Talk:Tor (network)/Archive 3

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3

Who/what does Tor, in layman terms, hide traffic data from

Let us say person X is using the Company Y's internet with his own computer. He uses Tor for surfing on the internet.

- Will the network-admin of Company Y be able to see what X is doing on the internet, what X is surfing to, downloading, etc.? Or is it completely impossible for the admin to see any traffic X is routing through Tor?

- Will the ISP of Company Y be able to see what X is doing on the internet, what sites X is visiting, what X is writing, etc.? Or is it completely impossible for the ISP to see any traffic X is routing through Tor?

- Who will actually see what X is doing on the internet, and will this person/corporation be able to link X's trafic to X's identity? Speaking in practical/realistic terms, of course. I know that in the most extreme of cases, everything can be done, but if X uses Tor, who can actually SEE (see traffic) what X is doing on the web, and who can realistically LINK this to X's identity? (And what are the chances of this happening?)

Specific answers with specific examples will be greatly appreciated! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.134.183.32 (talk) 22:14, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

This isn't the place for it, but while you are eating lunch or taking a dump, the network-admin can mirror your disk drive so he can see everything you have done. He can also put in a rootkit backdoor and spyware on your computer so he can see everything you do. He can then tell anybody he wants, including the ISP or the police. What tor is supposed to do is encypt all your network activity. The network-admin and the ISP can determine that you are using Tor. The operator of the exit node, and that exit node's ISP will know the contents of your communication, but not who you are. This is assuming a perfect world.90.135.216.19 (talk) 23:19, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Some asshat keeps deleting the links to core.onion

WTF? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.151.114.118 (talk) 14:05, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

It's not me, but I think a link to a public Internet list of hidden services (like Xiandos) would be ideal. If we must have hidden services, the Tor Project has a hidden service, so I tihnk that should be there. Now the Tor Project has links to core.onion as well as the Hidden Wiki, and if it's good enough for them, sure, why not? There is one major problem, though. Core.onion is becoming the de-facto entry point because it has been actively promoted in several places, including Wikipedia. So the logic becomes: We should include it because it is popular. It is popular because it has been included. Therefore, we should include it because it has been included.90.135.216.19 (talk) 23:13, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Torbutton and Alexa?

I have just removed revision 223333529 as I could not find any valid sources backing it up. If anyone thinks it does need mentioning, please provide a trustworthy reference. So far I did not find any bug reports or credible sources, merely (as far as I can see) FUD on the Mozilla review page. — Ewald || contact talk | email || info user | contrib || posted on 21:51, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

directory links

Regarding these edits:

02:23, 13 July 2008 (→Central sites: delete links that cannot be accessed without special software, per WP:NOTDIR) 02:22, 13 July 2008 (→Central sites: remove link to a wiki-site, that does not meet WP:RS)

I don't think those reasons are vald. I read WP:NOTDIR, and nowere does it say anything about links that cannot be accessed without special software. Since the link to Xiandos is not being used as a source, it does not fall within the scope of WP:RS. If don't like having these links in the article, please, just say so. Checking behind you like this is a massive waste of time. 90.134.69.135 (talk) 11:33, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

The purpose of the article is to educate about the Onion Router, not to provide instructions or a directory of external links, whether or not those links are in the external links section or within the article. Several sections of Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not apply.
There are also many links in the see also section that make it look like a directory; topics that don't have Wikipedia articles should not be in the see also section. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 17:22, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
Yes, the See Also section needs cleanup. By all means go ahead, but that doesn't explain why you object to having even one link to a list of hidden services. Take another look at WP:NOT why don't you. I think the relevant rule is WP:NOTLINK where it says "Wikipedia articles are not: Mere collections of external links or Internet directories. There is nothing wrong with adding one or more useful content-relevant links to an article; however, excessive lists can dwarf articles and detract from the purpose of Wikipedia." Surely an example of a hidden service is relevant and useful when discussing hidden services. ManaUser (talk) 05:57, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
I was thinking the same thing his. Also his new section, Illegal Uses looks biased to me. While factually accurate, the characterization of the events in Germany as Tor having "attracted international law enforcement investigations" is misleading at best. IMHO, Illegal Uses should be cleaned up and merged into the Etiquette and Abuse section. ManaUser (talk) 16:39, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
Jack-A-Roe: Thank you very much for your time, contributions and expertise. The only thing that was time-consuming for me was revisiting the specific policies cited to discover that they were (in my opinion) unrelated to the links removed. That is not to say whether or not there are perfectly valid reasons for removing them, just that the reasons given in the edit were (to me) way off. Regarding your concerns, I don't think that one wikified web site or one hidden service example (or even both of them together, for that matter) constitute a directory of external links. I believe something like that is worthy of being in the External links section, but (I suppose) it is in the hidden services section because of the explanation that Tor is necessary to see the content, and that the content is largely unpoliced. If it is a question of style, the external links can easily be incorporated into the paragraph. As for the See also section, you are completely correct. The sections is still a mess, but not as much of a mess as it was before. It is a work in progress in its early stages. I believe that many of the items are notable enough, and Wikipedia articles about them will be forthcoming. I think the list will be massively trimmed down as we sort things out and get each thing in its proper place. For now, it's almost like a repository for most of the anonymity applications on WP. 83.189.50.224 (talk) 21:24, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Page protection

I could not find that vandalism in the history. I am curious as to what that refers. 83.189.50.224 (talk) 21:28, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Okay, now the page is semi-protected. Can there please be some discussion about the need for these things? I can't seen the vandalism that the page history refers to. 90.136.115.53 (talk) 19:47, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
The page has been incorrectly moved a number of times. At least the last one is listed at the movelog (that's a regular URI to en.wikipedia and not a wikilink because I don't know how to make one to the move log). b0at (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 22:30, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
I would like to fix several things on this page. I do not want to create a Wikipedia account. 90.136.138.0 (talk) 11:23, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
This article has stagnated. Please unprotect it so that people may edit it again. The last edit reworded a direct quote simply for the sake of removing the quotation marks ([[1]]). I don't see how reader interest has anything to do with crediting an author. 90.128.4.39 (talk) 11:06, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
The only edit in over a month has been to add a tag that this article does not meet Wikipedia standards. Can somebody please unprotect this page so that we may improve it.90.136.253.36 (talk) 17:15, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Add a request for unprotection to WP:RFPP. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:12, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
This has been done. Nobody will unlock this page. Why is that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.136.143.111 (talk) 19:22, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

It has happened again. The logs do not make it clear as to why. What page-move vandalism occured? What edit summaries were removed? It seems strange that people would want to vandalize this page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.136.113.151 (talk) 01:38, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Are we going to be told why? Who would want the Tor article editable only by account holders? 90.128.96.153 (talk) 01:35, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
Can we please be told what happened to make this article protected? I think users have a right to know this.85.160.36.49 (talk) 20:03, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Node flags

The effort put forth to educate the readers about the various node flags is commendable. However, these are implementation details that virtually nobody wants or needs to know about. I propose that there instead be information about how Tor's implementation of onion routing is different from onion routing as described in the onion routing article. (Tor uses telescoping circuits.) An easy-to-understand explanation of the path data takes, and how it is encrypted and anonymized, would be great! I can't edit the article because I do not have a Wikipedia account. 83.189.125.144 (talk) 19:09, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Hello there! I expanded this section only because I had the relevant information handy. It came naturally after investing a lot of time searching. I agree with your arguments, the article needs a lot of work. If it's not unprotected soon, you can always post your contributions to the talk page. A register user will copy it to the main article, probably sooner than later. Regards, Adamantios (talk) 09:33, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Exit nodes

Adding reliable information about the legality of exit nodes to the 'legal issues' section might be useful. Since the ip address of the exit node is what the destination machine sees, the exit nodes may be the primary target of the police in some cases. Things like "can I suddenly become an exit node while running TOR" and "can I get arrested if I was a TOR exit node that routed an attack on some computer system", I think more people would like to know this before deciding to use this software. Theultramage (talk) 15:37, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Things like that are FUD, and should not be on the page at all. It's like when FOX News asks "questions" about right wing talking points. They aren't real questions, rather, they are to scare people.85.207.121.59 (talk) 15:55, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

EDonkey, Kademlia

> BitTorrent "Due to the high bandwidth usage caused by the use of this protocol, it is considered impolite and inappropriate to use the Tor network for BitTorrent transfers"

I would assume that, like torrents, since EDonkey and Kademlia are similarly high traffic p2p services, and their usage is extensive, that they would not be polite or appropriate to use. Someone more familiar with the TOR community should probably indicate, if I am correct, that the usage of these on TOR would be equally discouraged. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.250.219.28 (talk) 23:22, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Alpha vs. Stable?

Are there any major differences between the alpha and stable versions, aside from the obvious reasons?

I think the alphas usually have new features not found in the stable releases. The release notes are on the Tor Project site. More information is on the or-talk and or-dev mailing lists. 90.128.48.249 (talk) 21:58, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Fix it please

Can someone please fix those links (the ones with random crap in them like oldd6th4cr5spio4.onion and l6nvqsqivhrunqvs.onion). I looks like someone tried redirecting them. And yes, complaining here is easier than creating an account and waiting 4 days. I see more "view source" button than "edit" pages these days... so much for that whole "anyone can edit" thing. 75.4.156.210 (talk) 08:25, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Nevermind, I normally don't see the raw .onion urls with my browser setup... hehe. I didn't know they worked that way. :) 75.4.156.210 (talk) 08:35, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Grammar issue

In the Implementation section "The rationale for using C is that Tor requires routers to run fast. "

Should acutally be

"The rationale for using C is that Tor requires routers to run quickly."

untrue statement without source?

" Due to the high bandwidth usage caused by the use of this protocol, it is considered impolite and inappropriate to use the Tor network for BitTorrent transfers. By default, the Tor exit policy blocks the standard BitTorrent ports."

I dont think this is true. Can someone confirm if this is true, or should I remove it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.16.22.21 (talk) 10:21, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

AdvOR client

There's an awesome opensource Windows-only client that in my opinion is far superior in usability to the horrible* Vidalia. (* - Personal opinion)

It's called "Advanced Onion Router" or AdvOR. It allows you to select exit country from the UI, without restarting, and various similar options. You can easily tune it for hard anonymity, or speed and obfuscation (for example to circumvent country IP address blocks and ISP-level access restrictions - like to use Facebook from the PRC).

I think it should be included in the implementations list. Link is: [2]

38.125.36.194 (talk) 14:18, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

I would avoid this. 92.78.149.81 (talk) 19:12, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Name confusion

