• PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
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    6 days ago

    I like how the article boils down to, “Except for some isolated use cases, Tor is far superior to a VPN in both cost and safety,” and a lot of the comments boil down to “YEAH VPNS ARE GREAT GET A VPN.”

    It is okay to read the article before writing a comment, guys. In some circles, it’s even encouraged, because you might learn something.

    • umami_wasabi@lemmy.ml
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      6 days ago

      Except many services are very aggressive to Tor exit nodes, namely Google and Cloudflare. Everytime I just met with CAPTCHA after CAPTCHAs, and eventually I gave up on the site.

      Yeah, I should cut ties with Google but cutting YouTube on NewPipe is hard. I’m on Proton and watching YouTube is already hard.

      • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net
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        5 days ago

        You may want to give Freetube a try, which may avoid that issue (especially if combined with libredirect).

      • Claudia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        6 days ago

        The latest captchas and cloudflare-turnstile approve you because the google-cloud flare networks have already determined who you are as an individual and just wave you through.

        Tor gets the checks because they don’t know who you are and are seeing you for the first time. Getting a captcha means your privacy strategy is working.

        • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
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          5 days ago

          Yeah the whole logic of “If I protect my privacy effectively, I won’t be able to use Google services anymore! O woe” is a little bit strange to me.

          • Claudia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            5 days ago

            It’s a massive oversimplification. But with captcha systems everywhere, they’re able to see you visit a newspaper, visit the journal site, try to download a journal pdf, and captcha is able to easily conclude that you’re a human and have automatic approval.

            Maybe if you’re going straight to a site for the first time today it would measure your single mouse click. And then from there tracking you across the Internet, assuming you’re online for maybe 6 hours like 99% of connected humans.

            Tor blocks all the fingerprinting, and anonymizes the ip address. Captcha is only able to see a computer arrive at the website requesting access. Captcha’s only tool is to give challenges which the bots are able to beat. So they make you run the challenge multiple times, seeing how long it takes your or randomizing how many times you’re willing to do them.

            Source: some tech YouTuber did a mini documentary about it. You could watch it yourself I assume.

            • 0x0@programming.dev
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              5 days ago

              and anonymizes the ip address.

              The hell it does, it’s the exit node’s IP address, nothing anonymous about that… and that’s the problem, they know it’s a Tor exit node so they’ll give you extra shit for it.

      • pineapple@lemmy.ml
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        5 days ago

        I’ve had the same experience with vpn’s requiring a captcha for every second website I visit.

    • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 days ago

      Don’t just use Tor, use VPN on top of it.

      If you use tor frequently, you’d eventually get a bad “roll of dice” on the nodes and get 3 government run nodes. Its not a matter of “if” but “when”, roll the dice enough times, and the holes in the “swiss cheese” eventually line up.

      If you are using Tor, also use a VPN along with it. It might make the traffic a little slower, but its worth it in case you get 3 NSA nodes.

      • Allero@lemmy.today
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        4 days ago

        Doesn’t it mean there’s only 1 node NSA has to attack - your VPN?

        Kinda renders Tor over it pointless.