HN may have your email address privately (if you gave it to them) and they also have your IP/access logs.

But I'd be shocked in NSA/CIA/FBI etc was disinterested in online social voting habits of users.Īlso, you latched on to a single example I gave. I realize all this is indeed tinfoil-hat-ish stuff. HN has a high concentration of current-high-impact and future-high-impact individuals and is therefore a reasonably interesting trove of information. Social voting data is a rather sizable and useful dataset for surveillance agencies. Wait, why not? Knowing who votes for what content, when, and in coordination with whom else seems like it would be extremely useful indeed! Aren't techniques like this already used by FBI etc on Twitter when investigating illegal content and coordination of its' dissemination? Bot networks are taken down on Twitter and other sites all the time using voting data. The special purpose Tails operating system can be used with bootable USB memory on common hardware like laptops without leaving a trace.

If you're not authorized to install Tor Browser on a device and to emit Tor traffic on the network you're using, you generally shouldn't access Tor there.Īnyone using Tor to access resources that might get them in trouble in the country they're in should look into proper operational security with Tor Project-provided infrastructure like bridges. Tor Browser is painstakingly maintained to be fit for its specific purpose. Defaults matter, and as technical people we should assume a bit of 'do no harm' moral responsibility for people who seek our advice.

I've seen these proxies bleed into more problematic Tor use cases among vulnerable individuals. These proxies can appear useful, but I'm just going to drop by here to say that this a particularly bad idea to spread among non-technical people.

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