This article now says that it's Tor and was previously TOR which was/is an acronym for The Onion Router. Tor was never TOR. Here's what we know: The Tor Project FAQ says that Tor was originally an acronym and that it's called Tor "Because Tor is the onion routing network." Onion-router.net refers to "The Onion Routing program...made up of projects..." That site's list of publications goes on to refer to Tor as "Tor (the Onion Routing)" in reference to "Deploying Low-Latency Anonymity: Design Challenges and Social Factors", IEEE Security & Privacy, September/October 2007 (Vol. 5, No. 5), pp. 83-87. (Plaintext). In reference to "Challenges in deploying low-latency anonymity", NRL CHACS Report 5540-625, 2005. (PDF) it refers to Tor as "Tor (the second generation onion routing network)". Finally, the original Tor presentation entitled "Tor: The Second-Generation Onion Router", in Proceedings of the 13th USENIX Security Symposium, August 2004. (PDF), in addition to its title, refers to a "second-generation Onion Routing system" and "The Onion Routing project..." It would be nice to know if there is one definitive acronym that Tor once was. Almost every time I've seen it used, "routing" was used rather than "router." Looking back at Tor mailing lists dating back to 2002 and the source code and documentation from Tor 0.0.0, there is never any reference from people within the project to the capitalization TOR. 94.222.101.57 (talk) 11:33, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Resolved
You've made the edit and you're right. --Rezonansowy (talk • contribs) 16:02, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
I don't think it is resolved. It says that it was "The Onion Router" in the first paragraph. In the History section, it says it originated as "The Onion Routing project (TOR project). In addition to that conflicting information, there is no mention of "The onion routing" anywhere. 88.75.170.170 (talk) 20:23, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
It should say that Tor stands for "the onion router" or "the onion routing." For example, the onion routing network, the onion routing software, etc. 49.244.244.158 (talk) 10:46, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

government money text & washington post

This block of text has gone back and forth a few times. I'm not clear what's controversial. It sounds like the IP removing it has a problem with what the source says rather than its inclusion here, but I might be mistaken. --— Rhododendrites talk |  17:28, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Are the two people quoted here, Roger Dingledine and Andrew Lewman, liars? Maybe they accept money from the US government in exchange for deliberately making it insecure to use. Is there anything wrong with having them answer to these charges in a Wikipedia article? I mean, if a blog operated by the Washington Post can speculate on their honesty, why can't we? I have a better idea; find a reliable source that does in fact have evidence that this is true and then we can include it in the article. We should have a factual article, not an editorial on the question as to the honesty of those two people. 94.222.97.99 (talk) 18:00, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
I'm finding your edit summaries and response here difficult to understand. That may be because sarcasm isn't translating into text. So, wait, your problem is that you think the Washington Post blogger is calling Dingledine and Lewman liars? I see nothing of the sort there. I do see quotes and I do see a reliable source, though. Even if they did question the honesty of those speaking for Tor, we wouldn't be practicing a neutral point of view to omit it just because we don't like the tone of the article. Wikipedia operates according to Verifiability, not what a user says is or is not "fact." The idea is that if a source is reliable, it won't publish incorrect information -- and if it does, other reliable sources will publish contradictory information. It sounds like you just don't like it, but even then I don't understand why -- all I see is an article about where Tor gets its money and an account of a couple spokespeople as to the role of that money. --— Rhododendrites talk |  18:39, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
This is easily understood. Look at the title of this blog post: "The feds pay for 60 percent of Tor’s development. Can users trust it?" Notice that the blog does not answer this question; it merely "puts it out there." It is pure speculation. Here is what Brian Fung goes on to say in his blog post: "...NSA had managed to circumvent much of the encryption...By inserting backdoors...calls into question many of the technologies...One indispensable tool is Tor...there's no hard evidence that the government has compromised the anonymity of Tor traffic. But...a substantial chunk of the Tor Project's 2012 operating budget came from the Department of Defense, which houses the NSA." So it does question whether or not the NSA has purchased the ability to de-anonymize Tor users. That directly questions the honesty of Andrew Lewman and Roger Dingledine, who are now quoted in this Wikipedia article denying the allegation. They should not have to answer to these questions here.
What I don't understand is why people think this opinion piece of WP:NEWSBLOG is so important to have in this article. Just because some media outlet wants to raise conspiracy concerns doesn't mean we have to. If you want to continue to maintain that this blog does not incriminate those people, you need look no further than its comments section. Almost every single comment says that the Tor devs have been paid off. The connection is undeniable. 94.222.97.99 (talk) 21:29, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
It's a provocative title, yes, which isn't ideal journalism but has nothing to do with whether or not it's considered a reliable source. The headline wasn't even copied into the article on Wikipedia. Are you disputing the facts that were copied here? I.e. that Dingledine and Lewman verified part of its budget comes from these governmental agencies? If that's your argument, I think it would be worth looking for other sources to refute it, but if you just don't like that the piece casts doubt -- that's what the news does. In today's privacy climate when organizations have many times said the NSA has no access to their data just for the opposite to be true, doesn't it also make sense to look closely at the end-all be-all of privacy tools when it's discovered they receive government funding? Nothing here says "the NSA has a back door" and in fact what's in question is two quotes rebutting that accusation. But we can't include them because of the title of the source they were quoted in? --— Rhododendrites talk |  23:56, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
I included the title as evidence that the blog does, contrary to your previous remarks, cast doubt as to the honesty of those people you mentioned. I believe the quality of the source does, in fact, affect it's status as a reliable source. What was copied into the article was not merely "that Dingledine and Lewman verified part of its budget comes from these governmental agencies". Roger Dingledine was quoted as saying the funds are "...less similar to being a procurement contract...", the context being the NSA procuring a secret backdoor, which yes, would be dishonest of him. Lewman was quoted as denying it, "...the Tor service did not collaborate with the NSA to reveal identities of users." These are direct aspersions to their integrity. Just because the "news" does something doesn't mean we have to follow suit. And no, it does not make sense to "look closely" if what you really mean is to ask pointed questions about the honesty and integrity of living persons on Wikipedia. It's not unreasonable to stick to the facts and avoid unsubstantiated conjecture. Yes, it's poorly sourced, but an even bigger reason not to use this is that it introduces speculation into the article, even if they are only denials in the article itself. Since you warned me with a block if I remove the content again as per WP:3RR (even though it's been much longer than 24 hours and this is a WP:BLP issue), could you please remove this content for me? 94.222.97.99 (talk) 00:40, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
I don't see how you're not agreeing with me. "less similar to being a procurement contract" and "...did not collaborate with the NSA to reveal identities" are sides of the same coin. Given the information that they receive funding from the government, suspicion is taken for granted. All that's added is their denying it. Are you saying that even bringing up the question of whether or not some governmental agency is granted access on the basis of funding is the same as questioning the character of these two representatives for Tor? If so, that's not how it works. Regardless, pending a third party weighing in here I'll remove it for now in the interest of avoiding edit wars and deference to WP:BLP. --— Rhododendrites talk |  00:55, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
To answer your question, you asked, "Are you disputing the facts that were copied here? I.e. that Dingledine and Lewman verified part of its budget comes from these governmental agencies?" My response was that in addition to that they were quoted in the context of answering questions about their truthfulness. And yes, asking if they've been lying to the public all these years without evidence is something we must not do. This is very important. Brian Fung's doubts are not. 94.222.97.99 (talk) 01:26, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
To answer your actual question: "Are you saying that even bringing up the question of whether or not some governmental agency is granted access on the basis of funding is the same as questioning the character of these two representatives for Tor?" Converting your question from third person: Are you saying that bringing up the question of whether or not Roger Dingledine and Andrew Lewman granted access to some governmental agency on the basis of funding is the same as questioning the character of these two representatives for Tor? Naturally! (In case you didn't know, Roger and Andrew are the project leader and executive director, respectively.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.222.97.99 (talk) 01:37, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
Ok, so I understand your point now, and I'll reiterate that just because you say "we shouldn't do that" doesn't mean any Wikipedia policy agrees. BLP isn't an issue because it's a direct quote taken from a reliable source. A question was asked -- a question, by the way, which is implied in the notability/inclusion of the Tor-government funding connection to begin with -- and a reply was issued (from people representing the organization, no less). Unless the whole matter of funding isn't a notable enough aspect of the subject, this is an obvious include. --— Rhododendrites talk |  04:34, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
Do you understand that the matter of funding, which is already thoroughly presented in this article, is different from Roger and Andrew accepting money to backdoor their products while lying about it, which is sheer speculation? And I said "we must not do" that, not shouldn't. If you want to go into the reliability of the source, there is plenty wrong with it, but I've been trying to keep this brief. 178.8.155.17 (talk) 13:26, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

There is now a thread about this at the reliable sources noticeboard. --— Rhododendrites talk |  15:10, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Please stop adding this material over and over again until the issue is resolved! Every time this information reappears, it gets cached by Google. 88.75.125.199 (talk) 10:26, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

No. Four editors (Rhododendrites. Materialscientist, WhisperToMe and me) have examined and rejected your claims of a BLP violation, and you are now attempting to override that consensus through edit warring. You have two choices; you can try to persuade other editors using reason and evidence, or you can keep doing what you are doing and be blocked from editing Wikipedia. Please read WP:BRD, WP:TALKDONTREVERT and WP:CONSENSUS. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:09, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Please read WP:BLPREMOVE and remove the material. 88.75.125.199 (talk) 11:27, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Also, can you show me where this is so? Are you talking about on this talk page or elsewhere? What consensus are you talking about? 88.75.125.199 (talk) 11:30, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
All on this page. Count the editors who have reverted your attempts to remove the material or who have told you on this talk page that it does not violate BLP. and WP:BLPREMOVE isn't a magic word you can use to edit war with impunity. The material has to actually be a BLP violation, and this clearly isn't. -Guy Macon (talk) 11:49, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
That would be three, one of whom has not weighed in here and another, namely you, has posted a lengthy NSA conspiracy theory on this talk page Talk:Tor_(anonymity_network)#NSA_Endorsed.21. We must not write rumors about people's integrity into the article, and merely writing their "responses" (which when you check the original source for Andrew Lewman, it isn't anything of the kind) to the allegations does not get around that. We have to insist on high quality sources when talking about people, because their professional reputations are at stake. This source is far from being high quality. 88.75.125.199 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 12:24, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
And now that this page has been protected with that content in it, I would ask that someone with an account remove the content until this has been resolved. 88.75.125.199 (talk) 12:28, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
It was semi-protected because of your edit warring. I suggest that you try persuading others rather than insulting them and barking orders. --Guy Macon (talk)
I'm sorry, but you reverted three times to put the contentious material back while we discuss whether or not it's defamatory. Editors are supposed to remove the material immediately and wait for consensus. You are the one warring, and I now suspect it's to advance your pet theory. 88.75.161.131 (talk) 21:11, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
It appears that the uninvolved administrator who semi-protected the page, thus blocking you from editing it while leaving me, Rhododendrites, and the other logged-in editors free to edit it does not agree. If you think that he should have instead blocked me or some other editor, feel free to ask him to do that, or you can go to WP:AN and ask another uninvolved administrator to review his decision. Let me know how that works out for you.
I suggest that when you appeal, you use the following language as being appropriate to the situation:
Help! Help! I'm being repressed! Did you hear that? Did you hear that, eh? That's what I'm on about. Did you see him repressing me? You saw it, didn't you? Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system!! [3]
Also, "BLP" is not a magic word that lets you get your way. The material has to actually be a BLP violation, and this clearly isn't. This has been explained to you before. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:06, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

You're presenting the same kind of arguments repeatedly and have not convinced anybody. In fact now you're just pointing fingers. It's hard to point at anyone else as edit warring when you're waging a one-person campaign to remove this material several others have now added. Rather than persist along this same course, I recommend you seek satisfaction at the BLP or NPOV noticeboard. --— Rhododendrites talk |  23:12, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Herostratus made a significant change to the meaning of the Lewman citation. Would anyone like to voice their opinion? Good, bad, indifferent? 94.222.96.136 (talk) 20:34, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Note: the edit in question was explained at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Washington Post blog at Tor (anonymity network).
I think it was a good edit. In general. I am pretty happy with what the current group of editors have been doing with the page, and if something isn't quite right someone corrects it in short order. Now I might be inclined to support your preferred version, but that would require that you actually explain your reasoning, which is something you have, so far, refused to do. Instead you have made claims of BLP violations where none exist, edit warred to the point where an admin stepped in and prevented you from editing the page, and insulted the other editors. I can't make you follow our policy at WP:CONSENSUS, but I can tell you that if you pester the other editors too much without engaging in any real effort to discuss things and reach a compromise, you will find yourself unable to edit the article talk page as well. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:02, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
Please stop talking about me. You keep retelling events and distorting facts along the way. 92.78.115.171 (talk) 09:57, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
I am interested, however, in what you think my preferred version is. 92.78.115.171 (talk) 12:03, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
Could somebody please at least fix the reference? Since the publisher has a well-known newspaper of the same name, and the current citation makes it appear that this material was printed in it. I can not make this change myself due to page protection. Naturally, this is no way an endorsement of what has been included. I recommend <ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/06/the-feds-pays-for-60-percent-of-tors-development-can-users-trust-it/ |title=The feds pay for 60 percent of Tor’s development. Can users trust it? |last=Fung |first=Brian |date=6 September 2013 |website=The Switch |publisher=The Washington Post |accessdate=6 February 2014}}</ref>.
I started a thread about the poor sourcing on the Biographies of living persons noticeboard. 92.78.115.171 (talk) 14:08, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
What part of
The reliable sources noticeboard is for discussing the reliability of sources
and
The biographies of living persons noticeboard is for discussing violations of Wikipedia's biographies of living persons policy
are you having trouble understanding? --Guy Macon (talk) 01:48, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#BLP_noticeboard_scope_in_regard_to_WP:V.2C_WP:NPOV.2C_and_WP:NOR
Are you trying to reduce community participation in this issue? It's important. 178.8.154.86 (talk) 01:59, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
That's right. Suggesting that you discuss sourcing issues on the reliable sources noticeboard is an evil plot to silence you. You have unmasked my fiendish plan. Curses! Foiled again!! --Guy Macon (talk) 02:05, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
This is the second time I've seen you allude to my saying that. Why do you do it? 94.222.101.145 (talk) 18:16, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
I am sorry, but competence is required. If you are incapable of understanding basic concepts like "discuss reliability of sources on the reliable sources noticeboard, not the biographies of living person's noticeboard", I cannot help you. I wish you the best of luck in the cognitive, emotional, and social struggles that seem to be placing such a demand on you. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:53, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

My objection to including the Dingledine material is that the source is primary. We have to be careful using primary sources. It has been shown to be unreliable in faithfully conveying quoted material and should not be relied upon. There is no way to verify if Roger said anything like this. 118.91.161.38 (talk) 12:13, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Brian Fung Washington Post blog & government funding

I commented on the use of the Brian Fung article from the Washington Post's The Switch blog when the topic was brought to the Reliable Sources Noticeboard a few weeks ago. An editor has asked me to comment here.

