[tor-talk] FlashProxy questions

adrelanos adrelanos at riseup.net
Thu Feb 21 14:59:33 UTC 2013


Asked by me. Answered by David Fifield. Thanks! :) Just sharing, could
be interesting for anyone else.

> Can I post the following questions to tor-talk?

Yes, please feel free. I can answer some of the questions here; you can
copy the answers if you like.

> I am a website owner and plan to put a badge on it...
> - Is it likely that my website gets censored because of it?
> - Is it likely that I get into trouble with my host because I turn my
> clients into proxies?

We don't think it's likely your web site site will be censored, because
censored users don't have to reach it, so the censor doesn't have an
interest to block it. Only flash proxies on the free Internet have to
see it.

A badge doesn't use any extra bandwidth or resources on your host, so
you won't get in trouble because of that. But if your host restricts the
kinds of JavaScript you're allowed to run, then maybe.

> Page visitors are opt-in by default to serve as a circumvention
> helpers without their knowledge? Is this what all visitors want?
> Couldn't one say the website unknowingly and unwillingly took them
> over as a proxy?
> 
> Doesn't this highly risk that someone who doesn't want to be
> affiliated with the Tor network will unwillingly forward traffic to it?

Yes, this is really the only thing that still bothers me about the
system. I hope to move to opt-in–only. We haven't done it yet because we
don't know how it will affect proxy capacity, but we have ticket #7969
for that.

You as a web site owner can choose to make all *your* proxies opt-in.
Just use the cookierequired recipe at
https://crypto.stanford.edu/flashproxy/#badge-howto. You will need to
point your users to https://crypto.stanford.edu/flashproxy/options.html
to ask them to opt in.

> Can flashproxy be combined with obfsproxy? Does that make sense?

It is possible, though we haven't made much progress. See
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/7167.

> Will it replace the entry guard or will it be an additional hop?

It is an extra hop. See also
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/2764 for some
commentary.

David




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