Is TOR useless now

[MFAAS]

I'm not saying it does nothing. But for most people the security it brings isn't the level they assume it does. And the people who are getting away with stuff only using VPN would likely get away with it still if they were not.

I'll agree to a point but not the last sentence. People using VPNs for torrenting or for using TOR browser would not get away with it. ISPs flag those logs and keep them special for extra long periods of time (no idea how long, many years though). With the crackdown on torrents for pirating movies and whatnot, ISPs have even been known to send threatening letters to people just for torrenting.

They might not know exactly WHAT you torrented, but they know you did it. If the copyright owner finds out they will send a letter threatening to sue for massive sums of money, usually hoping to settle out of court for much less, but for a normal person the amount of stress this can cause as well as financial pressure is just mind blowing.

Or the feds pressing charges against you since you illegally copied a movie and all that. 5 years in prison and a quarter million dollar ticket/fine... hell, for some people just getting a letter like that could be enough for them to commit suicide. Like that guy who thought he was going to owe $730k to Robinhood (due to their app being shitty). So imagine a similarly young man who maybe has struggled with depression, getting a letter saying he is going to prison and gonna owe $250k? I know I personally would consider offing myself right then and there, not gonna lie.

Using a VPN sure is a cheap and easy way to mitigate these things.

Ordering steroids offline via email, much less likely to get scrutinized by your ISP since there's no unique protocols in use (unless you're using TOR).

IMHO, Just get a VPN and leave it on all the time. As I said, there's no reason not to.

No it won't save El Chapo from the feds, but it will PARTIALLY protect nornal peoples privacy from spying eyes...and there are a lot of them.

 

[hijoshiki]

I'll agree to a point but not the last sentence. People using VPNs for torrenting or for using TOR browser would not get away with it. ISPs flag those logs and keep them special for extra long periods of time (no idea how long, many years though). With the crackdown on torrents for pirating movies and whatnot, ISPs have even been known to send threatening letters to people just for torrenting.

They might not know exactly WHAT you torrented, but they know you did it. If the copyright owner finds out they will send a letter threatening to sue for massive sums of money, usually hoping to settle out of court for much less, but for a normal person the amount of stress this can cause as well as financial pressure is just mind blowing.

Or the feds pressing charges against you since you illegally copied a movie and all that. 5 years in prison and a quarter million dollar ticket/fine... hell, for some people just getting a letter like that could be enough for them to commit suicide. Like that guy who thought he was going to owe $730k to Robinhood (due to their app being shitty). So imagine a similarly young man who maybe has struggled with depression, getting a letter saying he is going to prison and gonna owe $250k? I know I personally would consider offing myself right then and there, not gonna lie.

Using a VPN sure is a cheap and easy way to mitigate these things.

Ordering steroids offline via email, much less likely to get scrutinized by your ISP since there's no unique protocols in use (unless you're using TOR).

IMHO, Just get a VPN and leave it on all the time. As I said, there's no reason not to.

No it won't save El Chapo from the feds, but it will PARTIALLY protect nornal peoples privacy from spying eyes...and there are a lot of them.

Email Proton to Proton for orders is probably the safest means possible to order. All communications can be deleted and email account deleted once the goods are received.

I can't think of a better way to leave no trace behind while finishing a transaction quickly.

I personally don't think customers are at risk even if they have a substantial stash of your local LE investigating the cyber crime part of anabolics, they just want the actual drugs in hand and paraphernalia that goes along to make sure you know who's in charge and put you in your proper place which is under their boot.

The crypto part of it is something that takes a bit more work to hide and I've noticed most will keep their same account at their exchanges, same email account and same wallet for extended periods. This is the area that needs some work to make it hard for LE to detect a pattern. That said if you're sending crypto payments from a wallet only used once and flushed that should make it more difficult to trace as it will be going directly to a sources wallet and not a site set up to process coinpayments.

 

[MFAAS]

Email Proton to Proton for orders is probably the safest means possible to order. All communications can be deleted and email account deleted once the goods are received.