The Tor anonymity network article being discussed on this Talk page currently contains the following statement, with a citation of Fung's piece: 

One of the founders of the project, Roger Dingledine, stated that the DoD funds are less similar to being a procurement contract and are more simiar to a research grant. Andrew Lewman, the executive director of the Tor project, stated that even though it accepts funds from the U.S. federal government, the Tor service did not necessarily collaborate with the NSA to reveal identities of users.

As I wrote in the Reliable Sources Noticeboard discussion,[4] the Fung article is not reliable for saying, "Andrew Lewman, the executive director of the Tor project, stated that even though it accepts funds from the U.S. federal government, the Tor service did not necessarily collaborate with the NSA to reveal identities of users." This line should be removed, unless another, more reliable source can be found that supports it.

I agree that this matter is both a reliable sources issue and a BLP issue.

BLP policy says: "Remove immediately any contentious material about a living person that is unsourced or poorly sourced; that is a conjectural interpretation of a source (see No original research); that relies on self-published sources, unless written by the subject of the BLP (see below); or that relies on sources that fail in some other way to meet Verifiability standards" (WP:BLPREMOVE)

and

"contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced should be removed immediately and without discussion. This applies whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable, and whether it is in a biography or in some other article. Material should not be added to an article when the only sourcing is tabloid journalism. When material is both verifiable and noteworthy, it will have appeared in more reliable sources". (WP:BLPSOURCES)

In this particular case, Lewman never mentioned the word NSA, and he did not specifically say that Tor did not/does not necessarily collaborate to reveal identities of users. We can directly read what Lewman actually wrote and confirm that he did not say what Fung says he said. So Fung is unreliable on this point, and attributing a statement to a living person in the absence of a reliable source showing that the person actually made the claimed statement is a BLP violation. The effect of the misattribution does not have to be negative for a BLP violation to have occurred; the policy says, again, "This applies whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable, and whether it is in a biography or in some other article."

If there is a consensus here to include statements from Lewman and Dingledine, then it would be more faithful to the sources to write what they said rather than Fung's interpretation of what they said. An example might be: 

In August 2013, Tor Executive Director Andrew Lewman commented in a Tor Project mailing list discussion on government funding of Tor. Responding to a question which asked, "Can anyone working for the Tor project comment on its U.S. Department of Defense funded activities beyond what appears when searching [the Tor Project's financial statements for the Department of Defense's funding award number]?", Lewman wrote: "We don't accept secret work, contracts, nor money from anyone.... [T]he parts of the US and Swedish Governments that fund us through contracts want to see strong privacy and anonymity exist on the Internet in the future. Don't assume that 'the government' is one coherent entity with one mindset."[5] Lewman also said that legal restrictions bar the Tor Project from disclosing direct ties between their contracts and the specific work the Tor Project produces.[6]

Roger Dingledine, a founder of the Tor Project, told Washington Post technology correspondent Brian Fung that funding the Tor Project receives from the U.S. Department of Defense is for "general research and development on better anonymity, better performance and scalability and better blocking-resistance". Dingledine also said that Tor project publishes all of its work in the open for review by the public and that the U.S. government has never asked the Tor Project to install a backdoor.[7]

Dezastru (talk) 17:44, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Does anyone have any objections to the above? --Guy Macon (talk) 13:59, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
Dezastru, it has been a week and nobody has objected, so I would advise putting the above into the article. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:58, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
I'm concerned about using this source to quote Roger Dingledine. It has already been shown to be unreliable in faithfully conveying quoted material. We need to use WP:NEWSBLOGS with care. We need to use WP:PRIMARY sources with care. We need to use extreme caution when using WP:BLPPRIMARY sources about living people. Since the Dingledine material is not independently verifiable, we're better off not using this source to quote him. 124.41.227.15 (talk) 14:43, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

TOR Stinks

We should cover this (http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/oct/04/tor-stinks-nsa-presentation-document) and some of the suggestions above too. There is a comment from the crypto community somewhere the "TOR Stinks" doesn't reveal any new weaknesses - that should be included too if possible. I will attempt to return to this some time, if no-one else fixes it first. All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 21:20, 31 March 2014 (UTC).

Orphaned references in Tor (anonymity network)

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Tor (anonymity network)'s orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "tor":

  • From Jacob Appelbaum: "Tor Project: Core People". Tor. Retrieved 11 October 2011.
  • From Heartbleed: "OpenSSL bug CVE-2014-0160". Tor Project. April 7, 2014.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 04:10, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Merge Tor Browser Bundle with this article?

There's a discussion about it at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Tor_Browser_Bundle. 92.78.157.181 (talk) 12:03, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

 Done — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk•track) 10:27, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Uses section?

I saw this addition mentioning use of Tor in domestic abuse cases where digital surveillance is involved. It didn't seem to fit in "controversy over illegal activities" but to my surprise there really wasn't anywhere it did fit. Does a "Uses" section make sense to add? Seems like one of the more common questions people have about Tor is what people use it for (and, based on some of the press it's received, what legal uses it has). Thoughts? --— Rhododendrites talk |  22:28, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

I'd put that bit in, and had reflected on the same issue. The trouble is, given the anonymity needs served by Tor, that success stories don't proclaim themselves (an issue which is addressed in the Tor blog itself). The references are all primary source, such as they are, so I'll tweak the subsection header. kencf0618 (talk) 23:12, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Commonwealth

In the section Third party, the following is stated:

United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and British Commonwealth countries

Since the first three are part of the British Commonwealth, either this is redundant or the part about British Commonwealth countries means something other than what is normally assumed. Should is just as "and other British Commonwealth..." or should someone clarify what the intent of the statement is.99.245.230.104 (talk) 04:52, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

I've deleted PAPARouter --it smells of self-serving WP:OR. kencf0618 (talk) 05:21, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Mailtor

@Philg88: I removed this section about mailtor. Specific hidden services like that (even the notable ones) aren't really covered here as just one service people use on top of Tor, rather than an implementation. The AfD furthermore was closed as redirect, not merge, and only because it was mentioned elsewhere by the page creator -- not because it's notable (and in fact the sources you carried over are all pretty unreliable). --— Rhododendrites talk |  18:45, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

History of Tor

This source gives a history of Tor and could be used to develop this article. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:22, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Mild inaccurate lead

The article contains Tor encrypts the original data, including the destination IP address, multiple times... which is not accurate. The payload data is encrypted with the final destination code described, and then the result is re-packaged and re-encrypted with the next destination node address so that there are nested encryption constructs, the text reads as if the destination payload is encrypted multiple times without routing instructions being added at each layer.

I suppose it does not matter, people looking for more technical aspects of Tor will go to the official Tor web site and download the specifics. Still, it's inaccurate. Does anyone care to propose better text? Damotclese (talk) 21:39, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 3 January 2015

65.35.47.185 (talk) 06:10, 3 January 2015 (UTC) first off, your isp can and will track your use of tor or the onion router. if you use an isp, which you have to unless you are cracking into someone elses router, you will and can be tracked. the packets coming and going, they can and will be cracked, if you are online for more than a little while, you can and will have your ip tracked, your ip addressed snooped, and the isp you are using will begin to break down what you have been doing. using tor does not surmise the ability to browse anonymously, only the fact that you can't usually be tracked by normal "bots". this page is wrong in so many ways i want to puke. this is why no one really, other than dumb people who will believe anything on the internet, will use your site fore definitions. change this. unless of course you are expecting people to use tor and get caught doing something wrong, in that case, congratulations, you are a troll and a person which most of the underworld would call a rat. yes, you have my ip address. yes, you know who i am if u search hard enough. that's exactly what the isp or internet service provider, will do to the people using this program. please, in further notes, make sure you have complete facts, i have checked this, done my research, and made sure i know the navy came out with this, just to set traps for people that are being stupid and doing something against the government. this is why im doing this from a firefox browser, on my windows machine, and not at all in the essence of someone that would care to know if u tracked me if i sent this. do a google search. it helps. your site is like.. retarded just looking at this ONE page. it tells me, an intelligent person, that both a. you let bad opinions become fact, and b. let good facts back up bad opinions therefore creating rumors.

seriously. bad wiki, no cookie.

-Fr0z7y

Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. and Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. Seriously, you deserve a cookie for typing out such a giant wall of text. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 08:17, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 7 January 2015

Please change the follwing (A) to (B) as the current downloaded size is ~32.7 MB (A) | size = 2–3 MB (B) | size = ~32 MB

I've made it around 32 MB for simple understanding. However, verify it from "Download Tor Browser" page. Joy-CS (talk) 15:21, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

@Joy-CS: Thanks. Though I didn't add the infobox myself, I imagine the 2-3 MB figure was for Tor itself, which I've just verified is about that (although I changed it to 2-4). On the download page this is called either "standalone" or "expert bundle" depending on OS. That said, the Tor Browser is the standard download, and based on OS that appears to vary from 32-41 MB. I've updated the infobox to reflect both figures. I'd welcome others to weigh in on how I formatted it, though (using smalltext on separate lines). --— Rhododendrites talk \\ 16:36, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
There's a separate infobox further down titled "Tor Browser". As I understand it, the "Tor" infobox at the top of the article is dedicated to (as Rhododendrites put it) the stand-alone Tor (which is 2-4 MB) and the "Tor Browser" infobox is dedicated to the Tor Browser implementation (which is 32-41 MB). I think we should keep these infoboxes separate. --Dodi 8238 (talk) 21:04, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
Good point -- I forgot there was a separate infobox. Maybe since that one is so far down on the page it's worth still clarifying the top figure? Something like "2-4MB (without browser)" (without the separate size for the browser)? --— Rhododendrites talk \\ 22:00, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
How about "2-4MB (implementations vary in size)"? --Dodi 8238 (talk) 09:17, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
While it makes sense, the length would make it bleed over to a second line for most people, I think, which is undesirable. If you don't think "stand-alone" or "without browser" works, I suppose we could also just restore the version with no parenthetical :) --— Rhododendrites talk \\ 05:14, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
@Rhododendrites: I've now restored the first Infobox to how it was and added a hidden notification: diff. --Dodi 8238 (talk) 22:13, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Torbrowser 4.0.3 released

Looks like I can't edit. Torbrowser hat been updated to 4.0.3 https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-browser-403-released This page says 4.0.2 is the latest release. Can someone please edit this. THanks --Alfonx (talk) 13:41, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

 Done --Dodi 8238 (talk) 13:54, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Grammar in the Weaknesses section

Weaknesses, Some protocols leak IP addresses: a couple of articles are missing from this subsection. Syrak (talk) 21:56, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

@Syrak: Could you please elaborate? How does this relate to grammar? By missing articles, do you mean that the Tor (anonymity network)#Some protocols leak IP addresses section does not contain all notable research done on that topic? In that case, could you please point to the articles you are referring to? --Dodi 8238 (talk) 22:24, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
@Dodi 8238: I am suggesting the following changes:

Some protocols leak IP addresses

Researchers from French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA) showed that Tor dissimulation technique+s in BitTorrent can be bypassed by an attacker controlling Tor exit node+s. The study was conducted by monitoring 6 exit nodes for a period of 23 days. Researches used three attack vectors:

Inspection of BitTorrent control messages
Tracker announces and Extension Protocol handshakes may optionally contain client's clients' IP addresses. Analysis of collected data revealed that 35% and 33% of respective messages contained real addresses of clients.
Hijacking trackers' responses
Due to lack of encryption or authentication in communication between tracker and peer, a typical man-in-the-middle attack allows an attacker to determine a peer's IP address and even verify the distribution of content. This attack works when Tor is used only for tracker communication.
Exploiting distributed hash tables (DHT)
This attack exploits the fact that distributed hash table (DHT) connections through Tor are impossible, so an attacker is able to reveal their target's IP address by looking it up in a (the ?) DHT even if the target uses Tor to connect to other peers.

