January 2020 - tor-project - lists.torproject.org

Are there countries where using Tor is illegal?
by Cristian Consonni 11 May '25

11 May '25

Hi, (Sorry if this question has already been asked in the past, feel free to point me to the relevant resources.) I know that the legal FAQs by the EFF state that: «we believe that running a Tor relay — including an exit relay that allows people to anonymously send and receive traffic — is legal under U.S. law.»[1] I also know there is a list of countries for which there is legislation that exclude communication service providers from liability. They are indicated in the Legal of the Tor Exit Guidelines page[2], they are USA, Germany, Netherlands, Austria, France, and Sweden. >From some articles in the press[3a][3b] it may be illegal - depending on how you interpret the wording[*] - to use Tor (and other technologies such as VPNs or proxies) in the UAE, with fines ranging in the millions of dirhams (hundreds of thousand of dollars). A couple of weeks ago it was discussed - on this list as well - that a law was introduced to the state parliament to ban Tor[4a][4b]. This follows a case of some months ago of a Russian Tor exit node operator being arrested for inciting mass riots and terrorism[4c][4d]. The idea of blocking VPNs or Tor seems to have already been considered in the past[4e]. This infographic about pluggable transports[5] suggests access to the Tor network is censored or limited in China, Uzbekistan, Iran, and Kazakhstan. Tor being censored orblocked may be different from it being illegal. What about other countries? Is there a place where I can find more about this topic? Cristian [1]: https://www.torproject.org/eff/tor-legal-faq.html.en [2]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorExitGuidelines [3a]: http://www.emirates247.com/news/emirates/dh500-000-fine-if-you-use-fraud-ip… [3b]: http://news.softpedia.com/news/people-caught-using-vpns-tor-or-proxies-in-t… [*]: «Whoever uses a fraudulent computer network protocol address (IP address) by using a false address or a third-party address by any other means for the purpose of committing a crime or preventing its discovery» [4a]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2017-June/043293.html [4b]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/22055 [4c]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2017-April/043109.html [4d]: https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/24/dmitry-bogatov-tor-russia/ [4e]; https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-and-tor-ban-looming-on-the-horizon-for-russia-… [5]: https://www.torproject.org/images/PT/2016-07-how-to-use-PT.png

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Tor Browser Team Meeting Notes, 06 January 2020
by Matthew Finkel 13 Apr '20

13 Apr '20

Hello everyone, Our first meeting of 2020 was held on 6 January. 2020 will be an exciting year for Tor Browser! We have a busy year ahead of us and we're hitting the ground running. The logs are available at http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting2/2020/tor-meeting2.2020-01-06-18.29.l… Summary: 1) Discussed how we can move forward with implementing per-site settings 2) Discussed how long it will take before we start writing 2020 instead of 2019 on documents 3) Discussed future plans for Namecoin integration (adding more platforms, timeline for adding in Alpha, etc.) With regard to (3), Namecoin is currently available in Tor Browser Nightly builds on Gnu/Linux 64-bit. Please provide feedback is you try it! ================================ Week of January 6, 2020 Discussion: How long will we be dating things 2019 when signing documents? Will this decade be as roaring as the 1900s version? - if it will be, is that a good thing pospeselr: Last weeks: - #31855 (remove end of year fundraising campaign) - small progress on Mozilla 1601040 and 1594455 This week: - continue baby-sitting above Mozilla tickets - #30570 (implement per-site security settings) - what do folks think about the discussion in the ticket? - tldr: looks like to build something consistent with the design laid out there requires a lot of work basically reimplementing what NoScript does, or heavily refactoring/redesigning NoScript's internals :/ - look into umatrix extension as an alternative to NoScript - put umatrix findings in a doc or on the ticket mcs and brade: Last few weeks: - #32636 (Clean up locales shipped with Tor Launcher). - Code review for #31855 (Remove EOY Campaign from about:tor). - Sponsor 27 work: - #19757 (permanent storage of client auth keys and associated management UI). - Time off for Christmas and end of year. This week/upcoming: - #19757 (permanent storage of client auth keys and associated management UI). boklm: Last few weeks: - Made patches for: - #32768 (Create a build-infos.json file containing firefox platform_version and buildid) - #32805 (Make creation of downloads.json optional) - Worked on #25102 which is almost finished (Add script to sign nightly build mar files, generate update-responses xml and publish the new version) - Looked at blog comments This week: - Help with publishing new releases - Finish work on #25102 (script to sign nightly build mar files, generate update-responses xml and publish the new version) and remaining things for #18867 (Ship auto-updates for Tor Browser nightly channel) - Try #32768 (Make script to optimize upload and download of Tor Browser releases) - Look at macOS signing situation sysrqb: Last few weeks: Mostly distracted by holidays, family, etc. Preparing releases for this week This week: Releases Reviewing roadmap for Q1 2020 Finishing remaining items we didn't finish last year Jeremy Rand: Last few weeks: #30558 is merged, yay. Attended 36C3; gave a talk and workshop; ran into boklm there :) This week: Ponder next steps for Namecoin now that the initial merge to Linux Nightly has happened. ================================ - Matt

