[tor-talk] flash and tor

adrelanos adrelanos at riseup.net
Fri Sep 28 00:49:16 UTC 2012


esolve esolve:
>     I notice that if you watch video using Tor, since flash is a
> third-party tool, that will ruin your anonymity.
> 
>     I think even if the plugin flash may use the real IP for communication,
> it may not reveal what content you are accessing but it just shows that a
> user on that IP is using flash. Or it just expose itself to adobe company,
> other entities, like government, other companies can't know about you. Am I
> wrong or not? are there any paper, articles about this?

When using TBB and flash the problem is, that flash will not honor proxy
settings, thus sending traffic in the clear.

Website can see:
- your real IP address
- what you view

Other companies:
- will know what the website is sharing with them

ISP can see:
- you are connected to website ip
- content: depends if the flash connection to the website is encrypted
or not

Government:
- I don't like to go into that, but there are no differences. Your ISP
can see it and government can see as much as always for non-Tor connections.

I am not aware of any papers, but I wrote a Whonix specific chapter
about Flash and other browser plugins.

https://sourceforge.net/p/whonix/wiki/Applications/#browser-plugins

(Summary: IP/location is safe when using Whonix, there are loads of
flash alternatives; even if IP/location is safe, flash is not recommend
anyway)


More information about the tor-talk mailing list