Re: Anonymity via Tor?

["Jeffrey F. Bloss" <jbloss () tampabay rr com>]

bardotherevolting () yahoo com wrote:

> Well like anything else I guesse it realy depends why and against what
> you want to have anonymity.

Actually it does not in this context. You are either anonymous, or you
are not. There's various "strengths" of anonymity defined by the hard
mathematical problems that must be solved to crack them, but anonymity
and privacy are two completely separate states. Anonymity is nobody
knowing who you are, privacy is trusting someone not to tell. Tor gives
you that "nobody knows" quality. Proxies do not, and never can. It's
flatly impossible by their very design.

> In most cases it's good but I still prefer
> PHP proxy scripts on a server where you actualy have access to the
> logs. 

What makes you prefer something that's not anonymous at all, and retains
logs of your activity, to something that's truly anonymous and couldn't
log anything useful even if it tried?

This makes no sense at all. If you want/need anonymity then you can't
use "PHP proxy scripts", or any other type of single hop proxy alone or
in chains, and you *certainly* don't want them logging any more than
absolutely necessary to run the service so every attacker has a golden
ring to grab at, even if you're just looking for privacy.

> Using both tor and a PHP proxy script would be great but then again
> it's going to be sooooooo slow that it's realy hardly worth it.

Define "worth it". One of the most visible uses of Tor at the moment is
to access forbidden information from behind things like the Great
Firewall of China, where normal proxies have already proved to be a
dismal failure. Is a little perceived inconvenience by the standards
you're use to today worth your freedom, or even your life? If it makes
the difference between you getting the information you're looking for
and not, is it such a huge price to pay?

There's something else you may or may not be aware of, and that's the
fact that Tor isn't inherently slow. The *public* Tor network is slow
because it's 100% donated bandwidth, mostly donated by hobbyists
sharing some small fraction of their personal connections (it's
configurable). There are however several private Tor networks and more
in the making that are not noticeably slower than your standard
connection, and nothing prevents people from creating more. Done
properly it's every bit as secure as the public network, with none of
the throughput issues.