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S27 Meeting today, Tuesday 7th January @ 15UTC
by Pili Guerra 11 Feb '20

11 Feb '20

Hi everyone, Happy New Year! We will be having our first meeting of the year for this project today. Looking forward to catching up and starting the final stretch for this project. Thanks! Pili — Project Manager: Tor Browser, UX and Community teams pili at torproject dot org gpg 3E7F A89E 2459 B6CC A62F 56B8 C6CB 772E F096 9C45

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December 2019 User Feedback Report
by Enjeck Cleopatra 03 Feb '20

03 Feb '20

Hey, team! Welcome to the *December 2019 user feedback report!* Happy New Year. TL;DR: There didn't seem to be much user feedback that we haven't seen in previous months. Since the update to Tor Browser 9.0, some users were still confused with the letterboxing feature and there were reports of missing dlls on Windows. - Reddit is mostly buzzing with the same questions we usually see. I'm also seeing questions about letterboxing, ISP block circumvention, proxy server errors, specifying exit nodes and getting Tor for Mac and iOS. ## Common questions on Frontdesk - Why can't download Tor Browser / download button not working. - Why can't I connect to Tor Browser? - How to fix missing dll files on Windows? - Why can't I access some websites on TB? - How to circumvent internet ban in Iran/ bridges for Iran users? - Is TB infected with malware/ why does my antivirus pop up a warning? - How long does it take to ship donation gifts? ## Most common questions of Reddit (/r/TOR) - Tor Browser for iOS/iPhones? - What are the borders in Tor Browser / how to remove them? - Can my ISP see what I do on Tor Browser/ bypassing ISP blocks/throttling? - How to specify exit nodes? - Do I need both Tor for Android and Orbot? ## TBA Reviews & Feedback on Google Play Store The average review score is still at *4.2 stars*. Below are some common problems mentioned in the by users in Google Play reviews: - The proxy server is refusing connections. - Crashes all the time / force stops. - Browsing speed is extremely slow . - Can't download any image - Some websites don't work/ Onion links don't work. - Why does TBA not block ads? - Need to donate to use app (It appears the EOY banner makes some users think they must donate to use the app). - How to import and sync bookmarks. - Why doesn't TBA have an adblocker? ## Most common stack exchange tags tor-browser-bundle: 10 this month hidden-services: 7 this month configuration: 4 this month directory: 3 this month windows: 3 this month server: 3 this month ## Notable bugs, fixes, & issues mentioned by users - Blog comment [1] - Difficulty verifying Tor Browser signature on Android. This could be addressed while working on [8]. - Blog comment [2] - Pictures not loading on websites. This problem was fixed by [9] - CLOSED. - #32847 [3] - Tor crashes when quitting Tor Browser nightly on macOS - OPEN. - #32693 [4] - TBB Android: startup crash when opened from external link - CLOSED as duplicate. - #32733 [5] - "Find" feature leaks information between Tor Browser and regular Firefox on macOS 10.15.1 - CLOSED as duplicate. - #32857 [6] - File parts are being automatically downloaded to /tmp - OPEN. - #32654 [7] - Torbrowser overrides user disabling tor proxy after restart - OPEN. ## Annotations 1. https://blog.torproject.org/comment/285898#comment-285898 2. https://blog.torproject.org/comment/285810#comment-285810 3. https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/32847 4. https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/32693 5. https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/32733 6. https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/32857 7. https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/32654 8. https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/31296 9. https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/32238

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Notes from Vegas Meeting JANUARY 30 2020
by Erin Wyatt 31 Jan '20

