I would consider marketing oversimplification to fit my analysis
However, I think it speaks volumes that you’re willing to own the error and address it, and at the end of the day I only really care if you weren’t willing to. I don’t think it was some huge evil lie, like I said just an inaccuracy that would lead me to have difficulty trusting everything else on the page.
I think your engagement with the community should serve as an example to others in this sphere, so thank you.
Poeple ussually recomend Vless Xray over TOR or OpenVPN or Wireguard. It’s specicially designed for bypassing censored country restrictions.
That was my understanding, is that TOR has not really worked good for Iranians facing censorship. But VPN services such as Psiphon do work. It really boggles my mind that Psiphon is not recommended here. They seem to fit all of the criteria for an approved VPN, and what sets them apart is being able to bypass internet censorship better than IVPN, Mullvad, and ProtonVPN.
Exactly what I was thinking, TOR is too slow for people to access the high bandwidth internet that we use today. I know in Iran many people use Telegram to spread news etc. Many Telegram posts contain videos and other media. TOR is not sufficient for addressing these higher bandwidth needs, especially when other solutions are faster and are capable of bypassing censorship.
I am starting to feel like TOR was capable of addressing certain needs when normal Internet use did not revolve around high bandwidth activities but that it is now outdated. No one in their right mind would use TOR all of the time (especially if they worked online). It would simply slow down their life too much.
Tor is easy to recommend almost universally because it is free and somewhat decentralized which makes it relatively robust and widely available despite its shortcomings. The only popular alternatives (VPNs) are paid and centralized services which comes with many significant risks and downsides. This doesn’t make either VPN services or Tor useless, it just means they have pros and cons. Most people should probably have both installed.
That can depend on which pluggable transport you use. Obfs4 is usually fast but meek is notoriously slow. Depending on what country you’re in, you might be able to get by with faster pluggable transports.
Unless you’re using a slow pluggable transport or have a slow internet connection in general, Tor’s speed should be tolerable for most web browsing. So long as you pick a fast bridge/guard node, slow speeds can usually be fixed by building new circuits. That said, Tor will always be slower than using a paid VPN or no proxies at all. Slower speed is a cost you pay for receiving better anonymity for free.
No you can’t. Brave doesn’t come close to Tor Browser’s anti-fingerprinting protections and traditional VPNs are central points of failure. Even “dVPNs” generally haven’t been tested as thoroughly as Tor and they tend to be smaller networks which are more vulnerable to Sybil attacks.
Thank you for the feedback, and taking the time to respond to all of my points. Yes my post was about censorship, but also about what tool is best for bypassing censorship in a practical way (Speed). I don’t argue with the points you made about TOR. However, as you stated, the Snowden leaks (occured in 2012 or 2013 I think) did point out that the anonymity of TOR can be broken. Granted that was in 2012 or 2013, and the material leaked was probably from even earlier.
That is over ten years ago, think about how far governments have come with breaking TOR anonymity since then. But yes you are right to point out that VPNs are subject to coercion hacking (totally possible TOR is subject to hacking to in some way, I am sure whatever advanced AI model that the NSA is using can figure that out).
I do most of my browsing with Tor (including this Forum) and I can say that
*The speed is fine for anything that doesn’ require you to react fast
But if your job revolved around using a computer, would you use it then? Also in a situation like Iran were it is important to get video updates out (bypass censorship) do you think it is practical in such a situation?
I would suggest that people do not trust-by-default anything they read on the web, especially when written by people (or AI) whose main motive is selling you something and especially when they somehow come out the best in comparisons.
One kinda-obvious fact, even with quickest look at their graphs: SPN routes traffic around its own nodes only. So, at best (and little longer glance seems to indicate the situation is far from best), it can only be as “safe” as Tor which by some disaster and decades long work had 100% of its nodes compromised (e.g. run by NSA or whoever).
As the main point of Tor is exactly that nodes are run by different people in different jurisdictions with different risks, and that not one of them knows what other has done, so when one or dozen entities are compromised it is still mostly (and often totally) fine.
Sure, e.g. Trump might given authority to NSA and control all US nodes, but it is unlikely that he himself at the same time also controls all Russian nodes, and all Ukrainian nodes, and all Iran nodes, all German nodes, all UAE nodes, and all Hungarian nodes, etc.
With SPN, Safing Gmbh (kinda obviously) controls all the SPN nodes. Thus all of the nodes know (or can know if they care) what all the others are doing (as they’re all owned by same company, so single request of relevant government, or single bribed employee with high enough access can see and change everything everyone is doing [unless you add your own extra steps of security on top of SPN)). You basically put all your eggs in one basket, creating a SPOF.
That is, like, enormous difference (bigger than e.g. using VPN vs. using plain HTTPS).
(Note: this is true not only about SPN, but about all entities which control all points in communication. If they’re forced to log/disclose information, you are actually worse then if you were not using any VPN/SPN whatsoever).
But, as others have said, it all depends on what you are dealing with. If you only want to avoid seeing targeted Viagra ads or want to see geofenced Youtube content, it is obviously enormously different situation than if you’re person of interest in totalitarian regime and your (and your family) heads are literally on the chopping block if you’re found doing the wrong thing.
My node is controlled be me only.
I know what you mean. I only mentioned it to test the product, but it makes sense that the website is missing information and needs to be more specific with actual data, especially for those who don’t have much computer knowledge (whether they haven’t learned yet or are still learning).
I haven’t tested the product because it’s not available for Android. If anyone notices anything strange or suspicious about the product, please let the community here on the forum know so we can investigate.