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Re: [tor-dev] UX improvement proposal: Onion auto-redirects using Alt-Svc HTTP header
Georg Koppen <gk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> [ text/plain ]
> George Kadianakis:
>> As discussed in this mailing list and in IRC, I'm posting a subsequent
>> version of this proposal. Basic improvements:
>> - Uses a new custom HTTP header, instead of Alt-Svc or Location.
>> - Does not do auto-redirect; it instead suggests the onion based on
>> antonella's mockup: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/attachment/ticket/21952/21952.png
>
> I don't see that or any particular idea of informing the user in the
> proposal itself, though. I think more about those browser side plans
> should be specified in it (probably in section 2). Right now you are
> quite specific about the redirection part and its pro and cons but
> rather vague on the actual UX improvements (having the header is just
> half of what you need).
>
Hello,
pushed another commit to the onion-location branch in my repo for
addressing the concerns in GeKo's email:
https://gitweb.torproject.org/user/asn/torspec.git/commit/?h=onion-location&id=14fc750e3afcd759f4235ab955535a07eed24286
I was not sure what other stuff to put in section 2 but please let me
know if you don't feel fullfiled with the current ones!!!
Also, I wiped out the improvements section because i was not sure what
to put there.
As a side thing, I found this extension which does the bottombar part of
this proposal, but it gets the redirection list from a local file
instead of an HTTP header: https://github.com/Someguy123/HiddenEverywhere
Cheers!
>>
>>
>> ========================================================================
>> UX improvement proposal: Onion redirects using Onion-Location HTTP header
>> ========================================================================
>>
>> 1. Motivation:
>>
>> Lots of high-profile websites have onion addresses these days (e.g. Tor ,
>
> Tor,
>
>> NYT, blockchain, ProPublica). All those websites seem confused on what's
>> the right way to inform their users about their onion addresses. Here are
>> some confusion examples:
>> a) torproject.org does not even advertise their onion address to Tor users (!!!)
>> b) blockchain.info throws an ugly ASCII page to Tor users mentioning their onion
>> address and completely wrecking the UX (loses URL params, etc.)
>> c) ProPublica has a "Browse via Tor" section which redirects to the onion site.
>>
>> Ideally there would be a consistent way for websites to inform their users
>> about their onion counterpart. This would provide the following positives:
>> + Tor users would use onions more often. That's important for user
>> education and user perception, and also to partially dispell the darkweb myth.
>> + Website operators wouldn't have to come up with ad-hoc ways to advertise
>> their onion services, which sometimes results in complete breakage of
>> the user experience (particularly with blockchain)
>>
>> This proposal specifies a simple way forward here that's far from perfect,
>> but can still provide benefits and also improve user-education around onions
>> so that in the future we could employ more advanced techniques.
>>
>> Also see Tor ticket #21952 for more discussion on this:
>> https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/21952
>>
>> 2. Proposal
>>
>> We introduce a new HTTP header called "Onion-Location" with the exact same
>> restrictions and semantics as the Location HTTP header. Websites can use the
>> Onion-Location HTTP header to specify their onion counterpart, in the same
>> way that they would use the Location header.
>>
>> The Tor Browser intercepts the Onion-Location header (if any) and informs
>> the user of the existense of the onion site, giving them the option to visit
>
> s/existense/existence/
>
>> it. Tor Browser only does so if the header is served over HTTPS.
>>
>> Browsers that don't support Tor SHOULD ignore the Onion-Location header.
>>
>> 3. Improvements
>
> Did you plan to write anything here? I guess there are at least UX
> improvements to the ad-hoc things you mentioned at the beginning of the
> proposal.
>
>> 4. Drawbacks
>>
>> 4.1. No security/performance benefits
>>
>> While we could come up with onion redirection proposals that provide
>> security and performance benefits, this proposal does not actually provide
>> any of those.
>>
>> As a matter of fact, the security remains the same as connecting to normal
>> websites (since we trust its HTTP headers), and the performance gets worse
>
> s/its/their/
>
>> since we first need to connect to the website, get its headers, and then
>> also connect to the onion.
>>
>> Still _all_ the website approaches mentioned in the "Motivation" section
>> suffer from the above drawbacks, and sysadmins still come up with ad-hoc
>> ways to inform users abou their onions. So this simple proposal will still
>
> s/abou/about/
>
>> help those websites and also pave the way forward for future auto-redirect
>> techniques.
>>
>> 4.2. Defining new HTTP headers is not the best idea
>>
>> This proposal defines a new non-standard HTTP header. This is not great
>> because it makes Tor into a "special" thing that needs to be supported with
>> special headers. However, the fact that it's a new HTTP header that only
>> works for Tor is a positive thing since it means that non-Tor browsers will
>> just ignore it.
>>
>> Furthermore, another drawback is that this HTTP header will increase the
>> bandwidth needlessly if it's also served to non-Tor clients. Hence websites
>> with lots of client traffic are encouraged to use tools that detect Tor
>> users and only serve the header to them (e.g. tordnsel).
>>
>> 5. The future
>>
>> As previously discussed, this is just a simple proposal to introduce the
>> redirection concept to people, and also to help some sysadmins who are
>> currently coming up with weird ways to inform people about their
>> onions. It's not the best way to do this, but it's definitely one of the
>> simplest ways.
>>
>> In the future we could implement with more advanced auto-redirect proposals like:
>
> s/with// maybe?
>
> [snip]
>
> Georg
>
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