Re: [tor-talk] Escape NSA just to enter commercial surveillance?

[creo <creo-tor-lists@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 2016-01-14 22:53, Markus Hitter wrote:

> Making users into assuming that they're anonymous just by using Tor
> while they still have to care about anonymity them selfs is certainly
> more dangerous than having no Tor at all.


(edit: woops - long answer incoming :-)

I understand your frustration at that point, but Tor never stated to
be an "out-of-the-box panacea" that magically makes every step you take
anonymous. There are several caveats and hints in online documentation
and FAQs that point out what it protects ... and what not. While you're
right that the website does not scream "we can't protect you from giving
away your identity yourself" into your face in big red letters, it's
not making a secret of that fact on the other hand.

https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#AmITotallyAnonymous is only
an example of many places where this is addressed.

We can't do anything against the fact that most people don't use proper
end-2-end encrypted protocols. We can't prevent YOLO users from giving
away identifying pieces information like email addresses, account names
etc. while using Tor.

The fact that some Tor users use us to connect to data collection 
services
like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. is not a novelty at all. The news
is that finally some of these companies are starting to realize that it
may be better to cooperate with Tor instead of fighting against it -
sure they do it for profit, but it will also contribute to Tor to some
extent, why not accept a Win-Win, even if it's caused by having an
unexpected temporary ally?

After all, I want to emphasize what str4d stated before: What if you
want to use a certain service, but you're prohibited from doing so by
a regime that won't let you use <$insert-commercial-website-here>?

This is where Tor provides you a great opportunity. The freedom to 
choose
your communication partners. The rest is in the users hand - and there
are people out there (the Tor project, EFF, etc.) who really try to 
educate
the non privacy-savvy folks about the SHOULD's and COULD's of privacy, 
the
rest is up to 'em.


- Daniel


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