Over 1 Million People Use Tor To Check Facebook Anonymously Each Month (techcrunch.com) 63
An anonymous reader writes: More than one million people have used the Tor anonymizing browser to login to Facebook, according to Facebook. Facebook expanded its support for Tor earlier this year as it rolled-out support for the Android Orbot proxy, providing Android Facebook users easier access to use Tor. In October 2014, Facebook created a dedicated onion address for Tor access, once again, making it easier for users to connect via Tor. Tor said some 525,000 people accessed [Facebook] via Tor in June 2015, rising to more than one million this month. "This [Tor] growth is a reflection of the choices that people make to use Facebook over Tor, and the value that it provides them. We hope they will continue to provide feedback and help us keep improving," Facebook added. Users may use Tor to access Facebook because of the location obfuscation feature, as well as to ensure their identity doesn't leak to intermediaries -- such as ISPs or "an agency that surveils the Internet."
Anonymously?! Haha (Score:4, Insightful)
Facebook is on Tor so the CIA can do network analysis of known origin data. Sure sure, some people jump through proxies first VPn or otherwise, but most don't.
Re: (Score:3)
For some people the CIA is not the organization most likely to kill them.
Sorry for the hijacking, but this is too important (Score:4, Informative)
Slashdot is deleting [slashdot.org] comments [slashdot.org]!
I cannot overstress the importance of stopping this!
Indelible, uneditable comments are Slashdot's last redeeming value! Without it all is lost!
Please, help spread the word, and maybe we can nip this in the bud.
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What were the comments about?
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What good is a VPN? (Score:1)
What good is a VPN when you're visiting the pages of your friends & family?
They don't NEED to trace down your internet connection to figure out who you're connected to!
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CIA? You do know on the grand scheme of government organisations tracking people down the vast majority of TOR users fear the FBI and the CIA the least. Much of the world is more worried about organisations which don't have the ability to subpoena or issue secret warrants to the likes of Facebook.
Those are the types of organisations much MORE likely to make people disappear in the middle of the night.
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anonymous browser to login... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Heh, really, the irony is thick
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Yes, when using Tor only you and Facebook know your identity and that you are using Facebook.
If Facebook were not collaborating with surveillance agencies and even developing a neat interface for them.
Re:anonymous browser to login... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes you are. Just because I can login to some website and post some comment under some strange pseudonym to discuss religious, cultural, political, or otherwise sensitive topics doesn't mean that I necessarily wish to allow those communications to be read by the government.
What you're missing, is that some governments are hostile to speech while at the same time in no position to subpoena a company to hand over user details. In that regard having a secure anonymous connection between yourself and a server which resides outside of reach of said country is important even if the transaction with the final server is not anonymous.
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I strongly suspect that a lot of them are basically parts of botnets run by shady marketers to sell likes/follows/etc. Tor is probably just used to avoid tripping certain Facebook mechanisms of multiple logins per IP or something.
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Yes, it's really about getting around firewalls, not giving you any sort of anonymity.
To copy a great analogy another user made in the story about Facebook's .onion site launch, in terms of anonymity it's "like putting a condom over the car you drive to the whorehouse."
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It's slow enough that it satisfies your need to reminisce for the good ole days of dial up.
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In some places, using Facebook is itself illegal.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Great quote. A comprehensive exploration of the topic is in: Nothing to Hide [amazon.com] by Daniel J. Solove, a legal scholar.
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Re: Why use Tor at all? (Score:2)
You are under arrest for violation of the Thoughts Contrary To The State and Expression of Opinion act. You will remain silent. Anything you say, or that we claim you said can be held against you. You may not consult with an attorney. If you attempt to do so you will be considered guilty as charged.
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I know you're trolling, but here's a serious answer anyway.
there's no reason you need to using T.O.R.
Only in the sense that there was "no reason Rosa Parks needed to ride on the front of the bus".
I won't comment on the dubious wisdom of logging into Facebook under TOR. But in a general sense, anything that frustrates the surveillance state and returns power from the state back to individuals has critical social benefits that make it worthwhile, even if it is inconvenient.
There's "no reason" only if you don't give a shit about human rights.
Re:T.O.R. (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason for accessing Facebook over TOR is noise. The more innocuous traffic on TOR, the harder it gets for anybody looking for the less innocuous stuff.
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Looks to me that much of the tor traffic to fb is from the asses that clone accounts unde a new misspelled name, ask to be friended and then send messages asking for money. Their scam only works when tracking back to the IP is difficult.
Re: T.O.R. (Score:1)
You, sir, are a grade-A moron.
The government might care about you specifically but they still log everything you access online. At least they do where I come from. You conveniently overlook that they might start being interested in you for any random reason.
What concerns me is what happens when laws change. I am concerned the government will go back through those logs because they can find people who previously engaged in legal behaviours and surveil them to see if they continue to engage after the behaviou
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Perhaps I perceive that anonymity is a right to privacy issue that is constitutionally protected.
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You gave up your right to privacy the moment you aquired a mobile phone and were being issued a credit/debit card.
Tracking you everywhere you go, as long as the phone is emitting a signal, is trivial. Using the credit/debit card leaves a more distinct track.
I'm not saying that you, the individual, are being monitored on purpose by any lettered agency, but the records exist and can (an will, in the near future) be used to compose a very accurate profile.
Now where's my damned tinfoil hat???
Re: T.O.R. (Score:2)
If you're not paid counterintel, you don't need to post that as AC.
Translation (Score:2)
Headline: "Over 1 Million People Use Tor To Check Facebook Anonymously Each Month"
Translation: "NSA Adds Over 1 Million People To Secret Watch List Each Month"
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Translation: "NSA Adds Over 1 Million People To Secret Watch List Each Month"
I don't believe that for a second - that would imply there exists someone not already on that list!
Re:Translation (Score:4, Insightful)
Headline: "Over 1 Million People Use Tor To Check Facebook Anonymously Each Month"
Translation: "NSA Adds Over 1 Million People To Secret Watch List Each Month"
Amen. More noise to sift through.
The fear is that the initial outfits will collect and parse all of our information. This is not worth worrying over. The toothpaste is pretty much out of the tube... the collection of everything is efficient and ongoing.
We are saved from a realistic fruition of the 1984 prophecy not by compassion, plenty of warning, or good governing; but by the endless, insatiable greed of the governors.
One million people? (Score:2)
If they are accessing it anonymously surely it could just be one person accessing facebook one million times per month?
(Or some other combination of multiple accesses by 1 million people.)
Out of shame probably. (Score:4, Funny)
Then again it could just be creepy basement denizens stalking the people they had a crush on back in their school days.
Re:Out of shame probably. (Score:4, Informative)
Or maybe people in Thailand speaking out against their king, people in China speaking out against their government, or people in Russia proclaiming their love to their homosexual partner.
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Well, OR... (Score:2)
... one guy uses Tor to check Facebook anonymously 1 million times per month.
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... one guy uses Tor to check Facebook anonymously 1 million times per month.
No, facebooks knows who the million are.
So the headline should be 1 million idiots used tor thinking they connected to facebook anonymously and here follows a list of their names, addresses, birthdays, favorite snack, last vacation they went on, and who their dentist is.
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tor (Score:2)
hitting FB using tor is FUBAR!!!!!
and will land you IN PRISON
that illegal onion site you visited ( hacked by fbi) has a computer finger print of YOU
then you log in to FB with a MATCHING electronic fingerprint and BOOM you are arrested
loging into FB is a very FUBAR idea
How do they know? (Score:2)
I know this sounds like a stupid question but how does Facebook know someone is using tor? Is there a TOR bit set in some IP header somewhere that alerts them to it?
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Facebook Microsoft Facebook Microsoft Facebook Mic (Score:1)
Lip Service (Score:2)
I gave it a shot when I was learning how the .onion protocol works, and as soon as I logged in, it flagged the activity as suspicious and invalidated the cookie on all my other devices. It's not some uber-protective measure - it literally warned me that the login was suspicious.
That's not what FB would do if it were trying to encourage opportunistic privacy. That the hidden service exists seems to just be to pay lip service to privacy advocates.
0.06% (Score:2)
Assuming the number is accurate, that would be about 0.06% of facebook users.
But what these people apparently don't realize is, that as soon as they log in, all anonymity is gone. Do they really think facebook doesn't communicate things like IP address or geolocation data, regardless of whether the communication goes through TOR? Even if that fails, it's really hard to escape the power of facebook's data analytics. They probably can identify you by that alone.
5000 People. (Score:1)
More like: 50,000 people use Tor to check Facebook 20 times each month. Though for Facebook addicts it wouldn't be 20 times in a month.
So it's more likely: 5000 people use Tor to check Facebook 200 times a month.
Big whoop there.