Talk:Tor (network)/Archive 2

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3

Remove core.onion Listing From The Article

IMO The core.onion page is a joke, can we remove it from the Tor article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.80.200.138 (talk) 08:10, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Do you have any suggestions?90.135.249.238 (talk) 00:03, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

It's a bit strange bit it's not a "joke". It's as good an index as any, but I think it's important to note that despite it's official-looking appearance it is not part of the Tor Project. I have added the following note: There is no official index of hidden services, but a number of third-party hidden services exist to serve this purpose. Does that sound good? ManaUser (talk) 02:14, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I suggest HiddenServices - Xiando at http://xiandos.info/HiddenServices . It is an index of hidden services that is not itself a hidden service. This should definitely be in this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.134.86.192 (talk) 00:03, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

core.onion should stay. It's one of the longest running hidden services, and it's regarded as a fairly stable one. Part of me thinks this was removed because of the whole "Matt vs Jamon" thing going on. If that is the case, then NPOV would mean including both Matt and Jamon's sites, the Hidden Wiki and core.onion. I'm adding it back for these reasons. --Snaxe/fow (talk) 05:28, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

As the one who removed core.onion and onionforum, I would like to assure you that it had nothing at all to do with anything regarding "Matt vs Jamon." The reason I added The Hidden Wiki is because it was linked from the actual Tor Project itself and was in this article before it temporarily went down. It is now back up (and has been for some time), and offers one of the best points of entry to hidden services, as it is one of the best lists of hidden services. I also added the Tor Project hidden service page. I also added a mirror of hidden service indexes that is not itself a hidden service. Further, what evidence is there that core.onion or onionforum are "central sites" of hidden services? Hidden services are decentralized, and the term "central sites" is a misnomer. We run the risk of making certain hidden services de facto "central sites" if we spam them here. I propose to have only a good mirror of hidden services (Xiando), a good list of hidden services (The Hidden Wiki), and The Tor Project page as a hidden service. To address your concern of NPOV: my motives do not dictate what is NPOV, and even if they did, it certainly does not mean including both Matt and Jamon's sites. If anything, this article must remain neutral to that conflict. 90.128.37.21 (talk) 23:01, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Tor.Eff.Org becomes Torproject.org?

When did tor.eff.org begin forwarding to torproject.org and why? Please point to some official documentation with the reasons. Searching EFF.org for recent information on tor shows little to nothing, and nothing regarding this change specifically.

As per http://www.torproject.org/donate.html.en, "As of December 2006, Tor is a US 501[c][3] research/educational nonprofit. Donations to the Tor Project may be tax deductible to persons who are in the US or who pay taxes in countries with reciprocity with the US on charitable donations." Limited EFF resources and a better nonprofit status precipitated this. Note that Tor's official site was at tor.freehaven.net even before the EFF got involved and it moved to tor.eff.org. I agree that it's confusing, and the eff.org domain gave the site credibility, and that they should be more extensive about the change to assuage fears of a fake site; but tor.eff.org does redirect to torproject.org anyway. b0at (talk) 08:13, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks!

Misleading Quote

"People think they're protected just because they use Tor. Not only do they think it's encrypted, but they also think 'no one can find me'. But if you've configured your computer wrong, which probably more than 50 per cent of the people using Tor have, you can still find the person (on) the other side." Although this is a quote from a person, the information he gives in part is very misleading. Tor does, in fact, use encryption to transfer information. It is not surprising that this man was able to eavesdrop on the very information he was serving, which any server has the capability of doing, most notably proxies, which can be configured to do the exact same thing this man did and are less secure in the first place because they do not encrypt any traffic, just mask the IP. Also, where is he getting his information that over 50% of tor users have configured it wrong? The possibility of tor servers eavesdropping information is a given and should be noted, however the quote itself I have to challenge. It is simply inaccurate, and just because he ran a tor server does not make him a trusted enough source to claim that tor does not encrypt traffic on the article page, that is just flat out wrong. We need to include this information, but we need to do it in a way without skewing it or muddying it down on what HE thinks of the tor network. He is not an authoritative source to be quoted like that, especially when some of the quotes include "dirty" connotation like his assertion that tor is mostly used for porn. This needs to be fixed, any suggestions? 24.209.140.179 (talk) 20:37, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd have to agree; this quote doesn't add informative value to the article and his opinion isn't sufficiently authoritative to be given so much space, particularly since it goes into matters which are irrelevant to the subject and on which he seems to be throwing a number out off the top of his head. I'd say yank the quote completely. P.T.isfirst (talk) 06:13, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

