[tor-talk] ProxAllium - A Tor frontend for Windows

[Mirimir]

On 08/04/2018 10:17 AM, Damon (TheDcoder) wrote:
> Hello everyone!
> 
> I would like to first say that [ProxAllium](https://proxallium.org/) is in no
> way affiliated with the Tor
> Project and it is developed independently by me at the moment.
> 
> Introduction: ProxAllium is a simple GUI frontend for Tor which works in
> Windows, the main goal of this program is to allow the user to get Tor up and
> running without the need of using Tor Browser Bundle (TBB) and configuring
> it.
> 
> ProxAllium makes the process easy by automatically generating a safe
> configuration for Tor without any user interaction on the first launch!
> 
> It's GUI displays useful information like the port, proxy type, PID etc of Tor
> in a single place so that this information is very accessible.

<SNIP>

Hey, I get where you're coming from. The Tor Project wiki isn't all that
helpful about standalone Tor setup in Windows. However, although I have
zero affiliation with the Tor Project, it's my impression that this
hasn't entirely been an oversight. In particular, I get that running
relays in Windows is discouraged, in light of security concerns. That
is, they're arguably more likely pwned by adversaries, and used to
attack the network. And I suspect also that there are concerns about
torrenting, which stresses the system.

Perhaps more fundamentally, there are concerns about surveillance by
Microsoft. I mean, using Tor arguably secures network traffic from
adversaries, but what secures the system from Microsoft? In particular,
unless users take extreme effort, Microsoft knows their identityies. And
if Microsoft is logging browsing and other network traffic, and file
operations, it arguably knows what users are doing, notwithstanding Tor.

So anyway, how does ProxAllium address those concerns?