Meet The New TorProject.org

Published on 2019-03-29

Meet The New TorProject.org

Two years ago, we launched our styleguide[1] as our first step in creating a consistent visual look and feel across the entire Tor Project ecosystem. We are very happy to announce the launch of our brand new website[2].

Besides bringing more consistency to our visual look, which reinforces community identity and helps us to build user trust by identification, our new website is one part of our goal to ensure that everyone on the planet can use Tor. Last year, we worked hard on making important usability improvements to our browser[3], including bringing a version of it to Android[4].

But, it is through our homepage that most people first learn about Tor and decide to download our browser. And our previous site was doing a poor job at helping potential users understand what Tor was all about. We had way too much information for a person to consume, and none of it was localized. With that in mind, we decided to redesign our website to focus on new users and make it mobile-friendly. Most importantly with our new website, we want Tor Browser to be easy to download and its benefits easy to understand. Most importantly with our new website, we want Tor Browser to be easy to download and its benefits easy to understand.

We want to make sure that people around the world, using Tor in an array of contexts, can use Tor without barriers. Tor Browser itself is available in 24 different languages, but our website isn't. With this refresh, torproject.org is now available in 7 different languages: English, German, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, and Russian, and there are more on the way. If you would like to help us with translations, here's how[5].

In addition to this update, we are also better organizing all the other content into different portals. For instance, last year we launched our support portal[6] to host all the content related to user support. Coming next will be our community.torproject.org portal that will feature content related to the different ways you can join our community and spread the word about Tor. The portal for all of our free software projects will soon be dev.torproject.org. If you are looking for any content that existed in the old site and is not on the new one, you can access it here[7].

These efforts are taking the collaboration of many people across Tor teams and the help of dedicated volunteers. We're very proud to start rolling these changes out.

We are a group of people united by the belief that everyone should have private access to the open web, and we hope our new site makes that easier to achieve.

[1]https://styleguide.torproject.org [2]https://torproject.org [3]https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-80 [4]https://blog.torproject.org/new-alpha-release-tor-browser-android [5]https://wiki.localizationlab.org/index.php/Tor [6]https://support.torproject.org [7]https://2019.www.torproject.org/

We Now Accept Donations in Multiple Cryptocurrencies

You can now donate several different types of cryptocurrencies to the Tor Project: Augur (REP), Bitcoin (XBT), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Dash (DASH), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Monero (XMR), Stellar Lumen (XLM), Dogecoin (XDG), and Zcash (ZEC). https://donate.torproject.org/cryptocurrency

Donations from individuals like you, whether they be in cryptocurrency or not, make it possible for us to allocate funds to pressing projects not covered by grants, such as the launch of our new website.

Donate today to help keep Tor robust and secure and to ensure we can continue to make Tor more accessible to people around the world: https://donate.torproject.org

New Releases

Tor Browser 8.0.8 The main change in this new release is the update of Firefox to 60.6.1esr, fixing bugs found during the Pwn2Own contest. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-808

Tor Browser 8.5a10 This release features important security updates to Firefox. The main change in this new release is the update of Firefox to 60.6.1esr. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-85a10

Tor 0.4.0.3-alpha This release is the third in its series; it fixes several small bugs from earlier versions. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-0403-alpha

Upcoming Events with Tor

Join Our Community

Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide

Learn about each of our teams and start collaborating: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/WikiStart#Teams

Donate to help keep Tor fast, strong, and secure. https://donate.torproject.org

--

The Tor Project is a US 501(c)(3) non-profit organization advancing human rights and freedoms by creating and deploying free and open-source anonymity and privacy technologies, supporting their unrestricted availability and use, and furthering their scientific and popular understanding.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/torproject Facebook: https://facebook.com/torproject Instagram: https://instagram.com/torproject\

Tor Stories, Sharing Files Over Tor, New Releases, Events

Published on 2019-02-27

What is Your Tor Story?

Last September, we asked to hear stories about how Tor has helped protect people online.

We heard from a father protecting his kids and their friends with Tor.

"I am a father of two teenagers. As teenagers, they, or their friends , are bumping into issues regarding sex, drugs and social media issues and bullying. They are pretty open about many issues and so I try to be up to date with research, information and details if anything arises. I use Tor to do the research to basically avoid telling Google (and others) that my children have these issues. It would be unethical of any parent NOT to do so and expose their children's issues to these corporations. I also encourage my children to use Tor for their research for the same reasons..."