I can't think of a better way to leave no trace behind while finishing a transaction quickly.

You have to trust the other person enough to delete their copy of the emails too.

Also again here there is no reason not to use a VPN in these scenarios either. It's just another layer of security to help keep us safe.

 

[MR_Midas]

Email Proton to Proton for orders is probably the safest means possible to order. All communications can be deleted and email account deleted once the goods are received.

I can't think of a better way to leave no trace behind while finishing a transaction quickly.

I personally don't think customers are at risk even if they have a substantial stash of your local LE investigating the cyber crime part of anabolics, they just want the actual drugs in hand and paraphernalia that goes along to make sure you know who's in charge and put you in your proper place which is under their boot.

The crypto part of it is something that takes a bit more work to hide and I've noticed most will keep their same account at their exchanges, same email account and same wallet for extended periods. This is the area that needs some work to make it hard for LE to detect a pattern. That said if you're sending crypto payments from a wallet only used once and flushed that should make it more difficult to trace as it will be going directly to a sources wallet and not a site set up to process coinpayments.

In general, crypto payments are currently the most conditionally safe compared to all the others.
In terms of emails, they can also be stored in encrypted containers.

 

[MFAAS]

Email Proton to Proton for orders is probably the safest means possible to order. All communications can be deleted and email account deleted once the goods are received.

I will also disagree with ProtonMail being the best and safest. I highly prefer Tutanota. Protonmail has tried very hard to cover up the facts about their service being pretty shitty and really not providing solid protection for its users.

Read this: Disturbing facts about ProtonMail

Then this: ProtonMail Gives Up Logs on User, Then Scrubs Website of No IP Logging Claims

So apparently:
Protonmail likes to talk about how being in Switzerland gives them such strong privacy laws, but it really doesn't at all. The Swiss courts will honor other governments requests to log or provide data for various users. They seem to do this quite easily.

ProtonMail doesn't actual provide end-to-end encryption. Protonmail can decrypt their own user's data. Tutanota cannot.

Protonmail was developed with CIA/NSA oversight, there was an article about this awhile back that I only recently saw. On top of being able to decrypt user's data, they also follow the NSA format for metadata. This makes it super easy for the NSA to see who is communicating with whom. The time stamps, the to and from addresses, none of that is encrypted.

Protonmail has a history of working with law enforcement and giving up users' data. As far as we know, tutanota does not and has actively fought with LE to try to NOT give up user data.

Apparently Protonmail's developers don't use protonmail...why would that be? I mean c'mon people, eat your own dog food. If the developers don't do this, that makes me highly suspicious. I work at a security software company and we use our products internally EVERYWHERE. It's awesome.

Personally I have never used protonmail and I never will after reading some of these posts. It is possible they aren't 100% accurate, but honestly I simply haven't heard of any issues with tutanota, whereas I have seen a plethora of red flags thrown up against Protonmail (as well as Proton VPN).

IMO: use tutanota with a secure, paid VPN. Never use free VPNs.

 

[MFAAS]

Ugh, well that's annoying. Please ignore the other post I made earlier, above.

Email Proton to Proton for orders is probably the safest means possible to order. All communications can be deleted and email account deleted once the goods are received.

I will also disagree with ProtonMail being the best and safest. I highly prefer Tutanota. Protonmail has tried very hard to cover up the facts about their service being pretty shitty and really not providing solid protection for its users.

Read this: Disturbing facts about ProtonMail

Some of it is a bit questionable or like...ok you are being a little over the top, probably this point isn't that big of a deal..but all of the info together is pretty alarming.

Then this: ProtonMail Gives Up Logs on User, Then Scrubs Website of No IP Logging Claims

They talk about how being in Switzerland gives them such strong privacy laws, but it really doesn't at all. The Swiss courts will honor other governments requests to log or provide data for various users.

ProtonMail doesn't actual provide end-to-end encryption. Protonmail can decrypt their own user's data. Tutanota cannot.

