Tor users locked out of Facebook after wave of dodgy traffic Users of the Tor traffic anonymizing service are currently locked out of Facebook after a flood of dodgy traffic triggered an automatic lockdown by the social network's security systems. Given the paranoid post-PRISM times we live, in the outage on Tuesday caused a certain amount of online panic. A report highlighting the …
Hmm.. we routinely block traffic from all Tor exit nodes on our (non-registration and wholly uncontroversial) web site.
I am sorry we have to do this.
I support and occassionally use the Tor service. However the bad traffic emanating from >a relative few< exit node IP addresses is staggering i.e. vulnerability scanning, post-spamming, scraping, high speed rule breaking bots etc. I don't think much of this traffic is actually routed via Tor - people just put a Tor exit node on their box to give them plausible deniability.
Two logical explanations come to mind:
1. They're on the run from the law. They're not hiding who they are, but not where they are.
2. They're using Tor to bypass censorship in their country (or school), which blocks Facebook.
Anyway, I'm actually surprised to learn Facebook hadn't been blocking Tor all along, given how little they care about anyone's privacy.
Independently from the fact that using Facebook, especially with your real name, is going to be PRISM-read or NSA acquired anyway, as the info is going to be asked to FB directly... they're using the wrong tool.
If you want to be "safe", you only need to use HTTPS, and it's even an option on Facebook to make it so that your entire session always goes through HTTPS. No need to use "HTTPS Everywhere" or anything like it. Adding that kind of stuff actually makes you more vulnerable, as now your "secure" traffic is going through a third-party. One that probably has PRISM sitting right at the exit point.
Fake security is worse than no security at all!
"Adding that kind of stuff actually makes you more vulnerable"
Disagree. For people working on sensitive stuff such as journalists in press unfriendly territories, there's Router and IP monitoring already in place. Therefore using a proxy is essential. Also HTTPS is crackable in the right hands, we know this from past articles on the Reg....
A Privacy Timebomb has arrived sooner than expected.... We have the NSA's crimes on one-hand, and every-day privacy invasion by Ad-engines on the other... Surely now there is a market for websites and devices that put privacy first? But are there digital entrepreneurs left that want to offer Social networks / Search Engines / Devices that don't track your movements.. Don't phone home... Don't serve you ads? Entrepreneurs don't have to aspire to be the latest greatest alternative, they just have to meet a niche for privacy advocates. They can even charge a fee in lieu of Ads.... Surely there is a market....?
A quick search on the previously mentioned Diaspora shows that's the main deal this social network. Good luck getting your mum to switch to it though.
As for search DuckDuckGo are probably your best bet. Personally I like the UI better than google now, more like an old google than the current G+ centric one. Still serves you a few ads, but they're pretty discrete (but still obvious enough you know it's an ad), plus you can turn them off in the settings.
No idea what email account to switch to though.. Other than rolling you own, something I'm actually considering these days.
"previously mentioned Diaspora"
I tried to switch but got no help from anyone on that project.
I think its taking them too long and it may be stuck in limbo....
I suspect they've over engineered it, instead of just keeping it simple....
That the NSA told them to lock out TOR because it would improve the quality of the data they claim they don't collect and is too vague to be of any use in the first place even if they did 'collect' it and put it in a database which doesn't exist and wouldn't be any good for tracking people if it were.
Natch.
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