We heard how Tor grants access to blocked resources online in Iran.

"I live in Iran and I have been using Tor for censorship circumvention. During political unrest while the government tightens grip on other censorship circumvention alternatives, Tor with obfuscation plugins remain the only solution. Tor changed my personal life in many ways. It made it possible to access information on YouTube, Twitter, Blogger, and countless other sites. I am grateful to the Tor Project, people working on it, as well as people running Tor nodes."

We heard from someone using Tor to research transgender issues and access a site blocked by their network.

"I am transgender and sometimes look thing up on Tor about that. When I was in high school I also used it to access blocked sites like the Internet Wayback Machine."

We heard from an activist who relies on Tor to stay safe.

"I'm a political activist, part of a semi-criminalized minority. In my younger years I entered the public debate openly, and as a result got harassed by government agencies. I later tried to obfuscate my identity, but I found that my government has surprisingly broad powers to track down dissidents. Only by using anonymizing means, among which Tor is key, can I get my message out without having police come to "check my papers" in the middle of the night. Tor allows me freedom to publish my message to the world without being personally persecuted for it. Being a dissident is hard enough, privacy is already heavily curtailed, so anonymized communication is a godsend."

What is your Tor story? Have you used Tor to curtail surveillance, circumvent censorship, conduct research, cope with an abuser, or speak up about corruption? If any of these apply to you or if you have another story to share, please let us know. Because of our deep commitment to protect your privacy, we won’t know your story unless you tell us. Your story can help us make Tor better for you and other people around the world who need it most: https://blog.torproject.org/how-has-tor-helped-you-send-us-your-story

Share Files Over Tor with OnionShare 2

OnionShare is an open source tool for securely and anonymously sending and receiving files using Tor onion services. It works by starting a web server directly on your computer and making it accessible as an unguessable Tor web address that others can load in Tor Browser to download files from you, or upload files to you. It doesn't require setting up a separate server, using a third party file-sharing service, or even logging into an account.

Unlike services like email, Google Drive, DropBox, WeTransfer, or nearly any other way people typically send files to each other, when you use OnionShare you don't give any companies access to the files that you're sharing. So long as you share the unguessable web address in a secure way (like pasting it in an encrypted messaging app), no one but you and the person you're sharing with can access your files.

I first saw the need for this tool when I learned about how David Miranda, the partner of my colleague Glenn Greenwald, got detained for nine hours at a London airport while he was trying to fly home to Brazil. Working on a journalism assignment for the Guardian, Miranda was carrying a USB stick with sensitive documents. I knew that he could have securely sent the documents over the internet using a Tor onion service, one of the most underappreciated technologies on the internet, and avoided the risk of physically traveling with them. I developed OnionShare to make this file sharing process over the Tor network more accessible to everyone.

After nearly a year of work from a growing community of developers, designers, and translators, I'm excited that OnionShare 2 is finally ready. You can download it from https://onionshare.org.

Learn more about OnionShare and its new features: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-onionshare-2

New Releases

Tor Browser 8.0.6

The main change in this new release is the update of Firefox to 60.5.1esr. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-806

Tor Browser 8.5a8

The main change in this new release is the update of Firefox to 60.5.1esr, fixing some vulnerabilities in the Skia library. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-85a8

Tor 0.4.0.2-alpha, 0.3.5.8, 0.3.4.11, and 0.3.3.12

These new source code releases all fix TROVE-2019-001. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-releases-tor-0402-alpha-0358-03411-and-03312

Upcoming Events with Tor

Nullcon. Goa, India. 1-3 March, 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/events/nullcon-goa

LibrePlanet. Boston, USA. 23-24 March, 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/events/libreplanet-boston

KNOW Conference. Las Vegas, USA. 24-27 March, 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/events/know-2019-vegas-0

Internet Freedom Festival. Valencia, Spain. 1-5 April, 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/events/internet-freedom-festival-valencia

Join Our Community

Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide

Learn about each of our teams and start collaborating: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/WikiStart#Teams

Donate to help keep Tor fast, strong, and secure.

https://donate.torproject.org

--

The Tor Project is a US 501(c)(3) non-profit organization advancing human rights and freedoms by creating and deploying free and open-source anonymity and privacy technologies, supporting their unrestricted availability and use, and furthering their scientific and popular understanding.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/torproject

Facebook: https://facebook.com/torproject

Instagram: https://instagram.com/torproject

Expect More from Tor in 2019

Published on 2019-01-31

Expect More from Tor in 2019

The Tor Project achieved a lot in the last year. We spent 2018 fighting for the fundamental human rights to privacy and freedom online and made our software more accessible than ever before.

