I am considering running a Tor Snowflake Proxy to help people circumvent censorship.
Does the proxy give clients access to the dark web? If yes, is there a risk that I facilitate criminal activity by running the proxy?
I am asking because I am trying to weigh the ethical pros and cons.
Yes, users of your Snowflake proxy will have access to Tor in all the usual ways, including to onion sites. Of course, you can’t know what your proxy is being used for, and neither can anyone else.
That said, Snowflake proxies are made for people in regimes who want to stop them from accessing information freely. With all the events in the world right now, there’s a strong need for Snowflake proxies. Some people may use them for things you object to ethically, but I think many need them to exercise their human rights.
From Doesn't Tor enable criminals to do bad things? | Tor Project | Support :
Criminals can already do bad things. Since they’re willing to break laws, they already have lots of options available that provide better privacy than Tor provides. They can steal cell phones, use them, and throw them in a ditch; they can crack into computers in Korea or Brazil and use them to launch abusive activities; they can use spyware, viruses, and other techniques to take control of literally millions of Windows machines around the world.
Tor aims to provide protection for ordinary people who want to follow the law. Only criminals have privacy right now, and we need to fix that.
Some advocates of anonymity explain that it’s just a tradeoff — accepting the bad uses for the good ones — but there’s more to it than that. Criminals and other bad people have the motivation to learn how to get good anonymity, and many have the motivation to pay well to achieve it. Being able to steal and reuse the identities of innocent victims (identity theft) makes it even easier. Normal people, on the other hand, don’t have the time or money to spend figuring out how to get privacy online. This is the worst of all possible worlds.
So yes, criminals can use Tor, but they already have better options, and it seems unlikely that taking Tor away from the world will stop them from doing their bad things. At the same time, Tor and other privacy measures can fight identity theft, physical crimes like stalking, and so on.
It’s plausible. But there’s almost no way to tie it back to you. You may want to try the browser extension instead of setting up the proxy if you’re on the fence.
If yes, is there a risk that I facilitate criminal activity by running the proxy?
Even if it weren’t the case, “facilitating criminal activity” was a main design goal of Tor from the beginning when it was a DoD project – even before the dark web existed.
The core principle of Tor, onion routing, was developed in the mid-1990s by United States Naval Research Laboratory employees, mathematician Paul Syverson, and computer scientists Michael G. Reed and David Goldschlag, to protect American intelligence communications online
And yes, such “intelligence communication” is indeed often “criminal activity” in the country at one end of the communication.
I am totally ignorant on how this works, but my question is that is there any way for me to get hacked by doing this? I want to help but I dont want to be targeted and have my computer broken because of it.
You facilitate criminal activity just as much as your ISP. You provide a service in good faith and have no control over how people use it. It is not your responsibility what people do with the tool you provide. You also wouldn’t accuse the knife manufacturer after someone has been stabbed with one of the kitchen knifes they sold.
Go for it! I have one running too and it feels good
From tor themselves
You can join thousands of volunteers from around the world who have a Snowflake proxy installed and running. There is no need to worry about which websites people are accessing through your Snowflake proxy. Their visible browsing IP address will match their Tor exit node, not yours.
So you should not have to worry about them doing illegal things.
Thank you! I appreciate your answer. I need to think about it but I really would like to help people in oppressive regimes.
This is not correct. The proxy and the browser extension are similar in funciton.
If you are in Iran you need to use Tor Browser and connect through snowflake on the settings.
Thanks for the history lesson. Who cares what it was it’s all about what it is. Thanks for the frame work be we made it into what it is. Good amd bad. You think when you walk out that door there is no crime. You think crime originations don’t have legit business that you prolly shop at and don’t even know it. So your supporting criminal activity To.
Amd tour trippin tor may have started fron the navy in a way to communicate securely and terriosts have been using it since the beginning. Every part of society has crime and drugs so what’s the diff? What we get to do it anonymously now. Sounds better then fling to the street to do things.
Everything is what u make it. People commit crimes with cell phone and computers you gonna stop using those? Doubt it. Pretty convent to only talk about 1 element of what tor is used for.
What about the news? What people’s gov making it so they can’t use the internet you think that’s right? Fuck the gov. Fuck 12. Fuck abcs.
Every piece of software you run, every Web site you visit, and every file you download, increases your chance of “getting hacked”. Anything can have bugs, anything can exploit bugs in other things, and anything can attract attention.
But there’s nothing especially dangerous about Snowflake, compared to anything else you might install.
I do it. Your helping people gain access to information that they should have access to in the first place. IMO it’s one of the easiest ways that you can do charity work for those in need.
And as one living in Iran, I thank you <3
You don’t know how hard it is to stay connected to the free Internet here and Snowflakes (with recent uTLS update) are one of the few ways. Thanks.