31 Jan '20

Notes from Vegas Meeting JANUARY 30 2019: + NEW BUSINESS ** Paste your bold items here for discussion and summarize the discussion/resolution at the end of the meeting. Nick: - Who can help me decide whether to go to a couple of boston-local things I've been invited to? I'll go if it's in Tor's interests. Outcome: people who want Tor to be/speak at an event should contact speaking at torproject org + GENERAL NOTES Erin - Launched next feedback cycle! - Moved office this week. Working on last few things/cleaning old office & getting internets at new place. This has taken up *a lot* of time the past week, so please ping me if you're waiting on me for something urgent. Thanks! Alex: - Will be traveling when the vegas team meeting is. - Some 0.4.3 planning with Nick. - The team seems to be doing good on the different projects. The new s55 is getting some attention. - Will be at FOSDEM in the weekend together with a lot of Tor folks :-) Georg - Spending a week in Tor Browser land at Mozilla's All Hands meeting Steph - Wrote an email for sponsors incorporating 2019 media coverage of Tor - Working with our Outreachy intern on her tasks. Submitted midterm feedback. - Working with OTF Learning Lab on our onion services project. Have a list of questions to answer to help with writing the narrative. - Responding to press inquiries. - Finishing Jan Tor News for this week anarcat - new ganeti server installed and working, but small setback because of some hardware problems - otherwise documentation is improving - work continuing on roadmap, will review with team in monthly meeting and come back here next week with the result - worked on a draft "support policy" with the TPA folks to see how we provide support and al, will bring it up after meeting as well - deployed (locally) a batch client to create trac tickets for said roadmap https://help.torproject.org/tsa/howto/trac/ - sent and received feedback requests - usual daily work: code reviews with hiro, RT queue config and debug, package install, TPA calendar migration Antonela - Attending All Hands this week isabela - Writing and reviewing reports - Working on different internal/external comms emails to tor-project, sponsors etc. - Annual meeting with Sida - Met w/ Josh from Zcash Foundation - Got started with new proposals (2DRLs) Sarah - Second donation acceptance policy meeting 2/4 at 20:00 UTC. - Logistics and invites for San Francisco and NYC events. - Helping with reports. Karsten - Worked on several iterations of graphs with OnionPerf and consensus information from Rob's experiment (#33076). Nick: - New stable releases today. - Network team members are doing another bug retrospective to see about commonalities in our regressions and look for ways to improve. - Important design proposals on-tor-dev from mike (congestion control) and teor (Ipv6) -- please read if you're interested, and I think you'll be interested. - We're trying to get 0.4.3.x stable and finished: everybody please help by testing the alpha releases and reporting bugs! - Who can help me decide whether to go to a couple of boston-local things I've been invited to? I'm not super interested on my own, but I'll go if it's in Tor's interests. (We don't need to figure out whether I'm going at the meeting; I just want to know whom to talk to.) Philipp - Roadmap post-processing and Sponsor 30 quarterly report - More more work on NSF TTP grant proposal - Sponsor 28 & 30 business as usual - More thinking about potential GSoC projects Gus - Updated training partnership agreement - Following up next remote training in Indonesia - Organizing Tor Village in IFF and putting together a schedule + call for activities - FOSDEM: AFK today and tomorrow - Meeting & retrospective with community members Pili: - S9 Sponsor meeting - FOSDEM prep - GSoC wrangling - S27 reporting - IFF planning - S9 Training Partner onboarding automation Gaba - AFK at Sustain OSS Summit

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Anti-censorship meeting notes, 30 Jan 2020
by Philipp Winter 30 Jan '20