In the last year, a significant shift took place in the public understanding of how big tech handles our sensitive, personal information, and how these companies build tools that further censorship in repressive places. For instance, Google’s leaked plans to launch a censored search engine in China were met with global protest. The world is watching.

At the Tor Project, this is an important moment in time. More people are looking for solutions to effectively protect their privacy. 93% of the people we met doing 1:1 usability studies said they knew they needed some protection online. More people need robust censorship circumvention tools as internet freedom declines around the world. More people understand the risks that come from surveillance as the business model of the internet. And we have been working hard to make Tor more accessible than ever before with the goal that anyone online can enjoy the protections our software provides.

In 2018, we:

  • Gave Tor Browser a UX overhaul with the launch of Tor Browser 8.0, making it easier and friendlier to use than ever.

  • Made it easier for people in countries that censor the internet and censor Tor to circumvent censorship with the ability to fetch bridges from inside Tor Browser.

  • Localized Tor Browser into 9 previously unsupported languages, bringing the number of available languages to 25.

  • Launched the alpha version of Tor Browser for Android.

  • Improved our Core Tor code for mobile devices, optimizing its performances and making it easier for third party mobile apps to embed Tor.

  • Traveled to meet our users face-to-face and get feedback without using popular and invasive data-collection practices.

  • Improved the security of v3 onion services with the vanguards add-on.

  • Published 10 research reports through OONI on censorship and network disruptions happening around the world.

  • Pulled in a record number of donations as we reduced our reliance on government funding. We received donations from 115 countries around the world.

  • Said goodbye to Shari Steele, who helped usher the Tor Project into a new stage of organizational maturity, and welcomed our new Executive Director, Isabela Bagueros.

These developments, plus the reality of threats everyone faces online, make 2019 the year to try Tor.

Find out what you can expect from us this year: https://blog.torproject.org/expect-more-tor-2019

Tor Browser at TPL: Defending Intellectual Freedom, and Winning Awards Doing So

Guest post by Jonathon Hodge, Digital Literacy Service Lead, Toronto Public Library

Every public library worker will know that person: the one who is worried about being spied on.

For a long time in public libraries, that person was treated with the kindness and respect we treat every person, regardless of whether we felt that their concerns may have been overblown. The difference between that bygone past and today, is that today, that person is right! The internet is spying on them; it’s spying on all of us. Even if we don’t use it very much. Public libraries have long offered effective guidance to the wealth of information society produces. So the question today is, ‘Are we doing enough for ‘that person’, and by extension, for all of us?’

In Toronto, we felt that the answer was NO. Our communities let us know that they do not know enough about the actual threats they contend with on the internet, they do not know what tools to use or actions to take to protect themselves.

Public librarians can do a great deal to arm our users with the knowledge, the tools, and the confidence to navigate the surveillance society online. We in Toronto felt that Tor Browser should be the centerpiece of a multi-vector Digital Privacy Initiative, that combines privacy education, and technology training and providing privacy-enabling tools at the point of service.

With the software being easy to install and maintain, and with a new public appetite for secure technology, I would encourage other public libraries to install Tor Browser. Our professional defense of intellectual freedom can no longer exist only at the realm of policy. In this age when our tech spies on us for the sake of massive internet companies and the State, our defense must be a technological one as well. That tech is Tor.

Find out more about TPL's initiative: https://blog.torproject.org/tor-browser-tpl-defending-intellectual-freedom-and-winning-awards-doing-so

New Releases

Tor Browser 8.0.5 This new release updates Firefox to 60.5.0esr and Tor to the first stable release in the 0.3.5 series, 0.3.5.7. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-805

Tor 0.4.01-alpha This is the first release in the new 0.4.0.x series. It introduces improved features for power and bandwidth conservation, more accurate reporting of bootstrap progress for user interfaces, and an experimental backend for an exciting new adaptive padding feature. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-0401-alpha

Tor 0.3.5.7 The Tor 0.3.5 series includes several new features and performance improvements, including client authorization for v3 onion services, cleanups to bootstrap reporting, support for improved bandwidth- measurement tools, experimental support for NSS in place of OpenSSL, and much more. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-releases-tor-0357-03410-and-03311