Using these techniques, researchers were able to identify other streams initiated by users, whose IP addresses were revealed.

---

I meant article (grammar). I'm not a native English speaker and not familiar with the technical details of the topic either, so some of these corrections may still be incorrect, and I may have missed some as well. --Syrak (talk) 10:43, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

heavily biased "Tor can be used for" statement with no counterpoint to balance it

Here is the counterpoint:

The counterpoint to this criticism is that just because a tool can be misused does not mean it should be banned. A hammer can be used to murder a person or a valued pet, or for committing vandalism, but few argue that they should be only available to police and government officials, or that owning a hammer should require a permit and background check. Water can also be used to kill and torture but is it nefarious?

The other problems with the "Tor can be used for" sentence is that a regular web browser can be used for many of those things, although with less chance of successful anonymity. And, more importantly, it is still debatable how much anyone can rely upon Tor for anonymity. Given that, can it indeed be used for the things this Wikipedia sentence claims it can be used for? Or, should the sentence say "Tor appears to be useful for"?

The sentence reads like it was written by an authoritarian government trying to scare people into handing over even the promise of privacy and anonymity online. If the article is going to retain that sentence and the agenda it pushes it should at least provide some basic counterpoint. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.33.93.239 (talk) 03:17, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

The section could use work, but it's not like these sorts of positive views are not present. Could you reframe your proposed changes in terms of how to better summarize currently cited sources or could you supply additional sources to justify changes? — Rhododendrites talk \\ 03:44, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Last edits by Twillisjr

@Twillisjr: Why you removed a bunch of content without any explanation? --RezonansowyakaRezy (talk | contribs) 08:51, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Rezonansowy Thanks for monitoring the article and restoring the content. Content which is backed by WP:RS should not be removed from Wikipedia articles without an explanation. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:32, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
The sources in the removed section consist of some IRS tax forms (WP:SYNTH) and a dead link to a Washington post blog, which leads me to believe that perhaps someone here didn't bother checking whether the sources exist when restoring the section. I'm just saying. The WP reference appears to be at [ http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/08/attacks_prompt_update_for_tor.html ], and does not appear to support claims such as "The EFF acted as The Tor Project's fiscal sponsor in its early years".
None of this implies that removal was a good idea, of course. It should have been tagged with citation needed. Would one of you gentlemen or ladies who restored the material care to add reliable secondary sources that support the claims made in the material before we continue this discussion? --Guy Macon (talk) 15:24, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
If we're talking about fiscal sponsorship in particular, the WP article does say EFF hosted the Tor site and the list of sponsors on Torproject.org lists EFF for 2004-2005. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 15:38, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
(Full disclosure: every year I donate to both the EFF and the TOR project, and I have a strong positive bias regarding both organizations.) I have no doubt as to the accuracy of the claims, but I am having trouble with WP:V and WP:WEIGHT here. When a bunch of claims are based upon a blog post and a bunch of WP:PRIMARY sources, I want at the very least for the blog post to contain the actual claims made. Who, other than the TOR project, says the EFF gave them fiscal sponsorship - a phrase that implies more than just letting them have space on a server? Who said that it was significant? --Guy Macon (talk) 00:22, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
If the sources are not good then remove that content - I do not object. No, I did not check them all. About claims by about 10 different sources were removed. Some of that looked good enough to restore pending an explanation. I encourage others to delete what they see as insufficiently sourced. Blue Rasberry (talk) 01:14, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Casual look for sources

Regarding eff being a sponsor to tor in 2004, both the tor project and eff makes that statement on their own corresponding websites. While both are primary, primary are allowed in direct straightforward and descriptive statements. However, I also did a lazy google search which provided articles from wired, one from salon, and one at time.

Since the removal covered a quite large amount of content and sources, and my time is limited, it would greatly help if people used in-line tags or prioritized down 2-4 statements which urgently need better sources. Belorn (talk) 07:58, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Last edits by Deku-shrub

Deep Web

@Deku-shrub: Why you think that Deep Web image is misleading? Do you have any suggestion what would improve its accurance? --RezonansowyakaRezy (talk | contribs) 20:00, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Right, this is a complicated one, but hear me out. I've been working on the Deep Web, currently edited and redirected to Deep Web (search indexing). The term Deep Web has a colourful past. It started as a search indexing term Mike Bergman invented and went on to use at his company Bright Planet. Now historically the dark web / dark net was entirely un search indexable and such formed a part of the deep web. No doubt Bright Planet was selling the first tor data mining software at this point. Continuing for a few years, coverage of the deep web and the emerging darknet/web started coming out simultaneously, often through short info graphics with Deep Web 'facts' juxtaposed with onion links. This image is just another one of a range.
Here are some examples: 1 2 3
Here's a really ambiguous one: 1
Now here are some different ones with facts about the deep web, search indexing term, 1
In my opinion, and that of the term's inventors, Bright Planet[1] and the dictionary.com blog[1], there is significant confusion and conflation of the two terms. Combined with the fact the Darknet (networking) page now has significant covered of the Dark Web too now, it seems natural to move to separate the ideas, as I see little way of combining the wiki articles usefully. Phew! Deku-shrub (talk) 21:49, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ a b "Clearing Up Confusion – Deep Web vs. Dark Web". BrightPlanet. Cite error: The named reference "confusion" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).

Impact on search engine results

Are there any references that show what the impact of using Tor is on the results returned by a search engine?--Nowa (talk) 07:05, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

TorFlow

I was introduced to TorFlow today, a striking visualization of the data flowing over the Tor network, but I am unsure how to incorporate it into the article. Suggestions?

https://torflow.uncharted.software/

kencf0618 (talk) 23:16, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't think it's particular useful to directly include, I would find some news coverage about it and add it to relevant comments about the latest statistics Deku-shrub (talk) 23:44, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
Good idea. There shall certainly be some academic research using this tool as well, so we shall await citations. kencf0618 (talk) 23:50, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
A link to this page in the external links section wouldn't hurt; I think it would add to the value of this article. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:25, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
I agree, this should be an external link. So I did it! Herostratus (talk) 21:08, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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Article name discussions

Requested move 10 August 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. No prejudice against a new discussion with a different proposed title. Jenks24 (talk) 06:16, 26 August 2015 (UTC)


Tor (anonymity network) → Tor (network) – A shorter name, easier to remember Deku-shrub (talk) 09:12, 10 August 2015 (UTC) --Relisted. Natg 19 (talk) 17:56, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Support - sufficient disambiguation sovereign°sentinel (contribs) 02:42, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Oppose - Anonymity is Tor's raison d'être. Network qua network is needlessly unhelpful and generic. kencf0618 (talk) 22:48, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Article_titles#Precision "Usually, titles should be precise enough to unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but no more precise than that" Deku-shrub (talk) 18:18, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes but it doesn't define the topic unless you already know that 'network' here means 'computer network', not a postal network in a place called Tor, or some political clique centred on a Mr. Tor … … or etc., nor incidentally does the present name IMO. Pincrete (talk) 23:28, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Oppose - per Kencf0618, though I can see present title is clunky. 'Network' isn't helpful as it has many non-IT meanings. It also isn't accurate, since (in IT) the term normally applies to the hardware rather the software, though present title is equally wrong in that sense. Suggest you find a better title, 'Tor (software)'? Pincrete (talk) 23:21, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Requested move 10 September 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved. The proposed disambiguation is not considered an adequate description of the bulk of the content. No prejudice against future discussion as most participants did seem keen on some sort of move. Jenks24 (talk) 16:16, 18 September 2015 (UTC)


Tor (anonymity network) → Tor (software) – Simpler to remember name, more accurately describe the software that simply forms the basis of the implemented network Deku-shrub (talk) 17:23, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

  • Support This seems more orthodox. Other opinions? Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:33, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Consider the difference between our articles World Wide Web and WorldWideWeb. The first is the network, the second is the software. In 1990 the two could have been considered synonymous, because there was only one software program that could access the World Wide Web network, but then came netscape navigator, internet explorer, firefox, etc. and now my imaginary 1990 Wikipedia would need another page; Web browser. In my opinion, this article should be about the network, with a section that mentions the only software that currently accesses that network. If and when more programs are written to access the Tor network, we can give each a page or possibly create Tor (software) (currently a redirect) for the lot of them. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:04, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
I'm not looking to split this, I just want something I can better memorise every time I write a wikified link to this article Deku-shrub (talk) 21:11, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose - I would have supported (network) if I had seen the thread in time, I think, but while the software is important, the primary subject is the network. If it were simply a way to anonymize Internet traffic, the software argument would be more straightforward, but it's also an overlay network. A huge portion of sources about this subject are about content, not software. I suppose you could make a reductionist argument that any network is just the collection of software on individual machines, but if we're going by what sources talk about when they talk about Tor, it doesn't make sense to shift its name from network to software. The existence of services like Tor2Web further complicate it by enabling the end user to "access/browse/other verb Tor" without ever downloading the software. There's a strict argument that could say they're not actually using Tor or that they're using Tor software on someone else's computer, but I don't think there's anything to be gained from framing the subject that way via the title. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 03:36, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
Bitcoin has both Bitcoin (implicitly software) as well as Bitcoin network. I just want a easy to remember name :( Deku-shrub (talk) 10:55, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
I agree with Guy and Rhododendrites now - probably "software" is not the focus but the network is. The article could be just "Tor" also. By the traffic, I think this article gets more than twice the pageviews of everything else at the Tor disambiguation page put together. That makes a case for this to be the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Blue Rasberry (talk) 11:22, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Requested move 5 November 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved. Jenks24 (talk) 11:58, 13 November 2015 (UTC)


– "Tor" is currently a disambiguation page. Because there are other move requests suggesting that a move would be desirable, and because this article gets lots of traffic and the other articles for "tor" do not, this article is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and so should occupy the title "Tor". Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:55, 5 November 2015 (UTC) Traffic:

Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:02, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Requested move 10 December 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved both. The previous move discussion was only a month ago, but it did not address long-term historical significance. Consensus can change, and the consensus of this wider set of editors is clear that when long-term historical significance is considered, the anonymity network is not the primary topic. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:08, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

– Request move is only admin, Itwiki6666 (talk) 06:04, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