  • I've removed it. If the contributor wants to find or create an appropriate place in the article to put the cited opinions that might be another matter ("blanket criticism of Tor users?") but it was outside the bounds of what the cited person could reasonably speak about with authority, as well as not belonging where it was.P.T.isfirst (talk) 02:03, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Security and hidden services

If there isn't an appropriate list of hidden service links, this page shouldn't contain any

The article currently contains the following list of hidden service links:

We could remove the "inappropriate links" tag by moving these links to a tor-to-web proxy, such as tor.theinfo.org. Unfortunately, I'm not comfortable with providing people with links to that current list of hidden services. For instance, "The Hidden Wiki" triggers a NoScript XSS warning in my browser, while Toogle contains tag/category links that appear to point to pedophilic content (I haven't confirmed this, for obvious reasons). Can we come up with a list of XSS free, CP free, hidden service links? Until someone can, the wikipedia entry shouldn't be linking to hidden services at all. -- pde (talk) 20:28, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

The idea is that new users learning about hidden services need a few .onion addresses to get started. This article is a great place for that. The problem is, the total number of hidden services is small, so it is easy to find content that is objectionable to someone. I think a list like you describe would make a nice external link. 90.128.96.153 (talk) 01:33, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Core.onion

As some of you probably already know, core.onion was recently hacked and replaced with a page threatening legal action against several Tor users. Although I hope this will not take longer than a few days for its owner to resolve, the fact remains that this is a chilling reminder of the way all hidden services, however anonymous the system may make them in theory, are vulnerable to the same types of sttacks that can be mounted against any other webserver (something which people often seem to overlook in favor of Tor-specific issues when configuring their server). It seems that this is undoubtedly the most important threat to hidden services right now, as such vulnerabilities can easily be used to expose them, or, as in this case, used to propagate false messages.

Maybe it would be worth addressing this in the article? -85.17.231.67 (talk)

It's not entirely clear if this was a real attack or a prank by the site's owner. (Despite my earlier statement that core.onion is "not a joke".) Possibly he was trying to make some kind of point. In any case, it seems to be mostly back to normal. ManaUser (talk) 16:29, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Torchat

Should the Tor page mention or link to the Torchat application website or should this be a separate page? http://code.google.com/p/torchat/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.117.177.114 (talk) 15:17, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

someone removed TorChat altogether with this change: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tor_%28anonymity_network%29&diff=prev&oldid=216922421 Why did this happen? Now Scatterchat is the only chat/messaging application in this section. Why is ScatterChat more worthy to be mentioned than TorChat? 82.83.248.71 (talk) 12:34, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

It looks like someone was cleaning house, as they removed several links. TorChat may have been removed because it did not have a Wikipedia article, so there was nothing to see (also). You are in luck, as a user (you?) created a TorChat WP article less then two-and-a-half hours after your mention of it here. Feel free to add it. I don't think anybody cares. 90.134.51.3 (talk) 17:53, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Low Latency Fact Tag

Latency in this context is a type of network, and doesn't necessarily mean high-speed or low latency in the sense of an online First-person shooter. I removed the fact tag because TOR is accepted as a "low latency" anonymity network in the study of those types of networks. I could probably find a source if I really needed to, but the tag seems unnecessary. I'm guessing the tag was added when someone used TOR and found out it wasn't as low latency as their Counter-strike connection.--Littleman_TAMU (talk) 00:57, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with your edit, though the context is really the same; in anonymity networks or in first person shooters, low latency means low packet travel time, meaning higher speed. What differs between anonymity systems and games is just scale; high-latency anonymity systems have RTTs of hours, maybe days; "high latency" might be a few 100ms in a FPS. Note this is going to cause a problem with the terminology in the field; already there is discussion of a need for a much lower latency anonymity network, a speed advancement over Tor like Tor was over Mixmaster, to support VOIP, various streaming video protocols, and I'm sure, games like Counter-strike. So while for now "low-latency" is accurately applied to Tor per the literature, you should probably expect to have to edit this soon once the terminology is set with the next generation of high-speed anonymity systems. We may get lucky and they will call the next type of anonymity network "ultra-low latency" or something along those lines. NoDepositNoReturn (talk) 19:12, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
I think low latency in this sense means that the timing of TCP segments is not artificially stalled in order to defeat bandwidth monitoring. The software makes a best effort to get data through the network as fast as the system will allow rather than creating latency. The benefit is interactivity, the trade-off is that it lets a strong adversary to sometimes make better guesses about identity. 90.135.206.57 (talk) 15:07, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Why Trivia?