Upcoming Events with Tor

FOSDEM. Brussels, Belgium. 2-3 February, 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/events/fosdem-brussels Tor Meetup. Berlin, Germany. 2 February, 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/events/tor-meetup-berlin IT Defense. Stuttgart, Germany. 6-8 February, 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/events/it-defense-stuttgart LibrePlanet. Boston, USA. 23-24 March, 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/events/libreplanet-boston KNOW Conference. Las Vegas, USA. 24-27 March, 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/events/know-2019-vegas-0

Join Our Community

Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide

Learn about each of our teams and start collaborating: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/WikiStart#Teams

Donate to help keep Tor fast, strong, and secure. https://donate.torproject.org

--

The Tor Project is a US 501(c)(3) non-profit organization advancing human rights and freedoms by creating and deploying free and open-source anonymity and privacy technologies, supporting their unrestricted availability and use, and furthering their scientific and popular understanding.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/torproject Facebook: https://facebook.com/torproject Instagram: https://instagram.com/torproject

Invasive Data, The Tor Ecosystem, Localization, LFI, New Releases

Published on 2018-12-27

We're nearing the end of our year-end education and fundraising campaign, Strength in Numbers. Learn more about it or support our work: https://torproject.org/donate/donate-sin-tn3

Usable Tools Don't Need To Be Invasive

Usability is about making sure anyone, no matter their technical background, can use a tool. Usability and user experience (UX) work has gained a lot of importance in the last decade as the tech industry has grown. To improve user experience, most of the tech industry relies on analyzing their users\'92 behavioral data to drive decision making. Mechanisms for collecting this data are often invasive and performed without consent from users, who may never be told their behavior is being analyzed for this purpose. The same means used to collect behavioral data is also responsible for aiding the surveillance economy.

Tor does things differently. We refuse to collect this type of invasive data. Find out what we do instead: https://blog.torproject.org/strength-numbers-usable-tools-dont-need-be-invasive

An Entire Ecosystem Relies on Tor

If the Tor Project, the Tor network, and Tor Browser were to disappear, what would happen? Not only would millions of global, daily users lose access to Tor\'92s software, but the diverse ecosystem of privacy, security, and anti-censorship applications that rely on the Tor network would cease to function.

The same network and technologies that allow you to use the internet anonymously power the anonymity, circumvention, and privacy features of many third-party web browsers, communications apps, secure operating systems, monitoring tools, and file sharing apps.

Learn about the many vital anonymity and privacy applications that rely on the Tor network and technologies: https://blog.torproject.org/strength-numbers-entire-ecosystem-relies-tor

The Internet Freedom Movement Must Be Localized

The aim of localization is much broader than just translating strings of words. To localize an application means to ensure that the application stays relevant in the local context, is understandable, and is usable.

English is the most common language used on the internet. People communicating in other languages have it harder.

We don\'92t want language differences to be a barrier to using tools that protect people from tracking, surveillance, and censorship on the web.

We made big improvements this year on our mission to localize Tor software for everyone who needs it: Tor Browser now supports 25 languages, and 4 additional languages are supported in alpha; we started tweeting more often in languages besides English; we published additional subtitles for the Tor Animation; we have better statistics about our language support; and we are working on localizing our user support website and the Tor Browser User Manual, with more languages added every month.

Find out what's next in our mission to localize Tor tools and resources: https://blog.torproject.org/strength-numbers-internet-freedom-movement-must-be-localized

Library Freedom Institute Applications Are Open

This is a one-of-a-kind opportunity for librarians who want to take their privacy advocacy to the next level. Tell your radical librarian friends to apply for LFI. Though tailored to public and community college librarians, LFI is open to librarians from all types of libraries, and it is completely free: https://libraryfreedomproject.org/lfi/

New Releases

Tor 0.3.5.6-rc This release fixes numerous small bugs in earlier versions of Tor. It is the first release candidate in the 0.3.5.x series; if no further huge bugs are found, our next release may be the stable 0.3.5.x. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-0356-rc

Tor Browser 8.0.4 Tor Browser 8.0.4 contains updates to Tor (0.3.4.9), OpenSSL (1.0.2q) and other bundle components. Additionally, we backported a number of patches from our alpha series where they got some baking time including a defense against protocol handler enumeration to enhance our fingerprinting resistance. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-804