30 Jan '20

Here are our meeting minutes: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2020/tor-meeting.2020-01-30-17.59.html And here is our meeting pad: Anti-censorship work meeting pad -------------------------------- Next meeting: Thursday January 30th 18:00 UTC Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 18:00 UTC, in #tor-meeting at OFTC (channel is logged while meetings are in progress). == Goal of this meeting == Weekly checkin about the status of anti-censorship work at Tor. Coordinate collaboration between people/teams on anti-censorship at Tor. == Links to Useful documents == * Our anti-censorship roadmap: https://dip.torproject.org/torproject/anti-censorship/roadmap/boards * Our roadmap consists of a subset of trac tickets. * The anti-censorship team's wiki page: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/AntiCensorshipTeam * Past meeting's notes can be found at: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/ * GetTor's roadmap: https://dip.torproject.org/groups/torproject/anti-censorship/gettor-project… * Tickets that need reviews: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=needs_review&componen… * Projects from sponsors we are working on: * https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/sponsors/Sponsor30 * https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/sponsors/Sponsor28 ------------------------- --- January 30th 2020 --- ------------------------- == Announcements == * == Discussion == * Kyle Undergrad Thesis: Fingerprintability of Snowflake * Want to be auto-copied on any Circumvention subcategory on trac? Current config: * Circumvention: cohosh, phw * Circumvention/BridgeDB: cohosh, phw * Circumvention/Censorship analysis: cohosh, phw, dcf * Circumvention/Obfs4: cohosh, phw * Circumvention/Pluggable transport: cohosh, phw * Circumvention/Snowflake: cohosh, phw, arlolra, dcf * Circumvention/meek: cohosh, phw, dcf == Actions == * Please add your monthly highlights to our january 2020 report * https://pad.riseup.net/p/qSHmkenLXX5yE0pW3_2y == Interesting links == * NDSS'20 proceedings are out and have several censorship-related papers: https://www.ndss-symposium.org/ndss2020/accepted-papers/ * "Decentralized Control: A Case Study of Russia" * https://censoredplanet.org/russia * https://censoredplanet.org/assets/russia.pdf * https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/20 * "Fingerprinting Network Censorship Boxes at Global Scale" * "Detecting Probe-resistant Proxies" * "SwarmProxy: Unblocking the Censored Web for the Masses" * "SymTCP: Eluding Stateful Deep Packet Inspection with Automated Discrepancy Discovery" * ICLab got into S&P'20: * https://people.cs.umass.edu/~phillipa/papers/oakland2020.pdf == Updates == Name: This week: - What you worked on this week. Next week: - What you are planning to work on next week (related to anti-censorship work). Help with: - Something you may need help with. Hiro: (last updated before 2020-01-09) Started restoring Twitter Responder. When retrieving tweets I need to check for new tweets only otherwise Gettor will end up responding to old back log and already answered messages. <-- is this #27330 ? Next Week: - Work on gettor specs <-- Is this #3781? - More with review of strings and website content and translation phw: This week (2020-01-30): * Roadmap post-processing (e.g., formalising goal statements) * Asked for letters of support for our NSF TTP grant * Worked on bridge campaign retrospective (#33007) * More work on porting BridgeDB to Python 3 (#30946) * Several issues remained after Damian's great work because some tests are only run in CI env * ...and some issues only emerge when you actually run the thing. * Worked on Sponsor 30 report * Provided simple mockup design for new Relay Search item (#33008) * Took a brief look at the location of bridges for Sponsor 28 * Barely any in traditional cloud infrastructure (Amazon, Google, etc.) * Many hosted on VPS systems (Digital Ocean, OVH, Hetzner, ...) * Many hosted behind residential connections (long tail) * Worked on making BridgeDB CAPTCHAs more usable (#24607) * Forked isis's gimp-captcha, made it work with modern APIs, and made CAPTCHAs easier * Deployed a batch of new CAPTCHAs to BridgeDB * Reviewed OONI's design mockup for its new Tor test * Helped Simone figure out what exactly OONI should test * https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/967 * Worked on a bunch of simple BridgeDB documentation fixes (#31427) * Fixed a race condition in bridgestrap Next week: * Take a look at BridgeDB metrics to see if new CAPTCHAs helped users * Hopefully finish Python 3 port * Write a summary of our current BridgeDB distribution mechanisms and brainstorm new ones Help with: * https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/31872 * https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/31427 Gaba: () Last week (Jan 27nd): This week (planned): * sponsor 30 report cecylia (cohosh): last updated 2019-01-30 Last week: - grant revising - checked in on censorship measurements again - implemented snowflake throughput checks (#32938) - finish up localization fix for gettor (#33002) - started looking at all snowflake measurements collected to measure censorship and throughput and analyzing pcaps for clues of why proxies sometimes don't work (#32545) - reviewed snowflake refactors (#33100 and #33040) - review #33038, #31872, #31427 This week: - UI mock up for snowflake throughput check (#32938) - started some recurring throughput tests for snowflake (#32545) - Aggregate and write up a report of snowflake throughput changes - send grant to some external reviewers - maybe pick up gettor email body localization ticket (#28233) Needs help with: - review of #31971 (from tor browser team, in progress) - review of #33002 arlolra: 2020-01-30 Last week: - started on #19026 Next week: - read up on turbo tunnel - continue with #19026 Help with: - dcf: 2020-01-30 Last week: - turbo tunnel in Snowflake - Snowflake refactoring and code quality improvements (#33040, #33100, thanks cohosh for review) Next week: - turbo tunnel in Snowflake - do Let's Encrypt upgrade for Snowflake bridge (#32964) Help with: - review of #33038, representation of timeouts cjb: 2019-01-30 Last week: - put up a patch for #31011 Next week: - would like to find out more about Snowflake + Android + Golang, since I've got some experience doing Android + Golang. Help with: - review of #31011 (perhaps teor) agix:2020-01-30 Last week: -Started reading up on all the received ressources from phw -Started with #31426 Next week: -Work further on #31426 -Start with #31967 Help with: -I will definitely have some questions and the need for some help next week ^^

