On 2/7/2014 12:42 PM, Matthew Finkel wrote:
As someone mentioned, seems in order to "convince" some sites to stop denying Tor, some TBB users and / or Tor Project personnel need at least *some* supporting data. Hopefully showing that the number of abusers on given sites aren't disproportionately coming through Tor. Might be a 1st step?This is in re: Hulu (whis is presumably authenticated)... but really, it applies to any service which we, the legitimate users of Tor, are denied access to. It has simply gone too far and we should be putting effort into reversing this trend by interacting with these deniers to become permitters. What do we do?Basically what Lunar said. A more active and vocal community may help. Passively accepting the current situation doesn't seem to be working. If the services don't know that legitimate Tor users exist in a significant quantity and that they are worthwhile to support, then there's no incentive to try.
If data doesn't back that up (where would typical users *get* such data?), then the sites blocking Tor could have a point (regarding their OWN site). How do we know if the blocking sites are / aren't getting lots of abuse via Tor (or at least think they are), OR... if that's *just an excuse.* An excuse because TBB users can't be fingerprinted the same nor have the same amt of data extracted, as normal browsers.
After all, some sites (what % ?) are reportedly selling their users' email addresses, other data - to companies building user profiles; which in turn sell the profiles for advertising or possibly "other" purposes (NS*, etc.). Even combining *real names & addresses w/ email addresses,* along w/ profiled personal interests, buying habits; interests in politics, religion - & so on.
So it wouldn't be surprising for some sites to use "we get abuse through Tor" as an excuse to block it. Theoretically, they'd be losing money by not having as much data to sell.
TWO of many detailed article on this practice, that seems to be gaining popularity: "Race Is On to 'Fingerprint' Phones, PCs" - http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304410504575560243259416072 "RapLeaf Inc. Profiles Users by Name" - http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704679204575646704100959546?
I also remember a time when a fairly large # of sites refused access, unless you accepted cookies. That practice was eventually relaxed. Maybe? in part, because other ways were developed to gather data from visitors (beacons, etc.) and /or get money from 3rd parties, without needing cookies?
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