> But hiding your real IP from the server is only one part of tor. The > other is encrypting and obscuring the destination of all traffic so > that your ISP/government/etc can't listen in. This is what makes it > useful for people in places like Iran and China. They don't care about > hiding their IP from twitter. They care about getting around the > censorship and surveillance put in place by the government.
It is sad how often people get this wrong. Tor only encrypts traffic between endpoints *within* the network created. As soon as it leaves the endpoint, which it inevitably does, it is just like normal traffic. Tor used to be much louder about their "we do not encrypt, only obfuscate IP address" vibe a while back, but now the footnotes seem much more muted.[1] It is well-known that people operate exit nodes for less than altruistic reasons, for "research" and otherwise. [2] I do not have a link on me right now, but there has been a lot of paranoia regarding intel agencies of different nations running exit nodes for snooping on traffic. I will be honest and call it that because I have never seen any evidence. I think this is important distinction to make, and Tor developers have always been honest that Tor is a false sense of security *when trusted unto itself as your only tool*. Please read the links and be informed. Since this list has lots of subscribers, some might not read the fine print of such assertions. If I am wrong, please feel free to correct me. Best, _AJS [1] http://www.torproject.org/download.html.en#Warning [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)#Weaknesses _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
