When access to http://tor.eff.org/ via Thailand's ISPs, it will show you a message:

Not Found
The requested URL /favicon.ico was not found on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

see 2006 Thailand coup d'état#Internet_censorship

The Tor website has been blocked in Thailand since well before the coup. Fortunately for users in Thailand, there are mirrors. ( http://tor.eff.org/mirrors.html.en ) --Victor Lighthill 03:09, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
as of now, i was able to access the Tor site Roger jg 08:29, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] help

i install tor and go to whatismyip.com and wut i see is the same ip that i saw before i install tor. isnt tor sopposed to make it different? 195.225.104.228

Not the place to discuss how you did or did not mess up the installation. --Gwern (contribs) 14:18, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
where would i get support? when i go to tor.eff.org, all the instances of the word support that i see refer to providing finincal support to them - not in getting support. ne ideas? 195.225.104.228 02:21, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Your friendly tech guru or forum or mailing list, I would guess. Not an encyclopedia. --Gwern (contribs) 02:38, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
There is a question on the Tor FAQ at [[3]] about getting support, but there is also (I think) an answer to your original question. But of course, you read the documentation before you decided to ask random people on the Internet to read it for you, right? -- Victor Lighthill 14:48, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
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