Why there is a "trivia" warning under In popular culture section?

They are usually lumped into the same category.83.191.190.208 (talk) 16:47, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

The "See also" section is a mess.

It would be great to have a Wikipedia article about anonymity networks. Then all those links have a place to go.90.128.71.15 (talk) 17:23, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I am going to make some major changes to this article.

Is there anybody here at all who has thoughts on the matter? I intend to get rid of several links, fix the hidden services section, and probably a few other things.90.135.149.106 (talk) 21:04, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I changed the Anonymous hidden services section to simply "Hidden services." I gutted a lot of it (like warnings about illegal content), and added some references. I also think I have found a solution to the whole link spam/Matt vs Jamon nonsense by simply not linking to any hidden services from this article. The one link to a public Internet hidden service list is sufficient and balanced. I would like to hear the input of others. I put quite a lot of time into this (check out my citations, and please correct any part of them). 90.134.118.52 (talk) 01:14, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I've got a problem with the, "HiddenServices - Xiando" as it leads to child porn

Hi,

I've got a problem with listing: HiddenServices - Xiando

The reason being is that core.onion is listed as the first link in the Xiando index.

I see the following scenario:

click wikipedia.. click tor ... sounds good ... download install... ... let's check out a hidden service to see what it's like ... check wikipedia again .. ... click Xiando index... click first link.. core.onion.... torpedo... ....... what is torpedo.... click .... ah, child porn!

That's right, anyone who visits core.onion is immediately presented with a bunch of options to view child porn.

I found this a bit distressing, and I'm not sure Wikipedia should be linking to indexs, that link to sites with genuine child porn content just a click away.

If you are wondering, go check out the core.onion site for yourself and make your own judgement.

That is a good point. It looks like: From this article - 1) Link to Xiando - 2) Link to core.onion - 3) Link to random Tor CP site - 4) Link to Hard Candy - 5) Link to CP. That is four or five links, but still rather close. As this article was, core.onion was placed (for whatever reason) at the top of the list of "central sites" (odd coincidence). Given that core.onion is not primarily a hidden service index, I will see to getting it bumped down the Xiando list a bit. In the meantime, feel free to get rid of the link to Xiando if you think it violates policy or good taste. A list like that, however, is awesome information for users learning about Tor. Do you know of any sanitized lists floating around? 90.134.51.3 (talk) 17:54, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Update: I have thought about this. It looks like every list of hidden services has links to index sites. Every index site has a link to a section that has links to sites which have links to sections that link to CP. I found a site, onion-proxy, which lets you browse to hidden services via SSL. It has a few links to get started, but it has core.onion, APE and various search engines. Even Wikileaks is illegal in some places. Please let me know what you think. 90.135.48.133 (talk) 22:35, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
I've just had another look at the core.onion service again, and it clearly has 'TorPedo' as a very prominent link on the top page. This means that it's only a few clicks away. After some consideration, given the fact that Xiando links to another page which provides child porn, I think that the gain in removing it outweighs the reduction in usefulness of the Tor wikipedia entry. I will remove it for the moment and refer it to Wikipedia moderators if there are others who vehemently want it to stay.

Just wanted to note that the hard candy section on xiandos was removed so could we put http://xiandos.info/HiddenServices in again? It's quite useful to get started imho.

I personally think it's ridiculous not to link to such sites anyways; there is no questionable content on the site itself (core.onion) and even xiandos hard candy section only linked to a wiki-collection of links. With 5 hops you'll get cp from anywhere on tor if you're looking for it.

