Scoundrel's avatar
Scoundrel 2 months ago
Doesn't the Tor client make an effort to diversify node jurisdictions? Three hops; two problematic jurisdictions. Seems good to me. Also, people on the darknet are always getting caught. As a rule of thumb, it's pretty safe to assume it's due to independent infosec mistakes. There have been dozens of cases of the media making a big deal about a Tor user getting caught, and every time more information emerges we find that they made numerous infosec mistakes that had nothing to do with Tor.

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Scoundrel's avatar
Scoundrel 2 months ago
I mean, if it was always choosing the fastest connection,it would obviouslh just connect to the same node 3 times so that the signal doesn't have to bounce around the world. By the way, I came up with a scenario where excluding German nodes could end up compromising a person's identity. Suppose someone has a personal Nostr account that they sometimes access through a Nostr relay with a .onion address. And suppose this person also sells firearms on the darknet in a country where the state does not recognize a right for citizens to bear arms. What this person doesn't realize is that the government currently has access to both Tor services. Over a long period of time, the government observes that across the two sites, there are exactly two users whose third node is never a German node. The firearms seller on the DNM, and the one user on their Nostr account. So they track down the author of the Nostr account based on some selfies they took, and have them executed. Suddenly the firearms sales stop.