Tor Browser 8.5a6 This release features important security updates to Firefox and updates OpenSSL to 1.0.2q for our desktop platforms. The most exciting news, however, compared to the alpha release early last week, comes from progress we made on our mobile builds. Tor Browser 8.5a6 is the first version that is built reproducibly for Android devices and is localized in all locales the desktop platforms support. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-85a6

Join Our Community

Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide

Learn about each of our teams and start collaborating: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/WikiStart#Teams

Donate to help keep Tor fast, strong, and secure. Mozilla is matching every donation through 2018. https://torproject.org/donate/donate-sin-tn1

--

The Tor Project is a US 501(c)(3) non-profit organization advancing human rights and freedoms by creating and deploying free and open-source anonymity and privacy technologies, supporting their unrestricted availability and use, and furthering their scientific and popular understanding.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/torproject Facebook: https://facebook.com/torproject Instagram: https://instagram.com/torproject\

New Board Member, Internet Freedom Threats, Events, New Releases

Published on 2018-11-30

We're in the middle of our year-end education and fundraising campaign, Strength in Numbers. Learn more about it or support our work: https://torproject.org/donate/donate-sin-tn2

Growing Our Board of Directors

Like most nonprofit organizations, the Tor Project relies on its Board of Directors to provide fiscal and corporate oversight to our important work. Over the past two years, the Tor Project has been focused on growing our board to reflect the diversity of cultures of people who build and use Tor.

We are proud to welcome the newest member of our Board of Directors, Nighat Dad. Nighat is the founder and Executive Director of Digital Rights Foundation, Pakistan. She is an accomplished lawyer and human rights activist, and she is one of the pioneers campaigning for access to a safe and open internet in Pakistan. Watch her TED talk to hear the amazing story of how she set up Pakistan's first cyber harassment helpline to support women who face serious threats online--a major problem in Pakistan: https://www.ted.com/talks/nighat_dad_how_pakistani_women_are_taking_the_internet_back

\'93Nighat brings an abundance of expertise and experience campaigning for digital rights in Pakistan and beyond,\'94 said Isabela Bagueros, Executive Director of the Tor Project. \'93She has strong ties to the communities we serve and our most at-risk users.\'94

Our board has eight members representing four continents: North America, Europe, Africa, and now Asia. Over the past year, the board held 16 official meetings plus several committee meetings during our searches for a new Executive Director and new board members.

In the coming year, we hope to continue to grow our board in number and in diversity. Like everyone involved with Tor, our Board of Directors all share a common commitment to internet freedom and human rights.

As we challenge major threats to internet freedom around the world, there is strength in numbers -- our numbers keep us strong as we challenge those threats. And our diversity gives us the understanding to fight with compassion.

Internet Freedom Is on the Line

The Tor Project believes that everyone should have private access to an uncensored web, but digital authoritarianism is on the rise. For the 8th year in a row, internet freedom has declined around the world, including in the United States.

"Of the 65 countries assessed, 26 have been on an overall decline since June 2017," reveals a new report by Freedom House: https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom-net-2018

A huge factor in this decline is government censorship, a growing problem in many countries. Freedom to publish, share, and access information online is critical for a healthy society, yet governments and entities around the world are denying people this universal human right, and their tactics for doing so are becoming more advanced.

In many countries around the world, people are only permitted to access state-sponsored news, where the stories always spin a nation's government and leadership in favorable lights.

Internet controls in China have reached new extremes, and China is exporting its methods to other governments. China, Egypt, Iran, Venezuela, Ethiopia, Turkey, and a few other countries now block the Tor network.

Join Our Community

Getting involved with Tor is easy: you can help us make the network faster and more decentralized by running a relay. https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide

You can learn about each of our teams and start collaborating: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/WikiStart#Teams

If you want to make a contribution but don’t have the time to volunteer, your donation will help keep Tor fast, strong, and secure: https://donate.torproject.org

--

The Tor Project is a US 501(c)(3) non-profit organization advancing human rights and freedoms by creating and deploying free and open-source anonymity and privacy technologies, supporting their unrestricted availability and use, and furthering their scientific and popular understanding.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/torproject Facebook: https://facebook.com/torproject

Newbie Reflections, Mozilla's Match, Events

Published on 2018-10-31

Reflections From a Tor Meeting Newbie

When I joined the Tor Project in July as Fundraising Director, I quickly learned that most questions I had about Tor'97what it does, its history, what makes up the greater ecosystem, even detailed notes from all past meetings'97can be found online. The beauty of a free and open source culture became apparent to me immediately. I learned this month at my first meeting in Mexico City that there is one aspect of Tor that cannot be encapsulated in documentation'97the people.