Protonmail was developed with CIA/NSA oversight, there was an article about this awhile back that I only recently saw.

Protonmail has a history of working with law enforcement and giving up users' data.

Anyway, I think people should reconsider whether they want to use Protonmail or Tutanota. In reality, if you're a big enough fish it likely doesn't really matter...but nevertheless, I'll stick with tutanota and will continue to not recommend protonmail to anyone for anything.

 

[hijoshiki]

Ugh, well that's annoying. Please ignore the other post I made earlier, above.

I will also disagree with ProtonMail being the best and safest. I highly prefer Tutanota. Protonmail has tried very hard to cover up the facts about their service being pretty shitty and really not providing solid protection for its users.

Read this: Disturbing facts about ProtonMail

Some of it is a bit questionable or like...ok you are being a little over the top, probably this point isn't that big of a deal..but all of the info together is pretty alarming.

Then this: ProtonMail Gives Up Logs on User, Then Scrubs Website of No IP Logging Claims

They talk about how being in Switzerland gives them such strong privacy laws, but it really doesn't at all. The Swiss courts will honor other governments requests to log or provide data for various users.

ProtonMail doesn't actual provide end-to-end encryption. Protonmail can decrypt their own user's data. Tutanota cannot.

Protonmail was developed with CIA/NSA oversight, there was an article about this awhile back that I only recently saw.

Protonmail has a history of working with law enforcement and giving up users' data.

Anyway, I think people should reconsider whether they want to use Protonmail or Tutanota. In reality, if you're a big enough fish it likely doesn't really matter...but nevertheless, I'll stick with tutanota and will continue to not recommend protonmail to anyone for anything.

I've never kept an email for more than a few weeks, so I don't think it matters.

Tutanota is a pain in my ass because they have a tendency to close accounts or lock them. Proton is super easy to get a free account up and running fast when you need to get stuff done and then delete the account. Tutanota makes you wait 2 days before you can access your new account to prevent you from opening lots of accounts.

And Tutanota is based in Germany which is basically a socialist police state.

 

[MFAAS]

I've never kept an email for more than a few weeks, so I don't think it matters.

Tutanota is a pain in my ass because they have a tendency to close accounts or lock them. Proton is super easy to get a free account up and running fast when you need to get stuff done and then delete the account. Tutanota makes you wait 2 days before you can access your new account to prevent you from opening lots of accounts.

And Tutanota is based in Germany which is basically a socialist police state.

But you deleting the email doesn't mean that the other person deleted their copy of it. That's the problem.

Tutanots being based in germany means it benefits from GDPR which is good for users and an advantage over protonmail. GDPR is superior to the Swiss Data Privacy Act when it comes to protecting user data and bot allowing companies/websites to collect info on you without your express consent.

Sometimes you have to wait with tuta, other times you don't. I've had it happen both ways. Yes account deletion can be a problem. Easily surmounted by having a short list of emails you rotate through ever few months and ensuring you login to each of them just once ever 6 months. That's all it takes. Tuta deletes after 6 months of inactivity.

Tutanota was built by a small group of privacy advocates, whereas protonmail was built solely as a for profit venture and apparently had dealings with the NSA, now Israel, and has a shady past/history of lying to customers and doing nothing to protect their data.

So, it seems you mainly prefer protonmail because you have a specific use case of wanting to spin up a bunch of emails, use then immediately for a few days, then delete them. That's fine but most people don't do this sort of thing and tutanota will be the superior option for them.

I really couldn't care less of whether you think Germany is a fascist police state. That seems like hyperbole and a very and silly reason to use a less secure service.

 

[EamonDeValera]

No it’s not useless.

I only use TOR.

You do know the mechanics of onion routing right?

It’s not useless per se, but unnecessary unless you need it for a certain task.

 

[MR_Midas]

No it’s not useless.

I only use TOR.

You do know the mechanics of onion routing right?

It’s not useless per se, but unnecessary unless you need it for a certain task.

My TOR periodically stops connecting, apparently the local provider has learned to filter and block it!