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Damian's Status Report - January 2020
by Damian Johnson 30 Jan '20

30 Jan '20

Hi al! Just finished my first status report of the new year. For a brief snippet on what I've been up to with regard to BridgeDB and GitHub please see... https://blog.atagar.com/january2020/ Cheers! -Damian

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No Tor Browser release meeting this week
by Pili Guerra 28 Jan '20

28 Jan '20

Hi everyone, We’ll be pushing this one out to next week. The next Tor Browser release meeting will be held on Wednesday 5th February @ 19UTC. Thanks, Pili — Project Manager: Tor Browser, UX and Community teams pili at torproject dot org gpg 3E7F A89E 2459 B6CC A62F 56B8 C6CB 772E F096 9C45

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Happy 2020! Privacy by Design
by isabela 27 Jan '20

27 Jan '20

Hello Tor! Happy 2020! First off, I’d like to thank all of you for your amazing support in 2019. Looking back, it is really inspiring to see how much we achieved despite all the challenges. I will try to list some highlights from 2019, but before I do, I want to say that I know we have done much more than what I am listing here. In 2019 we kicked off the year with the stable release of Tor Browser for Android, which is the result of a big effort to improve the Tor experience on mobile. We organized a plan to ensure our network can scale if more people start to use it. We started to look at how to improve user perceived metrics on our network, like speed. Our User Testing Program is now a mature program that we can rely on to receive user feedback about our tools. The Money Machine team really invested in our relationship with donors, and all that great work almost doubled the individual donations in 2019, bringing ~$850k in donations. We also saw the difference in our lives with a dedicated team working on anti-censorship efforts. This front is much better organized, moving projects forward, and we are better informed about what is working and what is not around the world. Thanks to everybody for helping with all this work! For 2020, we will continue to execute our scalability plan for our network, continue to improve its performance metrics, and kick off our Network Health team, a new initiative to ensure that the network is healthy as it grows. Scaling our network is not a small thing, and it will be our priority for a while. But as the demand for privacy increases, [1] we will see more and more people using Tor to improve their own tools’ privacy features. And we want Tor to be able to meet that demand. We should demand privacy by design, because right now, even privacy laws enacted to respond to the crisis we are facing, as it allows too much room for interpretation on the industry side. Privacy cannot be an afterthought. We need technology to be designed in an ethical way that respects people’s rights. Tor is in a position where we can offer privacy protections that others can use on their sites or applications. Onion services are a technology that can serve that goal. And of course onion services wouldn’t be possible without the combined efforts of every team at Tor. In 2019 our year-end campaign was Take Back the Internet with Tor. Throughout 2020, we will campaign for Privacy by Design. And we will promote Tor as both an example of it and one of the ways to achieve it. We have many challenges ahead of us to meet this goal of serving as a solution for other tools to enhance their privacy features. For instance we will have to figure out how to work better on mobile. We want to bring privacy to the internet and people are mainly using mobile devices to access it. There is no way for us to avoid that. We already made progress on this front with Tor Browser for Android and our work on the tor network to improve its performance for mobile devices. But there is a lot more to do, and just like we are doing with scalability, we will break down this work into phases so it's easier to manage and advance it. I am excited with all of the above and I am happy to chat more with folks about it. I would suggest keeping an eye here at this email list for our team’s updates. Folks are working their roadmaps right now and sharing it with their team meeting notes and or reports. Thanks again for all of your support this past year. I know 2020 will be even better. Cheers, isabela -- Isabela Bagueros Executive Director The Tor Project https://www.torproject.org http://expyuzz4wqqyqhjn.onion/

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Next Global South Meeting - Jan 28
by cy63113 27 Jan '20

27 Jan '20

[EN] Hi Tor friends, just a quick reminder of our Global South meeting will be tomorrow, Tuesday, January 28, 16UTC[1] at #tor-south[2][3] ----- [ES] Hola amigos de Tor, solo un recordatorio rápido de nuestro encuentro de Global South, será mañana, martes, 28 de enero, 16UTC, en #tor-south [2][3]. ----- [PT-BR] Olá amigs do Tor, lembrete rapidão de nossa reunião do Global South será amanhã, 3ªf, 28 de janeiro, às 13h, no #tor-south[2][3] See y'all there! Cheers, [1] https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ [2] https://webchat.oftc.net/ [3] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/onboarding/IRC -- Cybelle DC8F 1F4C 9167 049F 7AA1 0BD6 2FB3 B0C9 F369 34C5 https://keybase.io/cy63113 @cyb3113

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