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Re: [tor-talk] VPN/TOR Router
spencerone@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
> Hey :)
>
> I have been looking at a physical product by Cryptographi called the
> 'SnoopSafe Encrypted VPN/TOR Router'[0].
>
> Does this work? Is this safe?
>
> [0] http://cryptographi.com/products/snoopsafe
There have been a number of discussions on this mailing list before
about standalone Tor routers. The usual consensus is that using a
separate router together with regular Internet applications is risky,
because the applications don't know that they shouldn't behave in
certain ways. For example, the applications might mention your real IP
address in the course of some protocol, or they might send or allow to
be sent a persistent cookie, which might eventually be sent over both a
Torified and a non-Torified connection.
The Tor Browser has had a ton of work put into it
https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/
to try to make sure it works safely with Tor (again, by making all Tor
Browser instances look alike, making sure that they don't allow
long-lived cookies or cookie equivalents, and various other
precautions). The router running as a separate device can't usefully
apply all of these protections to regular Internet applications "from
the outside", and the applications, again, won't realize that they're
being used in an anonymous way and that they shouldn't send data that
might compromise their user's anonymity.
That's why the Tor Project doesn't currently recommend using Tor with a
web browser other than Tor Browser, and that's something that would
inevitably happen when using one of these standalone routers.
--
Seth Schoen <schoen@xxxxxxx>
Senior Staff Technologist https://www.eff.org/
Electronic Frontier Foundation https://www.eff.org/join
815 Eddy Street, San Francisco, CA 94109 +1 415 436 9333 x107
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