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The Daily Dot has a story about a browser vendor who wants to package Tor as part of its private browsing mode. From the article:
Several major tech firms are in talks with Tor to include the software in products that can potentially reach over 500 million Internet users around the world. One particular firm wants to include Tor as a “private browsing mode” in a mainstream Web browser, allowing users to easily toggle connectivity to the Tor anonymity network on and off.
“They very much like Tor Browser and would like to ship it to their customer base,” Tor executive director Andrew Lewman wrote, explaining the discussions but declining to name the specific company. “Their product is 10-20 percent of the global market, this is of roughly 2.8 billion global Internet users.”
The author elaborates:
The product that best fits Lewman’s description by our estimation is Mozilla Firefox, the third-most popular Web browser online today and home to, you guessed it, 10 to 20 percent of global Internet users.
The story appears to have gleaned most of its information from a tor-dev mailing list post. An interesting reply from Tor developer Mike Perry explains how Tor can be modified so that the network can handle the extra load.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by botfap on Tuesday September 30 2014, @02:12PM
Because TOR doesn't have the deployed infrastructure to deal with that level of traffic. Even if Mozilla invested a huge amount of cash and deployed a CLEAN and SECURE global TOR network to deal with the traffic then the security aspect would last for a few months maximum. How long do you think it will take local law enforcement around the world to get court orders to get their fingers in the relays and exit nodes created by Mozilla? At this point its no longer suitable for serious use. The existing TOR infrastructure is already heavily compromised anyway, unless you have a carefully maintained white list of nodes and relays you shouldn't really consider the service anonymous any more (for serious law enforcement purposes).
Also the most common use for encryption / vpn services (im a sysadmin for a VPN company) is for porn. TOR doesn't work well for instant satisfaction video porn, too much redundant traffic on the network.
-- I once killed a sea lion with my bare hands for stroking its whiskers on my genitals
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday September 30 2014, @02:39PM
If Tor mode is treated as a separate layer from privacy/incognito mode, that would cut down on the amount of users. If users find it slow to load videos, they will stop using it for that purpose, and just use incognito mode (clear cookies/cache/etc. on exit). If NoScript, similar built-in functionality, or other privacy extensions are included and turned on by default, that would cause a bunch of porn and other sites to fail by default.
If court orders will bring down Tor, why haven't law enforcement already done this? According to EFF [torproject.org], "No, we aren't aware of anyone being sued or prosecuted in the United States just for running a Tor relay. Further, we believe that running a Tor relay - including an exit relay that allows people to anonymously send and receive traffic - is legal under U.S. law."
Obviously if the userbase increases by 10x there will be more interest in subverting Tor. People (NSA, Carnegie Mellon [torproject.org], whoever) will get in, but those vulnerabilities can be fixed. You say that Tor is heavily compromised because of bad nodes, but the expansion of the network could mitigate the risk.
I think it remains to be seen whether this is a good idea or not. Mozilla may not go through with it, Tor may not be able to make the fixes needed to scale, law enforcement, the courts, or the spooks could poke gaping holes in the network, but it's still too early to tell.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 30 2014, @03:07PM
Also the most common use for encryption / vpn services (im a sysadmin for a VPN company) is for porn.
How do you figure that? Are you talking about people in countries where porn is illegal? Or people surfing porn at work?
I can't really see them being anywhere near the volume of bittorrent piracy users. Perhaps your VPN company targets a niche demographic?
(Score: 2) by cykros on Wednesday October 01 2014, @07:36PM
It sounds like he's figuring it based on logs.
As for "niche demographic", it may just be that he's working for a VPN that isn't particularly pirate friendly. Not all of them will just turn a blind eye to piracy, and some will happily drop you like a bad habit for breaching terms of service.
Others do things like run the whole system in RAM and keep no logs. If THOSE had more porn use than piracy (and it was for legal porn), you'd definitely have to color me surprised.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 30 2014, @03:17PM
I think you just got post 100,000!
(Score: 2) by cykros on Wednesday October 01 2014, @07:33PM
You're telling me more people use VPN's for porn than for piracy?
I guess I probably can't ask you for specific data or anything, but damn, that's a bit surprising if accurate. Maybe people are more shy about watching porn (like everyone else) than I realized.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday October 03 2014, @10:56PM
You realize Tor is peer-to-peer, right...?
How exactly is law enforcement going to install spyware on 10-20 percent of all PCs *around the world*? Good luck getting and enforcing a court order from a US judge to go snoop around on a PC in Russia...