I heard many voices at the meeting reflect on how the Tor Project has grown and changed in positive ways over the past few years. Without a doubt, this is a testament to the quality of the people working on Tor and the values we share. These values'97knowledge, engagement, inclusivity, collaboration, and fluidity'97were apparent throughout my five days in Mexico.

The people of Tor'97staff, volunteers, friends, and community partners'97are not only knowledgeable about privacy and security, they are citizens of the world and are eager to talk about philosophy, politics, and the ways in which people interact with systems and power. Without exception, the attendees of every session I went to were attentive and engaged.

The people of Tor are intentional about making everyone feel welcome and valued. From adherence to preferred pronouns to making sessions accessible to non-English speakers, these efforts to enhance accessibility could be seen and felt everywhere. Each session began with a reminder to make space for all types of people to speak and be heard. Although I was meeting most of the attendees for the first time, I was welcomed with open arms and never once felt excluded.

This meeting was inspirational in its engagement of local attendees on the public days. Many sessions were led in English and Spanish, including the State of the Onion address. Members of Tor teams, including myself, talked about what they'92d been up to and what was on the horizon, and we took questions from the group. The questions were intimate and thoughtful, and this opening session set an inclusive and collaborative tone for the public days.

I have never witnessed collaboration be so effective and efficient. People who have been working on Tor since the very beginning shared a space at the table with community members and people who were just hired. Roadmaps were created and new ideas were hatched.

Everyone I met was genuinely happy to be there. Old friends and new laughed, shared stories, and during the midweek party, we toasted mezcal and compared dance moves. People also connected through games of Mario Kart and Magic the Gathering.

All of these values coalesce around the ultimate goal of Tor'97making the world a better place. Essential human rights cannot be achieved without private and safe access to the internet. The work we do at Tor saves lives. Meeting our Tor community in Mexico City energized me and made me proud of the small part I play in this essential work.

Mozilla Is Matching All Donations to Tor

We have a bold mission: to take a stand against invasive and restrictive online practices and bring privacy and freedom to internet users around the world. But we can'92t do it alone.

Your support, along with the support of many others, can ensure the Tor Project'92s success into the future. Mozilla has already joined us in our fight and will be matching all donations until the end of the year.

This year, with your support, we can:

  • Increase the capacity, modularization, and scalability of the Tor network, making improvements and integrations into other privacy and circumvention tools easier and more reliable;

  • Better test for, measure, and design solutions around internet censorship, allowing people around the world living under repressive governments to access the open web safely and privately; and

  • Strengthen our development of Tor Browser for Android, now in alpha, and make sure it'92s in tip top shape to reach the rising number of people around the world who only access the internet from a mobile device that may have low bandwidth and a costly connection.

As part of our year end fundraising campaign, Mozilla will be matching every dollar donated to Tor, so your impact will be doubled.

Donate: https://torproject.org/donate/donate-sin-tn1

Make a donation today, and you can be counted as one of the stakeholders bringing safe and private internet access to people worldwide.

New Releases

Tor Browser 8.0.3 Tor Browser 8.0.3 includes newer NoScript and HTTPS Everywhere versions. Moreover, it ships with a donation banner for our end of the year campaign and includes another round of smaller fixes for Tor Browser 8 issues on Linux systems. We also switched to a newer API for our NoScript <-> Torbutton communication, which we need for the Security Slider. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-803

Tor Browser 8.5a4 Highlights in Tor Browser 8.5a4 are a new Tor alpha version, 0.3.5.3-alpha, a fixed layout of our macOS installer window and Stylo (Mozilla's new CSS engine) being enabled on macOS after fixing a reproducibility issues. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-85a4

Tor 0.3.5.3-alpha Tor 0.3.5.3-alpha fixes several bugs, mostly from previous 0.3.5.x versions. One important fix for relays addresses a problem with rate- limiting code from back in 0.3.4.x: If the fix works out, we'll be backporting it soon.Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-0353-alpha

Upcoming Events with Tor

Join Our Community

Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide

Learn about each of our teams and start collaborating: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/WikiStart#Teams

Donate to help keep Tor fast, strong, and secure: https://torproject.org/donate/donate-sin-tn1

--

The Tor Project is a US 501(c)(3) non-profit organization advancing human rights and freedoms by creating and deploying free and open-source anonymity and privacy technologies, supporting their unrestricted availability and use, and furthering their scientific and popular understanding.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/torproject Facebook: https://facebook.com/torproject

Tor Browser for Android (alpha), We're Hiring, Share Your Tor Story, Open Days

Published on 2018-09-27

New Release: Tor Browser for Android (Alpha)

Mobile browsing is on the rise around the world, and in some parts, it is commonly the only way people access the internet. In these same areas, there is often heavy surveillance and censorship online, so in the past year, we've focused on better supporting these users.