  • Support. Although the nom has not outlined a move rationale, the fact that this term refers to things as basic as a rock formation and a genus of fish leads me to believe that there is no primary topic by historical importance. bd2412 T 13:56, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose. This has been discussed before. Incendiary Iconoclasm 15:31, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Comment @Itwiki6666 and BD2412: Can you two please give your response to Talk:Tor#Requested_move_5_November_2015, where the current names were confirmed? Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:57, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
    • I was not aware of the previous discussion, but it does not seem to have taken long-term historical significance into account at all. bd2412 T 16:22, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
BD2412 This is Wikipedia so no previous discussion is binding when new information is available. What historical significance is there to consider? I am ignorant of this. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:37, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
The use of the word "tor" to refer to a particular kind of rock formation goes back hundreds of years. See, e.g., William Borlase, Observations on the Antiquities, Historical and Monumental, of the County of Cornwall (1754), p. 226: "Round Arthur's Bed, on a rocky Tor in the Parish of North-hill, there are many, which the country people call Arthur's Troughs in which he us'd to feed his Dogs". Software, no matter how popular, tends to be comparatively transitory. Geological tors will still be there, and will still be called that, for hundreds of years after the software is gone. bd2412 T 16:58, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
@BD2412: It doesn't matter. People who google "Tor" are most likely not looking for a rock, of whatever that is. Anyway, in the move discussion above this one, the consensus was clear and "Tor (anonymity network)" was moved to "Tor", and it would be an ignorant decision if we revert that. Incendiary Iconoclasm 17:27, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
http://stats.grok.se/en/latest90/Tor_%28anonymity_network%29
http://stats.grok.se/en/latest90/Tor_%28rock_formation%29
http://stats.grok.se/en/latest90/Tor_%28genus%29
--Guy Macon (talk) 18:20, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Strong support - please reverse an ill-thought through move. This software product isn't Apple and even Apple doesn't displace the basic meaning. If the primary topic isn't a Tor, then it should be a dab page, not this. I appreciate that software seeking users may outnumber the other 20 subjects on the dab, but that isn't the only consideration. The only incovenience here is an iPhone user seeing Tor (anonymity network) on the drop down choices next to the onion icon. Is (anonymity network) going to help or hinder the person looking for the software, obviously not. But is being sent direct to a very large article on an anonymity network going to hinder anyone looking for any of the 20 other subjects - yes it is. In ictu oculi (talk) 20:00, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose the previous move request made a very good case. The page statistics overwhelmingly show that this is the most sought after topic. Jolly Ω Janner 20:57, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
    No argument with the page statistics, but we don't get to cherry pick only one bit of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC to make a decision. The whole guideline must be considered, and the previous discussion did an overwhelmingly poor job of that. ~Amatulić (talk)
    The guideline states "In many other cases, only one sense of primacy is relevant.", which is why the page view statistics were reason enough for me to oppose. I did not take the policy as meaning primary articles need to satisfy both criteria. However, if TOR is shown to be lacking in long-term significance, I may be inclined to support the move. At the moment, I'll admit I haven't done as much research into this as I would like i.e. looking at the number of mentions in journals and books. It was based more on my opinion that if TOR was to shut down today, we would still look at it as primary topic in years to come (perhaps not decades or centuries, though). If anyone has some information on mentions in books and journals, it would be a great help in this discussion. And yes, the previous move discussion was pretty abysmal... Jolly Ω Janner 00:02, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Support. Having Tor as the software product is pure recentism. The software meaning is transitory. It is worth noting that 123 does not lead to the once dominant spreadsheet software; Word does not lead directly to the currently dominant word-processing software, Excel leads to a disambiguation page, not the currently dominant spreadsheet program; Access also leads to a disambiguation page and not the database package... Guess what Office leads to? Why should the Tor software product be an unexpected exception?-- Toddy1 (talk) 21:14, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
Those examples are all to software that shares a name with very commonly-used homonyms. That is not the case here; the software is much more likely to be linked than the rock formation. VQuakr (talk) 21:19, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
This is a very good point, VQuakr and I think apple would also be an example of a commonly-used homonym. It has also been used as an example in this discussion. Jolly Ω Janner 21:37, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Strong support – There are too many meanings for "Tor". This software is only a minor instance of the name, and only seems to be put here due to the tech bias from Wikipedians. +mt 21:46, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
    That is demonstrably false. As noted above, the visits to the software topic outnumber all others by about 20:1. VQuakr (talk) 22:04, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
    Software-based topics will inherently be biased on the Internet, but it does not reflect folks' general knowledge offline. "Tor" has existed since Middle English essentially as a geomorphology term, lets say >500 years of use. +mt 00:54, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia exists on the internet. I find the "it's an old term" argument spectacularly unconvincing - obviously this would be true for every software product that shares its name with an existing word. VQuakr (talk) 02:41, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Support. This is an interesting situation where both the rock formation and the software meet the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC guideline, which is the only thing that should matter in this discussion. The guideline offers two ways to determine a primary topic: (a) primary with respect to usage, the most sought topic over all others combined; and (b) primary with respect to long-term significance, enduring notability and educational value. Each of these two definitions apply here. They are mutually exclusive and equally valid, therefore the concept of a "primary topic" for the term "tor" is inconclusive. In such a situation, the topic term should be a disambiguation page. I'll also add that guidelines are not policies, regulations, or requirements, they are best practices, and best practices should be adapted as needed to different situations. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:22, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Support per Amatulic. DanHobley (talk) 01:53, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose move. Per the page traffic results above, our readers overwhelmingly (~95%) are going to be looking for this page - convenience to our readership is the underlying reason for WP:PRIMARYUSAGE. The geological usage of the term is certainly older, but it was never a particularly common term - to the extent that is is difficult to say which will be the more likely search term in the very long run. I am willing to live with the risk that this discussion might need to be revisited in 20 years. Since the current name appears to satisfy both the letter and spirit of the disambiguation guideline, I would say the unanimous move discussion last month got it right even if they did not formalize their reasoning adequately. VQuakr (talk) 02:41, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Regardless of the overwhelming current traffic, that's only one criterion in the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC guideline. Taking the guideline as a whole, the primary topic is ambiguous, and in that case it is more appropriate for the subject name to be a disambiguation page. ~Amatulić (talk) 16:29, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
@Amatulic: my reasoning addressed the entire guideline. You just only acknowledged a portion of it in your reply. VQuakr (talk) 04:11, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Amatulic already noted that part of WP:Primarytopic in his !vote. I'll repeat it here since you have requested it:
"A topic is primary for a term, with respect to long-term significance, if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term."
--Wikimedes (talk) 19:59, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
I think for me the problem is trying to assess the guideline as a whole when it states "In many other cases, only one sense of primacy is relevant.". To me this suggests it is fine to only use one criterion in some cases. Whether it is appropriate to do so for this article? Well, that's where I think the debate really lies and I haven't seen anything in the guideline which advises how to go about that, so I think we will have to work on consensus. Jolly Ω Janner 20:18, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Support per In ictu oculi and Amatulic...Jokulhlaup (talk) 09:34, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose This is the most popular topic, also see my aborted attempts to rename this previously... Deku-shrub (talk) 13:04, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Support - I agree with Amatulic that the primary topic is not clear. Mikenorton (talk) 12:04, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
  • This appears to be a textbook case of the primary topic being clear. The guideline says
"A topic is primary for a term, with respect to usage, if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term.".
I am a bit suspicious when I see editors ignoring clear wording like this in favor of using a vague, subjective "taking the guideline as a whole" standard to support something that is not found anywhere in the guideline. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:41, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
Why be suspicious when you can verify it yourself. See that other criterion adjacent to the one you quoted, saying that a topic is primary with respect to long-term significance, enduring notability and educational value? I'm also not convinced that "only one sense of primacy is relevant" with respect to this article. The Tor network happens to be generating the most traffic now, but that was not the case fairly recently, and will not be the case in the future. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:48, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Makes sense to me. I'm not privy to the this-has-been-discussed-before discussions though... IMO the primary topic for "Tor" is the geographic/geoglogic formation. If we must have a page "Tor" that isn't disambiguation, I would suggest Tor (rock formation) be moved to Tor. I mean, yo, take a look at this Ngram comparing "Tor" and "tor" and "TOR". Tor, the network, would essentially never show as "tor". Tor, the rock formation, would essentially never show as "Tor" because you would very rarely start a sentence with that word in singular. There are other uses of "Tor" though, such as in "Sir Tor" and "Tor Line"; how much noise that contributes I don't know. We'll be generous and allow that all instances of "TOR" refer to "Tor", the network; it doesn't make much difference.
The interesting thing to me here is that use of "Tor" remains steady from when I started (1920) to the present; the advent of the Tor network makes no discernible difference. Tor, the network, seems to have attracted little if any interest in the world of published books. Huh. Any road, and the main point, "tor" beats "Tor" hands down whatever year you pick. Makes sense to me.
Anyway, there's gonna be tors long after Tor (and maybe humanity) is forgotten. So let's keep perspective here. I know a lot of people are computer savvy and all that, and maybe naval-gazing is coming into play here a little. A tor is a rock formation, mainly. Herostratus (talk) 20:34, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
The users of Wikipedia do not agree.
http://stats.grok.se/en/latest90/Tor_%28anonymity_network%29
http://stats.grok.se/en/latest90/Tor_%28rock_formation%29
--Guy Macon (talk) 05:55, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Comments and questions
  • The anonymity network article appears to have been the most viewed by far in January 2010 as well stats from January 2010:
http://stats.grok.se/en/201001/Tor_%28anonymity_network%29 2577times
http://stats.grok.se/en/201001/Tor_%28rock_formation%29 0times 10873 times per Toddy1's correction below.
http://stats.grok.se/en/201001/Tor_%28genus%29 36times
http://stats.grok.se/en/201001/Mechanistic%20target%20of%20rapamycin 0timeshttp://stats.grok.se/en/201001/Mammalian%20target%20of%20rapamycin 6606 times
(0times for the rock formation and mTOR makes me suspicious, but the move logs come up empty, so they don't appear to have been called something else back then.)
  • Google Scholar results might be relevant as well [8], but I'm having trouble making sense of them. Most hits in the first couple of pages seem to be relating to mTOR or psychiatric studies, which for all I know could be false positives.
  • How would words containing tor (editor, raptor, monitor) affect different search results? Not at all for Wikipedia traffic, but for the other searches mentioned?
--Wikimedes (talk) 21:06, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
Don't know about the others, but Google Ngrams search for phrases, which for one-word phrases devolves to stand-alone words. --Herostratus (talk) 03:14, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
Tor was moved to Tor (rock formation) in September 2012, which explains the zero in the stats above...Jokulhlaup (talk) 19:02, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
stats for page views in January 2010 for the article now named Tor (rock formation) 10873 times.-- Toddy1 (talk) 19:26, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
Diff for the move-- Toddy1 (talk) 19:30, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for that. I've corrected the mTOR stat as well, which had also undergone a name change. Given that in January 2010 Tor (anonymity network) got about 1/5th the traffic as Tor it seems that the popularity of the anonymity network article is a recent phenomenon. (Even if readers got to the rock formation article first because it was called simply "Tor" at the time, the anonymity network article still accounted for only a small fraction of the Tor traffic.)

This discussion is pathetic. Nobody cares about a damn rock formation. This is almost as pathetic as the Java article, where it is about an island in Indonesia no one cares about, instead of the programming language that obviously everyone wants to know more about. Incendiary Iconoclasm 22:50, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Sweeping generalizations like that are pathetic. "Nobody" you say? Geologists likely care a lot more about a rock formation than an anonymity network that appeals only to a fringe population. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:51, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
Nobody cares about the rock formation. People don't even know what that is. Tor (the anonimity network) is very popular, by the way, and people come here to know more about how the software works. They don't come here for a stupid rock no one has ever heard of. Incendiary Iconoclasm 00:12, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
As I said, sweeping generalizations like that are pathetic. And you just made an excellent case for renaming, as the criterion in WP:PRIMARYTOPIC about the topic having long-term significance and educational value. ~Amatulić (talk) 00:19, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

*Oppose move Because if this page is moved it will be deleted and the record of this move discussion will disappear. Ottawahitech (talk) 22:22, 15 December 2015 (UTC)please ping me

That is not how Wikipedia works. The talk page with the move discussion will be moved with the main page.-- Toddy1 (talk) 22:28, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
Second that; Toddy1 is correct. @Ottawahitech: you can read more about what moves are and are not at the help page WP:MOVE. VQuakr (talk) 22:39, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Support 1) per Amatulic. 2) It seems a bad idea to rename articles every few months or years just because one article is temporarily more popular than another. (For an easily changeable online encyclopedia, the idea is not without merit. For example, during the OJ Simpson trial, we could have moved OJ to OJ (disambiguation) and made OJ a redirect to O.J.Simpson. But at first glance this seems a bad idea.)--Wikimedes (talk) 05:28, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
    Yes, and there are other examples. For instance, the topic of drones has been in the news a lot lately, but that isn't a reason to move the disambiguation page drone to unmanned aerial vehicle, even though most people who type "drone" in the search box are likely looking for the UAV article based on the hit counts. ~Amatulić (talk) 06:04, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Support. Per Amatulic. Neodop (talk) 10:52, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Requested move 25 February 2016

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved (non-admin closure). sst✈ 16:08, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


Tor (anonymity network) → Tor (technology) Tor (information technology) – WP:PRECISE: "titles should be precise enough to unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but no more precise than that"; see also information technology and virtual technology. fgnievinski (talk) 23:26, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

