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Tor is a popular and trusted anonymity solution, and many people wonder if it is possible to use it to download torrents. Although Tor is free and it offers the level of anonymity that torrent users need, the truth is that it not the best option for this purpose.
If I download a file through Tor, will it be any different than if I download a file through a normal internet browser? Sonic lost world download code. I've downloaded stuff through Tor but it's always really slow. I was wondering if I browse through Tor, but then download a file through a normal browser, will it practically be the same thing or completely different?
To be more specific, will it actually show my real IP address and my location if I download through Tor? If it does, then wouldn't downloading from a normal browser be the same?
forest
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ErosionErosion
marked as duplicate by forest, Tobi Nary, Xiong Chiamiov, David, Rory Alsopâ¦Feb 10 '18 at 13:36
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3 Answers
There are a couple different answers to this depending on the circumstances..
Peer to peer downloads (like torrents or filesharing networks)
Download game dat boom offline cho may tinh. If you are talking about downloading data illegally (e.g. copyrighted data in many countries), you shouldn't be doing that in the first place. Be a man and download that movie over the normal internet. If you download lots of data this way, you are using up a lot of CPU and bandwidth from multiple servers around the world and basically clogging up the network. That, too, is something you shouldn't do because the network will cease to be possible if too many people do this.
If you need to download lots of data anonymously and you have a real purpose for being anonymous (e.g. you're a journalist writing a piece on child porn), be my guest and use those resources.
If you're someone wanting to play the latest games without paying, well, I think you know where this is going. Downloads from websites
And you are NOT using https
When connecting over Tor to the open internet (any http:// or ftp:// address), Tor basically works as a proxy server. The website that you download from sends data, a few nodes in the Tor network forward it, and eventually it ends up with you. That is, if everything goes as it should.
What Tor also does is encrypt the traffic inside the Tor network. This means that any MITM attacks on your local network (for example an insecure WiFi network) are not possible. So this is an advantage for using Tor to download things.
On the other hand, you are willingly proxying your traffic through at least one other stranger on the internet that can modify the traffic as desired. That is also a risk to consider, so be sure to validate any checksums if available.
Can't Download Torrent File On Torrent
And of course like always, Tor also masks your IP address (and thereby the possibility to find your physical location), which works especially well when you are using the Tails OS or the Tor Browser Bundle.
If you are using https
The only added value of Tor in this case is that it will mask your IP address.
If you are visiting an .onion website and downloading from there
This works much the same as https, except that now it doesn't only mask your IP address, it also masks the server's IP address. Law enforcement and others basically can't monitor that anyone downloaded a file from that server at all. It makes the server anonymous as well as you.
Note that it may technically be possible to unmask people using Tor if someone really wants to spend millions (billions?) on it, but this is usually not the case. If this is a concern, read more about how Tor works, this answer is certainly not sufficient.
Communityâ¦
LucLuc
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Tor works just like any other network interface. The site serving the data is unaware that a Tor node is requesting it. If you're getting the same file from the same location, they'll both have identical contents.
But you will lose all the anonymity Tor offers. You can give yourself away just by browsing to the same site - you don't have to download for your activity to be tracked.
John DetersJohn Deters
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1 Malicious exit node can modify the files downloaded through it in malicious way. TorProject has a bot to detect and ban such nodes, but it won't help if exit node acts maliciously with low frequency.
2 HTTPS can help and cannot help, it depends on your threat model. If you try to avoid NSA or similar powerful agencies, https is not enough in most cases: the websites could be forced to disclose their private or/and and ephemerial keys to such agencies, and even public key pinning won't help. In the case if an adversary doesn't have access to the keys of websites, but has access to keys of CAs or are given intermediate CA certificate, it can reissue the certificates. In this case pkp will help.
3 You can download and verify gpg keys and then verify the files supplyed with the signature, if you beleive that the public key is not compromised.
KOLANICHKOLANICH
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Commentscommented Jul 10, 2018
added feature/torrentfeature/tor labels Jul 10, 2018added this to the 0.24.x (Developer Channel) milestone Jul 10, 2018commented Jul 11, 2018
commented Jul 15, 2018â¢
edited
![]() commented Sep 14, 2018
Can't Download Torrent File On Tor Macremoved this from the 0.24.x-legacy milestone Oct 2, 2018Error Can't Open Torrent File
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