There's never been an official Tor Browser on mobile. Until now.

Introducing Tor Browser for Android (alpha), the mobile browser with the highest privacy protections ever available and on par with Tor Browser for desktop. You can download the alpha release on GooglePlay, or you can get the apk directly from our download page. The stable release is slated for early 2019.

Note: For this release, you also need to install Orbot, a proxy application that will connect Tor Browser for Android with the Tor network. For the upcoming Tor Browser for Android stable release, our goal is for Orbot not to be necessary to connect to Tor.

Learn about its features and try it out: https://blog.torproject.org/new-alpha-release-tor-browser-android

We're Hiring: Software Developer, Anti-Censorship Team

To strengthen our fight against censorship worldwide, we're forming a new Anti-Censorship Team. We need to hire a developer to help improve the user process of finding alternate routes to the Tor network when access is blocked.

Extensive experience writing and evaluating code in Python and Go is required. Experience with Rust, internet security, and obfuscation technologies would be a big help.

Learn more and apply: https://www.torproject.org/about/jobs-developer-anti-censorship.html.en

How Has Tor Helped You? We Need Your Stories

It's an understatement to say a lot has happened related to privacy and freedom online over the past seven years! Surveillance and crackdowns on free speech have increased around the world, and vast amounts of personal data have been collected and sold. Tools like Tor are needed more than ever to allow people to browse the web freely and privately.

It's been seven years since we last asked, so we want to know: What do you use Tor for? Why do you need it? What has Tor done for you? What could have happened if you weren't able to use Tor? We need your stories!

We know these examples exist, and we reference them in our talks around the world, but these stories are more powerful when they come as a quotable personal narrative from you. Read some example stories and tell us yours.

https://blog.torproject.org/how-has-tor-helped-you-we-need-your-stories

Hack With Us in Mexico City

Tor folks from around the world are heading out now to convene in Mexico City for one of our biannual meetings. We'll discuss the future of Tor as an organization and decide what protocols and features to focus our efforts on.

As part of this meeting, we're also having two open hack days everyone is welcome to join. The open days for the Mexico meeting will be Tuesday, October 2 and Wednesday, October 3 at the Sheraton Mar'eda Isabel.

Find out more: https://blog.torproject.org/hack-us-mexico-city-hackea-con-tor-en-mexico

More New Releases

Tor Browser 8.5a2 This alpha version contains the same bug fixes and improvements introduced in version 8.0.1. In addition we are updating Tor to 0.3.5.2-alpha, and are fixing some 8.0 issues. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-85a2

Tor Browser 8.0.1 Tor Browser 8.0.1 ships the first stable Tor in the 0.3.4 series which solves a crash bug on older macOS systems (10.9.x). Also, thx to Alex from Cliqz for finding an issue with Torbutton. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-801

Tor 0.3.4.8 (also other stable updates: 0.2.9.17, 0.3.2.12, and 0.3.3.10) This is the first stable release in its series; it includes compilation and portability fixes and improvements for running Tor in low-power and embedded environments, which should help performance in general. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-0348-also-other-stable-updates-02917-03212-and-03310

Upcoming Events with Tor

Join Our Community

Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide

Learn about each of our teams and start collaborating: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/WikiStart#Teams

Donate to help keep Tor fast, strong, and secure: https://donate.torproject.org

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The Tor Project is a US 501(c)(3) non-profit organization advancing human rights and freedoms by creating and deploying free and open-source anonymity and privacy technologies, supporting their unrestricted availability and use, and furthering their scientific and popular understanding.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/torproject Facebook: https://facebook.com/torproject Instagram: https://instagram.com/torproject

We Gave Tor Browser a UX Overhaul

Published on 2018-09-06

We Gave Tor Browser a UX Overhaul

For the past year, we have been collecting feedback on how we can make Tor Browser work better for you.

Tor Browser 8.0, our first stable release based on Firefox 60 ESR, is now available. This release is all about users first.

