Thread: How secure is Tor?

Originally Posted by tommo

Just wondering really. I was just thinking that, if someone wanted to find out who was on the website or whatever, they could contact the person who's proxy you were using etc. etc.

Couldn't they also contact Tor and get that information from them, if they are going to go that route?

It's better than online proxies because online proxies usually don't do anything. And if they do they aren't anonymous. Or they are incredibly slow. Or all of that.

I don't understand what you mean by, "they don't do anything." Connect to a proxy and go to whatsmyip.com and you'll see its the proxies IP, not yours. Sure they are slow, but it sounds like Tor would be even slower since it is adding multiple hops instead of just one.

Originally Posted by Marvo

You can easily connect to the internet through a VPN. What I was getting at, is that people who really want to find people (the government) probably have networks like Tor mapped out by now. Though it's tough to say.

When you said VPN I was thinking of the basic idea of connecting to another LAN over the internet. Which would require you to have two separate networks set up, and since you owned them both it wouldn't help at all, hence my confusion. But then I googled and found this. So basically you pay somebody to connect to their network and connect to the internet through them. But if the government wanted to find you couldn't they just contact whichever service you are using and get your information from them?

I would think a proxy, Tor, or a personal VPN would protect you from the average hacker equally. But I don't see how any of them could protect you from a large corporation or the government.