  • Oppose. WP:PRECISE is just one of the five WP:CRITERIA for article titles; the proposed title is less recognizable and less natural. Proposed title also is inadequately precise, as (for example) the Tor missile and Tor rifle could also be considered "technologies". VQuakr (talk) 02:33, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
How about Tor (information technology)? fgnievinski (talk) 04:29, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
It's not the only thing in information technology referred to as "tor", torrents frequently use the term "tor" to refer to torrents, torrent files (tor files), torrent sites, etc -- 70.51.46.39 (talk) 05:00, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
Torrent is not even in Tor (disambiguation). fgnievinski (talk) 22:48, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
Then why don't you add it to there? The page is edit protected. IT clearly is used for torrent, per what's found on the internet. -- 70.51.46.39 (talk) 00:35, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
"Technology" seems a pretty useless word for parenthetical disambiguation in this particular context. VQuakr (talk) 16:29, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
As I said above: How about Tor (information technology)? fgnievinski (talk) 22:48, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
Repeating it doesn't make it less useless. VQuakr (talk) 05:05, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose not the only technology topic referred to as "tor", there are many technology topics on the disambiguation page. Further, the name of the technology used inside Tor is onion routing not "tor" -- 70.51.46.39 (talk) 04:59, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
As I said above: How about Tor (information technology)? Further, both Tor and onion routing are instances of information technology. fgnievinski (talk) 22:48, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
It's not the technology being TOR, the technology behind TOR is called onion routing; it's not the only information technology topic referred to as 'tor' either. So all around a bad name -- 70.51.46.39 (talk) 00:35, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose: The Tor network is not the same thing as The Onion Router, the basic technology behind the Tor network. The most notable difference is that it is a network, not a technology. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:19, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
A (compouter) network is an instance of (information) technology. fgnievinski (talk) 22:48, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
Please elaborate; this is not a voting. fgnievinski (talk) 22:48, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Call for a six-month moratorium on new requested moves

Should we summarily close any requested moves until September 1st, 2016?

  • Support as proposer. We have had so many requested moves lately that it is time to give it a rest. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:40, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Support prefer a 1 year ban though; this just keeps going round and round and round -- 70.51.46.39 (talk) 04:36, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose The reason the issue keeps being raised is because the title “Tor (anonymity network)” isn’t working and doesn’t faithfully represent the article’s contents. Only when we fix the title—or divide the article into sufficient component subarticles—will the requests to move finally stop. Let us not simply kick the can down the road. —LLarson (said & done) 16:21, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose "Tor" is the best name for the article. The subject covered here gets 10 times the traffic of any other concept and has 10 times as many reliable sources discussing the concept. Renames keep getting proposed because the title seems like it does not fit, and in fact, the current title does not fit. The current name is used to keep the status quo default not because there was ever consensus to select it. There are unanswered arguments on both sides and it could be possible to have more discussion.
I think the matter could be settled if someone identified the second most popular "tor" concept after this one, and then estimated the combined popularity of all tor concepts other than this one. My expectation is that this article is much more popular than all the others put together. If someone can refute that or fail to refute that then I think that would settle the issue. The standing argument for not making this article primary is the supposition that other concepts are more significant, but I have not seen another article with significant pageviews or another concept with many sources discussing it. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:05, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
Bittorrent is not even one of the articles on the disambiguation page. I am not aware of any sources calling bittorrent "tor" and so far as I know no one has used "tor" to refer to "bittorrent" on-wiki or off. So far as I understand, Tor (rock formation) is asserted to be the number #2. This Tor has 170,000 monthly views and about 160 citations versus 4,000 monthly views and 6 citations - see traffic. I am open to hearing why you think Bittorrent ought to be the article to compare, but my expectation was that this article would be compared to an article on the disambiguation page. Is there anyone who wants to present an article to compare with this one by traffic, citations, or some other measurement? Someone else suggested that "tor" rock formation is a decades-old term whereas tor the software is about 15 years old. That also is true and something to take into consideration somehow if someone wants to advance that position. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:43, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Chances of Detection

I think we should include this information in the article to put weaknesses in perspective. "At the most basic level, an attacker who runs two poisoned Tor nodes—one entry, one exit—is able to analyse traffic and thereby identify the tiny, unlucky percentage of users whose circuit happened to cross both of those nodes. At present the Tor network offers, out of a total of around 7,000 relays, around 2,000 guard (entry) nodes and around 1,000 exit nodes. So the odds of such an event happening are one in two million (1/2000 x 1/1000), give or take." Source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/08/building-a-new-tor-that-withstands-next-generation-state-surveillance/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.85.77.121 (talk) 02:40, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

This is useless information as this just goes for this type of attack and just for exactly two poisoned Tor nodes while it could be any number. --Fixuture (talk) 17:46, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Emphasize sources of funding

I propose expanding the "Reception, impact, and legislation" section (6) to emphasize Tor's sources of public and private funding:

"Tor has received funding from U.S. government agencies including the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor; the National Science Foundation; the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory; and DARPA. Some have proposed that the government values Tor's commitment to free speech, and uses the darknet to gather intelligence.[19] Private sponsors include Reddit, Google, and Human Rights Watch.[20]"

19. Moore, Daniel; Rid, Thomas. "Cryptopolitik and the Darknet". Survival. Feb2016, Vol. 58 Issue 1, p7-38. 32p.

20. Inc., The Tor Project,. "Tor: Sponsors". www.torproject.org. Retrieved 2016-10-28.

Atticusbixby (talk) 21:23, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Tor

How do u sign up for darkweb? Aphe de.soul (talk) 13:24, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

An article's talk page is used to discuss changes/improvements made to that specific article. As WP:TPG states, it's neither a platform for Q&As, nor it is a forum. Try asking your question(s) on Wikipedia:Reference desk. -- ChamithN (talk) 13:42, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia on Tor

I asked Jimmy Wales about creating a Tor hidden service (just like Facebook has one) for Wikipedia on his talk page here.

This would be good for improving Wikipedia's resilience and allow people to anonymously read, and potentially/preferably also write, Wikipedia.

I'd be interested in what you think of this. Do you have some concerns with this or could you provide help in implementing this?

For instance I guess improving anonymous write-access to Wikipedia also opens doors to some types of malicious edits and hence I'd suggest to have all edits made via Tor remain pending (or alike) even if the page is unprotected.

I also suggested an I2P eepsite and some other cybersecurity measures in the talk page entry.

--Fixuture (talk) 18:44, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Mouse fingerprinting?

An editor is wanting to remove the following material, with an edit summary of "Removed mouse fingerprinting as it's not actually a TOR network specific weakness it's a browser "issue" - mouse fingerprinting or browser profiling could be used to "identify" the same unique user in most web browsers":

In March 2016 a security researcher based in Barcelona, Spain demonstrated that laboratory techniques using time measurement via JavaScript at the 1-millisecond level[1] could potentially identify and correlate a user's unique mouse movements provided that the user has visited the same "fingerprinting" website with both the Tor browser and a regular browser.[2] This proof of concept exploits the "time measurement via JavaScript" issue which has been an open ticket on the Tor Project for ten months.[3]
  1. ^ Cimpanu, Catalin (10 March 2016). "Tor Users Can Be Tracked Based on Their Mouse Movements". Softpedia. Retrieved 11 March 2016.
  2. ^ Garanich, Gleb (10 March 2016). "Click bait: Tor users can be tracked by mouse movements". Reuters. Retrieved 10 March 2016.
  3. ^ Anonymous (10 March 2016). "Tor Users Can Be Tracked Based On Their Mouse Movements". Slashdot. Retrieved 11 March 2016.

And I'm not sure the material should be removed. On the one hand the point is well taken that mouse fingerprinting is not Tor-specific. On the other hand, apparently mouse fingerprinting is specifically a problem for people trying to be anonymous, which ties in with Tor, and all three of the refs talk about Tor specifically. Because of this I've restored the material for now, subject to discussion. It may well be that it doesn't belong though. The article is already pretty long. Herostratus (talk) 17:38, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

@Herostratus: imo such material should simply be split into a separate section (e.g. "General vulnerabilities" / "Issues not specific to Tor" etc). Also once this section grows long enough it should be moved into a separate article (e.g. "Anonymity-related browser vulnerabilities") and only be linked from here in the case that all of those issues also apply to Tor. --Fixuture (talk) 18:41, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
OK. Herostratus (talk) 19:45, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Etymology

"Tor" means "gate" in German. Then I first learned of Tor, I assumed that this was the reason for the choice of that name. I don't know much about this, but my guess is that, when people came up with the acronym for "The Onion Router", it immediately occurred to them that this would be a great name because of the meaning in German. I would be interested to see whether anyone can shed more light on this. ---Dagme (talk) 09:34, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

To my knowledge "Tor" is not an acronym (although it is commonly taken to be a backronym); in proper usage it is "Tor" and not "TOR," to such in extent that reportage using the latter form is evidence that someone had not done their homework. That said, the inadvertent German meaning is really neat, given logic gates and all that. kencf0618 (talk) 05:09, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

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Arm renamed

Hi lovely Wikipedia folks. Concerning section 3.3 of the tor article (Arm status monitor) the project was renamed in November 2017 to Nyx. I've been asked to leave leave maintenance of this article to others since I'm a Tor dev and author of Nyx/Arm. If you have any questions just let me know. :)

Atagar (talk) 20:10, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Updated. Are you aware of any articles about Nyx that are not on the Tor site? O3000 (talk) 20:24, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Objective3000! My blog and Tor's had release announcements but I'm unaware of what other articles there are out there. Quick search presented a how-to and a German snippet. Atagar (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:49, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Onion Services

The name "hidden service" has been deprecated in favor of "onion service" (at least in part due to the fact that, at least by volume of traffic, most of them are things like Facebook, which aren't hidden at all). [1] Since almost everyone affiliated with the Tor Project, related projects, and researchers have all switched over to the new terminology,[2][3][4] I'm going to switch the name used here in this article (as well as other places on Wikipedia.) I figure this change should be pretty non-controversial, since it is so universal by now, but wanted to explain more why I'm doing it, since I know there are still a few holdouts who use the older terminology (either because they don't know, or just old habits die hard, I suppose).

References

  1. ^ "Tor: Onion Service Protocol". Tor Project. Retrieved 13 December 2018.
  2. ^ "Onion Services". Whonix. Retrieved 13 December 2018.
  3. ^ "Best Practices for Hosting Onion Services". Riseup. Retrieved 13 December 2018.
  4. ^ "Introducing the Cloudflare Onion Service". Cloudflare Blog. Retrieved 13 December 2018.

Tga (talk) 04:48, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Recommended Edits HiddenServAuth

Would Recommend Editing to include mention of the HiddenServiceAuthorizeClient / HiddenServAuth commands within Tor which could plausibly give rise to what is popularly known as the "shadow net", as opposed to the "dark net". See The Tor Manual for more information on this. 12.32.207.164 (talk) 13:22, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a summary of sources which people cite. We typically do not cite primary sources like manuals. Can you provide a third party source, like research or journalism, which explains the significance of what you are saying? Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:27, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Wording of TOR Usage

The article currently has this:

"Tor is also used for illegal activities, e.g., to gain access to censored information, to organize political activities, or to circumvent laws against criticism of heads of state. "

But this is problematic. For example, it does not explain why "gain access to censored information" would be an illegal activity.

Any random state could make any random law that would prohibit something, at any moment in time.

Then the comment about "circumvent laws against criticism of heads of state". Well, in any dictatorship-like setup criticism is usually forbidden.