You might personally find it ridiculous, however there is no denying that core.onion, which xiandos links to, has working links for child porn. This make xiandos a facilitator for people who want to see pictures of preteen children being sexually abused. In addition, xiandos also has other links of dubious contents such as "Stolen amateur porn dump" and "furry and zoophilic stories". This doesn't strike me as added value to the tor wikipedia page, it strikes me as added value for a very small number of people who use tor to look at morally reprehensible material. I think that the only kind of index that the tor article should contain is one that is vetted for suitability for a general audience. In addition, arguing that other tor sites have links to child porn is absolutely irrelevant in considering the suitability of including the xiandos index on its own merit.

That's why I added it as a personal opinion of mine ;) You're probably right that it doesn't belong here, I just wanted to let you know that the questionable links were removed so it might be appropriate to add the site again.

Although I like the idea of an index that's "vetted for suitability for a general audience" (as it would make Tor more respecatable for a "general audience") the problem to make such an index is I think the very nature of those hidden services. I didn't look to thoroughly into it but from what I've seen, how many sites are there that explicitly host really illegal (i.e. CP) content? "PedoBay", "TorPedo" and something like "eryyyy" that are three sites (+ a handful of others that just don't care and host it by the way) which "poison" the network. So as there are not too many hidden service sites (unless there is an immense dark net I missed) it's almost inevitable to have links (or links to links to ...) to those few sites no matter where you begin; unless the site is totally isolated. Thus if xiandos' index doesnt fit in here I doubt we will find a real one that will.

This is starting to get a little heated, so please sign with four-tildes. There is no need at all to accuse us of looking for morally reprehensible material. The hidden services are tightly knit because indexes of hidden services are of great value, and lists will contain links to other lists. To keep the links current, the lists are wikified. Because hidden services are anonymous, people will add links with impunity. Since the services are hidden, there is little pressure to censor them.
I have not been able to find a sanitized list as of yet. If someone wants to create and post one, that would be great. Just be aware that maintaining the list will consume a little time; new services will not be added quickly, and dead links will remain longer. Guidelines: 1) No links to anything unsuitable for children. This includes onionforum, as it has a mature section. 2) No links to other indexes with links to anything unsuitable for children (this probably means no indexes). 3) Possibly no links to hidden-service search engines.
If I could get such a list hosted at Xiandos, would there be a problem with it. Is the site tainted? 90.135.206.57 (talk) 14:56, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia is WP:NOT#CENSORED for children. None of the links lead to illegal content, and morality has no place in determing the content of our articles, per WP:NPOV --AnotherSolipsist (talk) 20:16, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
I would think that a sanitised list at Xiandos would be perfectly cool. The only criteria that would be relevant IMO would be if you'd be happy for your child, mother, or father, to look at sites from the list that's pretty cool. If people browse Xiandos and other places looking for more populated lists then so be it, and IMO wouldn't reduce the appropriateness of the sanitised list to be listed here. 86.132.176.144 (talk) 22:06, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Someone has totally borked this page in the past couple of weeks. There used to be a link to the core.onion and stuff on here which someone has removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.9.50.100 (talk) 22:10, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

The only links that were removed were ones that had direct links to child pornography.
That's not true. And those that do are indexes of Torland, like Google is to the WWW. Should we delink www search engines, too? One can find morally reprehensible material with them very easily, too. If you can find a law applying to Florida that says we can't link to sites that link to sites that link to sites that link to sites that have child pornography, I'll agree to remove them. Otherwise, Wikipedia is WP:NOT#CENSORED over moral concerns. --AnotherSolipsist (talk) 18:31, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

AnotherSolipsist has been banned for paedophilia related edits on wikipedia. Now that this pederast has been removed from editing articles on wikipedia, can we have a sensible debate again about this issue? 80.177.118.85 (talk) 21:07, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Sure. And as much as I disagree with that guy's other edits, that's no reason to discredit his points on here, which were perfectly well-reasoned and valid. I also feel compelled to point you to Wikipedia's rules. Wikipedia is not censored. That is one of the key principles upon which it was founded. Of course linking to something illegal is a different matter altogether, but you seem to be forgetting that we're not actually linking to child porn in any way. Looking at the arguments against it so far, I see:

"I found this a bit distressing"

Sorry, but that's your problem. You could have simply ignored it and clicked "back" rather than choosing to view anything on there. Your lack of self-control and susequent discomfort is not our problem.

"I think that the only kind of index that the tor article should contain is one that is vetted for suitability for a general audience."

WP:NOT.

