[tor-talk] How intensely do you use Tor?

[Roger Dingledine]

On Wed, Jul 03, 2013 at 07:43:47PM +0000, anonymous coward wrote:
> I think for certain things it does not make much sense to use Tor, for
> example for online banking. When I connect to my bank I am not anonymous
> anway. When I use ebay, I am not anonymous either, they have my adress,
> Paypal knows my adress. So to torify such things does not make much
> sense, doesn´t it?

Tor aims for a variety of anonymity properties:

1) Nobody watching your local network connection can learn where you're
going.
2) Nobody watching your destination can learn where you're coming from.
2b) The destination can't learn where you're coming from.
3) No single relay in the path can link your location to your destination.

I think your phrase above is most like 2b above. But even then, while
paypal may know your physical address, why do they need to know that
you're vacationing in Italy this week? And why should somebody watching
Paypal's network connection get to learn that you're using Paypal right
now? And why should somebody watching *your* network connection (or the
company that your ISP sells all your clicklogs to [1]) learn that too?

That said, there *is* a reason to avoid using Tor for banking: a growing
number of banking websites use IP address to decide if you're really you,
and if you suddenly show up from Italy (whether on vacation or because
you're using Tor), they lock your account.

--Roger

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorm