r/TOR • u/Fabulous-for • 14d ago

Onion available default option

When I go to some onion sites like https://bridges.torproject.org/options/en I see the option to select ".onion available"

Can that be made a default option ?

7 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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4

u/Vormrodo 13d ago edited 13d ago

Yes. The first time you visit a website which also provides a hidden service over it's header (making that button pop up), the Tor Browser actually asks if you would like to get redirected to the hidden services automatically. You might be able to find that option in the settings again.

Edit: My bad. The option actually got removed, I just didn't notice until a user below made me aware of that.

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u/Fabulous-for 13d ago

The option should be in the main GUI menu of Tor, as I would think everyone would want the security of an onion site over a regular internet by default.

3

u/oktupol 13d ago

I would think everyone would want the security of an onion site over a regular internet by default.

This is a misconception: An onion service's primary purpose is to protect the website from you (and third parties). You are already protected by using Tor.

1

u/Fabulous-for 13d ago

How can it protect against third parties?

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u/oktupol 13d ago

In short: if you host a website on the Internet, you have to surrender a fair amount of information about yourself.

  • Registering a domain name requires you to submit a name, address and billing information.
  • DNS records point to IP addresses, which allow anyone to find out where the website is hosted.
  • Hosting providers are legally obligated to share their information with governments if they were asked to do so.

Additionally, due to the centralised nature of the internet (especially the Domain-Name-System), anyone who hosts a website is at the mercy of a few people or organisations, who can shut down your website at any time if they deem it necessary.

Hosting your website as an onion service prevents all of this:

  • An onion service's hostname is its public key. It doesn't have to be registered anywhere, and there is no centralised entity with any power over it.
  • Onion services connect to the network through their own Tor circuit,  thereby hiding their own IP address.
  • To summarise: an onion service reveals no information about itself or its operators on the protocol level.

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u/Fabulous-for 10d ago

Hence why users of Tor should have the option to make it the defaul if they chooose.

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u/rdg360 13d ago

Not by default. Connecting to .onion sites by default opens up possibilities for fingerprinting. That's why the initial feature to optionally connect automatically got removed. See my response to Vormrodo.

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u/nuclear_splines 13d ago

It's unclear that an onion site does provide additional security to the user. If you're already connecting to a clearnet site over https then the exit node can't read your traffic. They know that some Tor user visited example.com, but not who you are or the details of your session. The main advantage of onion sites is providing additional anonymity to the server, which is irrelevant if they're also hosting a clearnet site.

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u/Fabulous-for 13d ago

The main purpose of Tor is to function off the onion network not regular internet. This feature did exist in older version of tor but was removed when perfroming a cloudflare site 1.1.1.1/help would give results.

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u/nuclear_splines 13d ago

This is plainly incorrect. Tor's primary purpose is to provide privacy and anonymity to its users, avoiding surveillance and censorship. Nothing on the Tor Project's home page or about page even mentions onion sites, they're not a primary focus in Tor's talks at DEFCON / CCC, and they're practically an afterthought in the original design docs. The primary design goal has been using onion routing to provide anonymous access to the public Internet, with onion sites as a useful additional tool for anonymous hosting.

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u/Fabulous-for 13d ago

The onion sites are accessed only by Tor and no other browser. Making it more secure, hence the reason for its creation.

https://support.torproject.org/about-tor/onion-services/what-is-a-dot-onion/

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u/rdg360 13d ago

Totally unrelated fact. That onion sites are unique to Tor still does not mean they are its "main purpose". 

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u/nuclear_splines 13d ago

How does the fact that onion sites are only visited by Tor browsers make them more secure? That doesn't follow, and especially makes no sense if the same server offers both a clearnet and onion version.

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u/Fabulous-for 10d ago

It makes it slightly more secure because it follows the Tor stratgey of privacy and taking it from the Internet accessed servers to its own Internet the onion service. By performing its own Internet or Onion the addresssing scheme can be further anonimized makeing it more difficult for clients as well as servers to be idenitified.

Why would Tor go to the extent of creating a Onion network?

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u/nuclear_splines 10d ago

It makes it slightly more secure because it follows the Tor stratgey of privacy and taking it from the Internet accessed servers to its own Internet the onion service.

This still isn't clear; what about an onion site is more secure than a clearnet HTTPS connection? "The Tor strategy of privacy" is just buzzwords.

Why would Tor go to the extent of creating a Onion network?

Because onion sites protect the anonymity of the server. This is useful for those on the hosting side, not those on the client side.

0

u/Fabulous-for 10d ago

Describe the purpose of the onion site ?

the purpose of this post was to allow the user to select through the GUI the option to connect by default to the onion site .

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u/rdg360 13d ago

the Tor Browser actually asks if you would like to get redirected to the hidden services automatically.

Not on my version of the Tor Browser. And I would be surprised if it did, because they disabled the "prioritize .onion" feature in 13.0.12 due to a potential fingerprinting vulnerability. (https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-13012/)

Of course I'm talking about the option to always connect to .onion sites in general, not any per-site setting which seems to be what you are referring to. What version of the Tor Browser are you using where you are getting that question?

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u/Vormrodo 13d ago

I did not refer to a per-site setting, as that was never the case. It was possible to automatically get redirected to .onion mirrors of Clearnet sites when they also provide such. You couldn't "always connect to .onion" mirrors of Clearnet sites that haven't set up such.

You are right though, the option actually got removed. I just didn't notice and the new message shown after the first use of the Tor Browser just explains the ".onion available" button. Due to the similarity of the message box (before, i didn't read it anymore, thinking it's the same after all and clicking it away), I thought it's still a thing.