"The only criteria that would be relevant IMO would be if you'd be happy for your child, mother, or father, to look at sites from the list"

WP:NOT. Should we also remove Wikipedia's article on pornography, while we're at it?

"Guidelines: 1) No links to anything unsuitable for children. This includes onionforum, as it has a mature section. 2) No links to other indexes with links to anything unsuitable for children (this probably means no indexes). 3) Possibly no links to hidden-service search engines."

Wikipedia itself doesn't meet those criteria. Why on Earth should any links from here be expected to? Google returns many more "immoral" results than any hidden search engine...I suppose we better remove that article, too...

"The only links that were removed were ones that had direct links to child pornography."

Incorrect. The worst I've ever seen on core.onion is a link to a disclaimer page warning of exactly what the site contains. Any sane person would hit "back" in their browser toolbar at that point.

"This doesn't strike me as added value to the tor wikipedia page, it strikes me as added value for a very small number of people who use tor to look at morally reprehensible material."

So you don't believe Wikipedia should give people an entry point into the .onion network? Have you any idea that number of forum threads I have seen asking for "Tor links" because people were unable to find an index? If that's not evidence of the "added value" of including this, I don't know what is.

"there is no denying that core.onion, which xiandos links to, has working links for child porn. This make xiandos a facilitator for people who want to see pictures of preteen children being sexually abused."

Google has working links to child porn, I guess we really shouldn't be link that...4chan has child porn, hey, let's delete that article too! Limewire, eDonkey and [Bittorrent]] have child porn as well, why not wipe the whole fucking lot off the peer-to-peer section?

"morally reprehensible"

I very much agree. However, it's not our place to censor anything here based on morals. Many, many things are morally reprehensible, but that does not mean they should not have a place on Wikipedia, unless prohibited by US law.

Please people, be rational.

Many, many things are morally reprehensible, but that does not mean they should not have a place on Wikipedia, unless prohibited by US law.
Child porn is illegal under US law.
I honestly can't tell whether you're actually that stupid or just trolling for the sake of it, but just in case it isn't the latter, re-read the comment above yours and notice that we are linking to an index page and text-only message board. Nothing else.

Of course it is but so what? core.onion still doesn't have any! Compare it to bitorrent: If the TOR Client/Vidalia etc is Azureus/uTorrent then core.onion is something like thepiratebay.org/other torrent sites. Maybe not everything THEY DO is absolutely legal in the U.S. but their website is not illegal to VISIT. All the articles about torrent sites have (of course) links to the corresponding sites because there is nothing objectable about the website itself.

Please sign posts. Please indent. It's getting heated and difficult to sort out. I would personally like a link to a good hidden service directory. I agree completely that links to the sites previously mentioned are very low-risk, and probably fall well within Wikipedia guidelines. Child pornography is a huge issue to many people. The problem is not just that there are well-labeled links to links to links to links to CP, but that some anonymous person might just decide to plop down links to actual images. Until recently, anybody could post any picture they wanted on the front page of core.onion, so a link to there from here could be a direct link to an illegal image. Having pictures in Talks, Pages or Sites would make that two clicks. Since somebody can create a hidden service of a web page with illegal images, and post that link in the Sites section, this is always a possibility. Yes, it is always a possibility on Google, too. At any rate, we can solve this issue, let's not get too steamed over it, okay? (I am a little ticked off that a person would be banned from talking about their point of view, though.)90.135.216.19 (talk) 01:10, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
some anonymous person might just decide to plop down links to actual images. Until recently, anybody could post any picture they wanted on the front page of core.onion, so a link to there from here could be a direct link to an illegal image.

Unfortunately, nowhere is safe from that. Take 4chan, which displays the 4 most recent images on its front page. Even on Wikipedia itself, anyone can upload an offensive image and link it in any article they want.

@Topic: As i see the main article is locked with the links inside so i guess our debate is indeed settled. As you said, posting images on core.onion is no longer possible and all sites (the ones on core.onion to my knowledge at least) are clearly laballed/have a huge disclaimer like TorPedo so no one will be "assaulted" by CP images. After all i'm glad we were able to properly discuss this without flaming/insults and get to an imho satisfying result for wikipedia. I'm btw sorry for not signing my post. I'm no steady contributor so i don't have a real account but i think especially concerning such a "heated and difficult" topic it can also be quite useful as it prevents argumentum ad hominem.
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