I enjoyed this tweet. Regulars might recognise the name.
Many thanks to @AlecMuffett and everyone else at @Facebook who is working to improve integration with Tor!
— torproject (@torproject) April 22, 2016
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Facebook and TorApril 22nd, 2016 |
 22 comments to Facebook and Tor |
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It would be hard to overstate the importance of stuff like this.
How does TOR – which is all about anonymity – and Facebook – which is all about data gathering and selling that data to any and all buyers – have any ability to work together?
If Facebook isn’t getting information on its users then its undermining its own business model and if it is, that undermines the *point* of TOR – any government can demand the collected data be turned over to them.
https://twitter.com/sharksix6/status/723513116307410948
@torproject @AlecMuffett @facebook Facebook still requires a mobile number to join.They don’t NEED this.It’s just more info for them to sell
I have the same question as Agammamon. (Cute moniker, by the way.)
So what? If you don’t like facebook, don’t use it. But if the state does not like you using it, fuck ’em, just use it via TOR. That is the issue, nothing else is relevant.
Only if they know that person is using it.
My point is not about liking or disliking Facebook – its that Facebook is all about collecting your personal information while TOR is all about anonymity. There’s an inherent conflict there.
And as you’re seeing with Facebook’s requirement that you give a mobile number to use it with TOR, they’re still working to defeat your anonymity in order to collect information on you – because that’s their business model. They sell *you* to other companies to fund the social media network.
Perry, Facebook goes to great lengths to ensure that the people behind FB profiles are who they say you are – or at least it claims so. What usually happens in reality, is that if you annoy someone who knows you on FB, they can report you to FB as a “fake profile”, and FB will freeze your account until you show them proof of identity (usually a photo of ID/DL/similar). Your profile can be as real as any, doesn’t matter, and people do this all the time. So yes, if someone doesn’t like FB, they are free not to use it, but I presume the news in that tweet is not aimed at people who are not using FB. So what am I missing?
Nope. FB are not known for pulling people’s fingernails out for using social media unlike, say, the Iranian government. So if FB sell the marketing details of someone organising buttsex raves in Tehran via cryptic remarks on FB, as long as FB are not selling identifying data to the Iranian government… who cares? Ok, so Raza and Sorya might start getting spammed by gormless DUI lawyers in Florida looking for new clients, but as long as TOR makes it very hard for the Iranian Anti-Fun Police to find out, the buttsex raves continue. Hurrah for TOR and all that is good and decent.
Oh and moreover FB using TOR helps ‘normalise’ TOR, making a nonsense of the often proffered claim that using TOR is irrefutable proof a person is dealing drug or plotting to kidnap children so they can be filmed being buggered by trained goats.
Btw this is meaningful because plenty of sites are not friendly towards Tor at all: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/doc/ListOfServicesBlockingTor
Isn’t there a good chance that popularity will expose Tor to more efforts than before to break it?
The TOR network needs to expand the growth of servers and exit nodes at about the same rate as the expansion of the user base so that performance is maintained for the user base to ensure that there are sufficient exit nodes here, there and everywhere that the network can’t be easily disrupted.
I use TOR at in both the UK and Malaysia to get around government censorship which is its intended purpose, not to buy drugs or plot kiddy/goat rape. The fact that I have to use it in Malaysia is unsurprising, that I have to use it in the UK is a bloody outrage.
“So if FB sell the marketing details of someone organising buttsex raves in Tehran via cryptic remarks on FB, as long as FB are not selling identifying data to the Iranian government”
Because they’re willing to do the former?
Because the Iranian government will tear out their fingernails until they do?
That’s kind of a *benefit*. Especially as the system grows. The more attempts to crack it the more information on haw it can be cracked, the better you can close out those exploits.
If only a few people use, are monitoring it, the easier it is for someone who finds an exploit to keep it secret.
Please link to your source where FB is giving such information to the Iranian government, or that the Iranian government has been torturing facebook staff to get people’s details.
HOW many electronic credit units were reportedly exchanged by the FBI for “cracking” a “smart” phone?
Oh sure, they SAAAAAAAAAAAyyyy this needed to be done, because otherwise, “XYZ is SOOOOO super duper secure from prying eyes that….well, you can trust ME with ALL your speakeasy receipts!”
If the threat, or “bounty” is sufficient, that “secure” site you can “access from your mobile phone” ….isn’t.
But you may rest assured that the powers that be will NEVER confess they “saw it on TOR” (et alia)
Lest we forget, people “forget”. The OLD scams are so old they’re NEW again.
Aesop’s Fables, Brothers Grimm, and “The Prince”, have NEVER been made…obsolete. “Only the names have been changed to protect….” somebody.
Please link to your source showing that Facebook *isn’t*.
I don’t understand the hostility from you here. I just left a thought about it being strange that there’s any sort of long-term possibility of ‘integration’ between two platforms that have diametrically opposed models. If you want to be anonymous you use TOR, if you want to be known you use Facebook.
But you’re responding as if this is some sort of personal attack on you or the project – its not. And then you double down with ‘well foreign governments would never target a visible platform to find out who its users are’. TOR doesn’t do you any good if you have to link your online ID to your real identity to use an app.
If I’m missing something, please point it out – or point me to where I can find out why I’m wrong. I just disagree that this is of more than ‘oh, that’s an interesting technical exercise’ level of importance.
This is not me being hostile, I assure you. I am just a bit evidence based. Frankly I doubt FB sees much value is kowtowing to Iran. China yeah quite possibly, but Iran? Unlikely
Well be HAPPY to control, and direct, the flow of “information” and public opinion. Or automated service can be CUSTOM fit to ANY platform, and parameters, desired by highest bidder clients, including the “clean up” of undesirable keywords, users, or content deemed “offensive”.
I wonder if any OTHER mass, or “popular” communications folk figured out that “model” before?
I wonder how that’s any different than the sales pitch from arms dealers with altruistic names?
I do find it novel to be using the anonymity of Tor to be slapping all sorts of personal gumph on Facebook. Not thought that through, somebods.
Or then again, perhaps your notions how some people use FB are actually too limited. Perhaps somebods have indeed thought this through 😉
Personally, Perry, like Twatter I avoid FB like the plague. My taste for tedium being stunted. So you may well be right. But given how easy it is to set up little private corners of the interweb – Samizdata being one – it’s a mystery why anyone wanting to remain obscure would entrust themselves to a provider who’s raison d’etre is making people less obscure.