I think the wording is problematic. It's fine if the wording is changed to explain it in more detail, while retaining the general aim of the sentence, but the way it is currently worded is very peculiar. After all, what constitutes an "illegal activity"? This is also different from country to country. I don't think the wording can be correct in the general sense without being explicit about the country at hand and the laws there. 2A02:8388:1604:CA80:0:0:0:2 (talk) 09:29, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

An illegal activity is an activity that violates the laws of the jurisdiction in which you reside. It is a pretty intuitive definition. I don't what is problematic about this. VQuakr (talk) 16:31, 8 March 2019 (UTC)
I think there actually is a problem with this wording, and with the article as a whole, to be honest. The article plays very heavily into the sensationalist "dark web/deep web" framing, despite the fact that onion service traffic makes up ~1% of Tor traffic, and about 50% of that is Facebook. The problem is that nobody writes news articles about Tor that give these actual statistics, you have to dig through research papers to learn this sort of thing, and we're not supposed to cite primary sources here. I have a half a mind to gut this entire article and start over though, because as of right now, this whole "Bitcoin! Silk Road! CP!" roadshow is largely deceptive nonsense, and paints Tor traffic as being significantly different from the internet at large, when there's basically no evidence that's actually the case, because nobody will pay for a story that says otherwise. As such, the point made by 2A02:8388:1604:CA80:0:0:0:2 is just scratching the surface. The wikipedia article on the internet has one sentence about criminal activity on it, why should Tor be treated any differently? Tga (talk) 20:35, 8 March 2019 (UTC)
Because we follow WP:WEIGHT and not your unsourced opinion (which, incidentally, is quite tangential to the question raised by the OP). VQuakr (talk) 00:30, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
First of all, that was unnecessarily antagonistic — let's try to keep this from falling into WP:AVOIDABUSE territory. :) Secondly, it is directly related to the point being made: the article is clearly making value judgements about the legality of Tor's usage, and simply stating "it violates laws in the jurisdiction the user resides" doesn't address that point. Finally, this isn't a matter of my "opinion"; Tor measurements is the area of research I work in for a living. If you want more sources from academic papers, I'm willing to give them, the only reason I didn't before is this is a talk page, not an article, and didn't think it would be necessary for having a basic discussion about this issue. In any case, here are a few sources that demonstrate the problem:
Measured by bandwidth, Onion Services make up approximately 1% of the Tor network.[1] Measured by connections, Onion Services make up approximately 1% of the Tor network.[2] Half of all Onion Service traffic is Facebook traffic. (I don't have a direct source for this unfortunately, it seems to be a fact that has slipped though the cracks. Will Shackleton mentioned this fact multiple times at the last Tor meetup, which was in October, but they don't seem to ever mention it on any of their blog posts. At that meetup they switched over to alt-svc headers,[3][4] so that even more Facebook traffic uses onion services now, which means if anything the number is now much higher, as evidenced by the sharp rise since October. If need be I could at least ask him for an official post from Facebook attesting to this, but once again, nobody writes articles about that sort of thing so it would still have to be a primary source being cited.) Connections from Tor IPs are not statistically different from non-Tor IPs with regards to malicious behavior.[5]
To be clear, I understand why this is a rule on Wikipedia. I'm merely pointing out that in this case, the rules are preventing the information pretty much every expert in the field agrees is factually correct, simply because that story isn't interesting enough to the general public to become widely known, while an alternative story with less truth to it is widely told. Tga (talk) 00:30, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
The sentence in question states "is used for", not "is exclusively used for". It is neither inaccurate nor a value judgement. VQuakr (talk) 05:20, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
I'm sure you'll notice there is no such sentence in, e.g., shipping container, despite being equally true there. Its inclusion, when left without explanatory context, is precisely a value judgement (as is the original point was made in this topic). In any case, my point was that it is exemplary of a large portion of the article's content, which is a problem in that it does not accurately reflect reality. Tga (talk) 06:14, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Not verifiable and relevant to topic

Current wording of Wikipedia block on Tor (anonymity network) at the lead of the article (as described at WP:LEAD) is unable to get verified. Need a good source (not a WP:BLOG, WP:USG, WP:UNRELIABLE, ect) to verify content and that weird link to Wikipedia:Advice to users using Tor completely unrelated. Wikipedia is not being discussed and there is no reference in body to verify lead. User:Saschaporsche what rule did you apply here? Would discuss this out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 182.58.239.252 (talk) 07:38, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Current wording of lead:

For example, the MediaWiki TorBlock extension automatically restricts edits made through Tor, although Wikipedia allows some limited editing in exceptional circumstances.[6]

References cited to support inclusion:

A New York Times article is being cited which discusses about a current situation of Wikipedia block in Turkey, which has received extensive media coverage. The news article discusses about the Virtual Private Network block on Wikipedia which is discussed extensively on the article, not Tor's block on Wikipedia. A link to Wikipedia namespace does look problematic as it is not being well aligned to WP:WIKILINK which states to use Mainspace links instead of Wikipedia: namespace links.

Text of reference is (NYT; attribution of fair use to demonstrate unverifiability and incorrect reference):

ISTANBUL — Baris Dede, a game design student, had a question: How easily did Viking longboats glide through the water? Dilara Diner, a psychologist, wanted to double-check a symptom of hysteria.

But these Turks were not able to quickly find out what they wanted. Since late April the Turkish government has blocked one of the world’s go-to sources of online information, Wikipedia.

After Wikipedia refused to remove unflattering references to Turkey’s relationship with Syrian militants and state-sponsored terrorists, officials simply banned the whole site.

Several weeks into the ban, some Turks are still struggling to remove Wikipedia searches from their muscle memory.

Yaman Akdeniz, a law professor, turned by habit to Wikipedia to find out when the latest “House of Cards” season was released.

“You forget that it’s blocked, and then you click on it and then — boomph, nothing: You realize you can’t access it,” said Professor Akdeniz, describing his personal form of digital whiplash. Many people didn’t realize until after it was blocked, he said, that Wikipedia “was so much a part of our lives.”

Mr. Dede said he mourned the loss of “part of your memory.” Even in his academic world, where Wikipedia is sometimes scorned, the website was secretly seen as a good starting place for research, he said.

But beyond the problems it has created for the curious, Turkey’s Wikipedia ban is a reminder of something darker, government critics say: a wholesale crackdown on free expression and access to information, amid wider oppression of most forms of opposition.

Wikipedia is just one of 127,000 websites blocked in Turkey, estimated Professor Akdeniz, who has led legal challenges against the Wikipedia ban and other web restrictions. An additional 95,000 pages, like social media accounts, blog posts and articles, are blocked on websites that are not otherwise restricted, Mr. Akdeniz said.

Some of these sites are pornographic. But many contain information and reporting that the government finds embarrassing. Sendika, an independent news outlet, is now on the 45th iteration of its website. The previous 44 were blocked.

For web activists in Turkey, Wikipedia is simply the latest victim of a wave of online censorship that grew steadily from 2015 onward and then surged significantly after last year’s failed coup.

The coup attempt gave President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the political cover to expand a crackdown on his opponents, including in the traditional news media. Since the coup, 190 news organizations have been banned and at least 120 journalists jailed.

“The international community noticed this issue by reference to the Wikipedia block, but it’s not a new thing from our point of view,” Mr. Akdeniz said. “Critical media is under stress on a daily basis — and what made that visible is the Wikipedia ban.”

For students, the ban could not have come at a worse time: just as they were knuckling down for exams.

“It’s a big obstacle,” said Ege, a 17-year-old high school student, whose surname has been withheld at the wishes of his headmaster. “Wikipedia is the source of the sources — you can find everything there.”

While studying Jean Anouilh’s French adaptation of a Greek tragedy, “Antigone,” Ege’s friends had wanted to know more about the heroine’s father: the mythical King Oedipus, who mistakenly married his mother.

“The Oedipus bloodline, what he did, the curse that was put on his family,” Ege’s classmate Yusuf said. “Reaching that information wasn’t exactly easy.”

Wikipedia use has fallen by 85 percent in Turkey since April, but some have managed to circumvent the ban with a VPN, or virtual private network, a tool that helps web users gain access to blocked websites.

According to GlobalWebIndex, a group that researches worldwide internet activity, Turkey has the third-highest VPN prevalence in the world. More than 45 percent of Turks ages 16 to 64 who have web access used a VPN in the first quarter of 2017, and the practice has become second nature even for some beginners.

“My mom learned to send an email two years ago,” Mr. Dede said. “The next thing, she’s learning how to access a VPN.”

But VPN use comes with an unwelcome side effect. Because Wikipedia does not allow VPN users to edit articles, Turks are unable to correct or update information posted on the site or write new articles.

“Turkey has lost its voice online because of its inability to edit Wikipedia,” said Alp Toker, a co-founder of Turkey Blocks, a group that tracks Turkish internet censorship.

In addition, some VPNs are also banned. Those that remain are often slow, particularly on cellphones, so using one is sometimes not worth the hassle.

As a result, some students are getting desperate about their final exams.

“Dear President of the Republic, the Leader, open up Wikipedia at least until the end of the finals week,” one wrote on Twitter. “President, I am overwhelmed, hear me out.”

No mention of Wikipedia's block of Tor (although it has a article and a extension to enforce them).

References

  1. ^ "Onion Services – Tor Metrics". metrics.torproject.org.
  2. ^ Jansen, Rob; Juarez, Marc; Gálvez, Rafa; Elahi, Tariq; Diaz, Claudia (21 February 2018). "Inside Job: Applying Traffic Analysis to Measure Tor from Within" (PDF). Network and Distributed Systems Security (NDSS). doi:10.14722/ndss.2018.23261.
  3. ^ Shackleton, Will. "Making connections to Facebook over Tor faster | Facebook". www.facebook.com.
  4. ^ "AltSvcOnions". trac.torproject.org.
  5. ^ "Akamia's State of the Internet / Security". Akamai. Akamai. 5 April 2016.
  6. ^ PATRICK KINGSLEY (June 10, 2017). "Turks Click Away, but Wikipedia Is Gone". The New York Times. Retrieved June 11, 2017.


Requested move 15 September 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: CONSENSUS TO NOT MOVE. --- Coffeeandcrumbs 02:10, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

This page, Tor (anonymity network), gets the most traffic. See the pageview analysis of the articles on the disambiguation page. Because of this high traffic the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for the term "tor" is this page.

There were a series of similar move requests in 2015-16. I participated in those. What is new now is that we have these traffic analytics tools which make it easy to identify a WP:PRIMARYTOPIC with data by running a query. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:38, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

  • Reasonably convinced... the traffic analysis you linked is convinces me that PRIMARYTOPIC comes into play. Jason Quinn (talk) 14:22, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose I am not convinced there is a primary topic here, due to the long-term significance of the many other potential topics. However, the disambiguation "anonymity network" sounds clunky - maybe Tor (software) would be better.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 19:14, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I don't see a primary topic for "Tor". The high pageview stats for the software are biased by WP:RECENTISM, which has only been around since 2002. +mt 01:33, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Weak oppose. I can see the argument because the network dominates the pageviews, but I'm sure for many folks the primary meaning of "tor" will be Tor (rock formation). PC78 (talk) 12:28, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Weak oppose per PC78. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:46, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Support per pageview stats. If this move fails to find consensus (and it's looking like it won't), I would suggest elevating Tor (anonymity network) to "most often refers to" status at the top of the dab page as a compromise to help speed readers to their intended destination. Colin M (talk) 19:25, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
    I support moving it to the top. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:34, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. No primary topic here. For instance, I would always think of the rock formation if I heard the word. Pure WP:RECENTISM. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:51, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
  • @Necrothesp, PC78, Mwtoews, and Crouch, Swale: Could I ask for some clarification? I fail to understand why you think anyone would think of the rock formation for such an odd, geology-field-specific term. I have never heard this word to mean a rock. "Tor (rock formation)" is a page which, based on citations, might not even meet WP:N, so I was wondering what you all were thinking. I looked at your user pages, and you all are British. Special:WhatLinksHere/Tor_(rock_formation) seems to be a list of British places. Do you all expect that people in the UK know this word? I am in the United States and lived in India. I do not think there are "tors" in either of these places, except to mean the privacy tool. If there were some way to determine that only people in the UK knew this word to mean rock, would that either change your view now, or otherwise be a justification to you for raising this discussion again in the future? Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:21, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
If you lived in Devon or Cornwall you certainly wouldn't think it was an "odd, geology-field-specific term"! The land is covered in them and the word is in common parlance. Remember, experiences vary. I'm not saying the rocky outcrop should be the primary topic; I'm saying there isn't a primary topic. Personally, I've never heard of the Tor you think is because I have little interest in technology other than as an end-user! Please don't assume everyone shares your interests and remember the long-term significance clause of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Pageview analysis is not the be all and end all and a computing topic is soon yesterday's news; whereas things like rock formations will be around long after we're dead and gone. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:27, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
I get that experiences vary and that pageviews are not everything, but what constitutes sufficient evidence? Am I misapplying WP:PRIMARYTOPIC? In both 2017 and 2018 Tor the software got about twice the pageviews as all other uses put together. To me this looks like strong evidence. I was wondering if I was somehow ignorant of the United States rock tors, but now I am thinking more that by coincidence British people happening to be commenting here and by coincidence this is a term which British people know, but maybe not others. I can only speak for myself and maybe some people outside of the UK know this word. Or, maybe for the sake of the UK, we should take cultural experience over pageviews. I just found it odd that there could be firm feelings about an odd term. And yes, there is more recenticism happening here in the United States with about 10 years of continuous technology privacy scandals, espionage, and data leaking, all of which results in people talking about privacy and Tor. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:49, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
What Necrothesp said. The primary dictionary definition of tor is the geological formation (see Merriam-Webster, a US dictionary) so I don't necessarily think its a US/UK thing, more a question of different interests – I've also never heard of the anonymity network, for example. I think it's best to say that there isn't a primary topic in this case. PC78 (talk) 16:17, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
The rock formations outside UK are also called tors, so it's not a British thing. This term has been in use before the 12th century, and is still used today. I might change my tune if the software is still around a few centuries from now :) +mt 21:28, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Advocating for this to be primary topic is nothing but recentism. If anything were to be granted primary topic for this name, it would be the so called "odd, geology-field-specific term". --Khajidha (talk) 13:47, 18 September 2019 (UTC)PS - for Bluerasberry's benefit, I'm from NC. The geological formation and the SF publisher are much more familiar to me. And the combined form "Glastonbury Tor" is definitely more familiar than this software I've never heard of before.
  • oppose - this is the most popular Tor recently, but as a seemingly common 3-letter word with so very many meanings, almost all of which are older and regarding subjects more likely to be around X years from now, I'd err on the side of disambiguating. In general I'm wary of making a very short word with many meanings default to a proper noun. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 23:41, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
  • See the recent discussion at Talk:Beck (disambiguation)#Requested move 23 May 2019 where PC78 opposed to a move of a musician despite "beck" being a term used in northern England for a stream. Mwtoews is in Aotearoa but I agree with Necrothesp that there isn't a clear primary topic. Crouch, Swale (talk) 09:39, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
    • Not sure why you felt it necessary to bring that up. The two cases aren't necessarily comparible, and each move request ought to be judged on its own merits. PC78 (talk) 00:58, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
      • It was in response to the comment I looked at your user pages, and you all are British. Crouch, Swale (talk) 07:54, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
        • Ah, ok. No worries. PC78 (talk) 13:18, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose — On the basis of the discussion so far, it seems that both the geological sense and the computing sense are commonly used enough that neither should be held as primary topic. Factor in, also, that Tor, the software, rose to prominence in the early 2010s with the growing popularity of WikiLeaks and even more so in 2013 following the Edward Snowden reports, and there's clearly an argument for recentism bias. Google Trends results for even just the UK, however (see here), show that Tor, the software, is still around twice as commonly searched for compared to probably the most well-known example of a geological tor, Glastonbury Tor. I'll also chime in with my own personal experience, and say that as an approx. 20-year-old Londoner in the computing industry, I've personally only ever heard "tor" used as a lone term to refer to the software, with "Glastonbury Tor" being the only example of it being used in the geological sense that I've come across before (but of course, anecdotes are just that: anecdotes). — JivanP (talk) 13:02, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Quick note on move request

I missed the entire move request, which is fine since I agree with the outcome. :) However, I wanted to note a couple points for future reference in case it becomes relevant later:

  • The article is about the Tor anonymity network, not the software called "tor". While tor is the software typically used to access the Tor network, you wouldn't say that the article on BitTorrent is about torrent clients, or that the article on the World Wide Web is about browsers.
  • The claims of WP:RECENTISM seem vastly overstated to me. For one, the network has been around for almost two decades now, and isn't going away any time soon. It's well funded, has a massive community, and is one of the most consistently used privacy enhancing technologies over the course of its existence. Furthermore, it's not just Wikipedia accesses that indicate it's better known than the rock formation. A Google Scholar search for "tor rock" turns up 547,000 results, while a search for "tor network" turns up 1,980,000 results (related searches like "tor geologic" and "tor privacy" give similar discrepancies). Just because something is newer doesn't make it WP:RECENTISM, and we have hard numbers that indicate that's not the case here. For an analogy, the page for train is on the industrial vehicle, even though the word predates that use by hundreds of years, and isn't even close to the main definition on wikt:train.

Again, I think that the decision not to make this the primary topic is the right one, but also think it's important to understand the actual situation. —Tga (talk) 22:31, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Possible incorrect information

The article states "Tor does not prevent an online service from determining when it is being accessed through Tor." However, this CAN be incorrect under certain circumstances. This is because the means via which we determine whether or not a given IP is a tor node is based upon the lists provided for by Tor which come from the mainstream public directory authorities. Most users use the public directory authority in actual practice, but it is possible to form your own directory authority, if you were to have enough nodes join your directory authority. Simply put, the ability to learn if a machine is a tor node is dependent upon the given directory authority publishing to the public in some way or another that the information that it is a tor node. While the Tor project does this for the mainstream public directory authorities, other directory authorities may not necessarily do this, though the nodes would still very much be "Tor" nodes within the classical sense. 66.90.153.184 (talk) 00:56, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

The statement looks correct as written to me. Another equivalent wording that might make things clearer for you, but would probably confuse most laypeople, is "An online service determining if it is being accessed through Tor is not in Tor's threat model." An alternative tor network could opt to refrain from disclosing this information, but that's not the same as tor preventing it. My guess is that there are mechanisms which would work for fingerprinting Tor traffic from the server side, because this was never a threat anyone has been trying to defend against (off the top of my head, I know Tor handles half-open TCP connections unusually). And from a more practical perspective, outside of test networks (which typically aren't allowed to exit to the wider internet), I've never heard of an alternative network being deployed, so clarifying that this isn't something Tor as it exists will help you with seems like good information to convey. —Tga (talk) 17:06, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
Agreed. To the OP: even if a given set of nodes does not publicly disclose that they are, in fact, Tor nodes, that does not prevent servers being accessed by Tor exit nodes from profiling all visitors and thereby determining which visitors are actually Tor exit nodes. The fact that Tor exit nodes are not required to publicly disclose their status as exit nodes does not imply that nodes which do not disclose such status cannot be identified as exit nodes through other means. — JivanP (talk) 19:17, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Missing info at “Some protocols expose IP addresses”

There is a lot of discussion on the boards (e.g. reddit) about the security of webm, especially regarding the protection of the user’s IP address when using HTML5. This is a very active discussion right now in the context of using TOR even over VPN, especially on iOS and possibly other mobile platforms. I did not see any discussion of this on other security-focused wiki pages nor on the webm Wikipedia page. Perhaps someone with more detailed knowledge than I could consider adding something to this section of this page on this topic? I also will added a note to the webm Wikipedia page about this. Mike-c-in-mv (talk) 17:19, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Splitting December 2019

Wikipedia:Article_size recommends dividing from a size of 60k and strongly recommends it from above 100k. This article is 137k. What part should be moved to a different article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Streepjescode (talk • contribs) 16:02, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps a split is not required. By User talk:Dr pda/prosesize.js the "readable prose size" is 44kb, which is within the standards of that article size recommendation. Much of the content here is in citations and lists. Maybe those usage templates with all that data are contributing to your larger measurement; I am not sure.
If there were a split, then there could be a History of Tor article. Tor is 20 years old, and as with much software, the relevant information is the software's current state. I have no idea if the "weaknesses" are still accurate, because I do not know if problems from 5-15 years ago still persist today. Some of the implementations are probably stale, and the year by year updates in "impact" could be moved to a long history article but summarized here. To save time and editorial labor, I say move lots of old content to a history article for preservation and reworking, and do so without changing it in the split, then let anyone work it there if it needs curation. The information should be accessible but it is excessive here. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:17, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

"Weaknesses" section outdated and one-sided

It focuses too much on outdated attack methods. It references some really old studies (2009, really?) and methods that as of 2020 are patched. Why not talk about a current problem, such as malicious relays running SSLStrip? or hidden services being DoSed? I suggest rewriting the entire section, focusing on relevant stuff, and actually referencing Tor's blog. https://blog.torproject.org/bad-exit-relays-may-june-2020 https://blog.torproject.org/stop-the-onion-denial https://blog.torproject.org/ IveGonePostal (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 11:27, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

I don't know I'd call it "one-sided", but it definitely suffers from outdated WP:RECENT, and needs to be rewritten. The question is, do we try to rewrite it to avoid said recentism entirely, or just remove old attacks and update it with the attacks that are more likely to be relevant to contemporary readers of the article? If we re-structure it to avoid recentism by orienting it towards classes of attacks and the general Tor Project response to them, we can avoid having to do this again in another few years, and generally make things more appropriate for Wikipedia's style. On the other hand, readers for security-critical software like this might be more interested in the latest attacks they should be thinking about, rather than more abstract understandings of Tor's security. Do any more experienced WP editors have advice for how to weigh this sort of thing?--Tga (talk) 18:20, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
The former option sounds nice. I don't think we should delve any deeper into past attacks that have been patched. It may give readers the wrong idea that Tor that it is inherently unsecure. We should give readers the general idea that Tor users can be "deanonymized" because of correlation attacks, i.e using the same pseudonym both on clearnet and Tor. I'll add a "Section needs to updated" template for now IveGonePostal (talk)

People relying on Tor as a 'safety-critical' piece of software, that if it were to fail would result in being busted, etc... but it has not been written to such standards.

Also it an open open secret within the internet service provider community that it is not secure, because anyone with a "God's eye" view of the network can break it. That means pretty much all governments and many law enforcement agencies. So the software could be considered a honeypot because it provides a false sense of security, and innocent people who are not true criminals are likely to end up being prosecuted because of draconian 'thought crime' computer crime laws.

Tor does not claim to be functional against a global passive adversary, and has openly stated as much since its inception. There is no publicly known case of such an adversary using this information in practice. Rest assured, if there was a fundamental and practical flaw in how Tor operates that adversaries (or researchers) knew about, there would be a lot more visible use of it. But of course, if you know that your adversary does have a global view of the network, then you should not rely on Tor. It's also just true that most people do not have such adversaries, and those who do, basically cannot use the web at all. With regards to your link, I would recommend not taking its claims seriously, and we certainly can't use it as a source here on Wikipedia; that blog has a reputation of not being particularly well-informed or knowledgeable about the subject. My understanding is that the community has been trying to be patient with explaining things to this person, but to no avail (to be fair, it's easy to misunderstand these things, but there's a reason why this field has a peer review process, and random attention-seeking blogs aren't a part of it). In any case, accurately describing the threat model Tor uses is, of course, well within the scope of this article, but just describing things as "safety-critical" or not doesn't actually mean anything. --Tga (talk) 15:55, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
To be clear, the person you replied to there was not me, it was an IP i do not know IveGonePostal (talk) 10:04, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Wrong word, should be resistant rather than resilient...so it seems to me. "In spite of known weaknesses and attacks listed here, a 2009 study revealed Tor and the alternative network system JonDonym (Java Anon Proxy, JAP) are considered more resilient to website fingerprinting techniques than other tunneling protocols." 2603:6080:800:6A:A8C6:987B:33B:52BE (talk) 04:28, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Technical aspects

I am not really a computer expert per se, but I have been using linux since about 20 years. What I would love to see on wikipedia is an article that focuses on technical aspects (implementation details) BUT without assuming the user is very clever; without assuming the user is very dumb, either. Wikipedia is quite good, but some articles are way too complicated whereas others lack some detail. Anyway - would it be possible for a longer document to be integrated into the main article here BUT perhaps linked in from the main website (here, on wikipedia about tor), so that not everyone has to read it as-is? This new article should focus on technical aspects, implementation details and so forth. I understand the general gist of how Tor works but not really where the limitations start and end; for example the "torbrowser" is implemented via firefox I assume, so it may share some design limitations incurred by firefox (I assume here). The article is ok but it is a bit convoluted and should probably be re-arranged entirely. 2A02:8388:1602:6D80:3AD5:47FF:FE18:CC7F (talk) 10:54, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

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