Tor Browser 8.0 comes with a series of user experience improvements that address a set of long-term Tor Browser issues you’ve told us about. To meet our users' needs, Tor Browser has a new user onboarding experience; an updated landing page that follows our styleguide; additional language support; and new behaviors for bridge fetching, displaying a circuit, and visiting .onion sites.

For the most part, using Tor is like using any other browser (and it is based on Firefox), but there are some usage differences and cool things happening behind the scenes that users should be aware of. Our new onboarding experience aims to better let you know about unique aspects of Tor Browser and how to maximize those for your best browsing experience.

Improved Bridge Fetching

For users where Tor is blocked, we have previously offered a handful of bridges in the browser to bypass censorship. But to receive additional bridges, you had to send an email or visit a website, which posed a set of problems. To simplify how you request bridges, we now have a new bridge configuration flow when you when you launch Tor. Now all you have to do is solve a captcha in Tor Launcher, and you’ll get a bridge IP. We hope this simplification will allow more people to bypass censorship and browse the internet freely and privately.

Better Language Support

Millions of people around the world use Tor, but not everyone has been able to use Tor in their language. In Tor Browser 8, we’ve added resources and support for nine previously unsupported languages: Catalan, Irish, Indonesian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Danish, Hebrew, Swedish, and Traditional Chinese.

Collaboration Was Key

Providing this many improvements for our users could only be possible with collaboration between the Tor Browser team and Tor's UX team, Community team, Services Admin team, and our volunteers. We would like to thank everyone for working hard over the past year to bring all these new features to our users.

Learn more about it: https://blog.torproject.org/new-alpha-release-tor-browser-android Try it out: https://www.torproject.org/download/download-easy.html

Volunteer Spotlight: Sina Rabbani Helps Activists Avoid Government Censorship

Tor is a labor of love built by a small group of committed individuals. We’re grateful to have the support of a dedicated volunteer base who help us to make Tor the strongest privacy tool out there, and we’re highlighting their work in this series. We want to thank Sina Rabbani, one of the co-founders (and former CTO) of Access Now, a nonprofit dedicated to defending users’ digital rights, for his years of support to Tor and to the internet freedom movement.

Sina runs Faravahar, one of nine Tor directory authorities. These dedicated servers tell the millions of Tor clients which relays make up the Tor network. A talented and passionate engineer, Sina has been involved with digital rights activism for almost a decade. Today, he’s a Systems Engineer with Team Cymru, an internet security company which analyzes threat intelligence.

Free speech is something Sina doesn’t take for granted. “I was born in a country where you can be sentenced to death because of your speech,” he said. “Freedom of speech in the digital age is a basic human right. Tyranny will start by taking our ability to speak up first, then the rest of our rights.”

“Tor gives me a chance to resist tyranny in a non-violent manner, and I feel blessed and grateful for the opportunity. The hope is to one day move Faravahar to one of Iran’s universities. Until that day, Ma Hastim va Ma Bishomarim — we are, and we are countless.”

Learn more about Sina's work and how he became involved with Tor: https://blog.torproject.org/volunteer-spotlight-sina-rabbani-helps-activists-avoid-government-censorship

More New Releases

Tor Browser 8.0a10 Tor Browser 8.0a10 is the second alpha release based on Firefox ESR 60 and contains a number of improvements and bug fixes. It includes major updates to the user experience, and there are more to come. The stable version is slated for release next week! Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-80a10

Tor 0.3.4.7-rc Tor 0.3.4.7-rc fixes several small compilation, portability, and correctness issues in previous versions of Tor. This version is a release candidate: if no serious bugs are found, we expect that the stable 0.3.4 release will be (almost) the same as this release. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-0347-rc

Upcoming Events with Tor

Join Our Community

Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide

Learn about each of our teams and start collaborating: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/WikiStart#Teams

Donate to help keep Tor fast, strong, and secure: https://donate.torproject.org

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The Tor Project is a US 501(c)(3) non-profit organization advancing human rights and freedoms by creating and deploying free and open-source anonymity and privacy technologies, supporting their unrestricted availability and use, and furthering their scientific and popular understanding.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/torproject Facebook: https://facebook.com/torproject

Research Tips & Topics, Egypt Censorship Report, HOPE Vid, Events

Published on 2018-07-31

The State of Internet Censorship in Egypt

A groundbreaking report by OONI and AFTE uncovered anomalies on Egyptian networks including censorship and the hijacking of unencrypted HTTP connections for advertising and cryptocurrency mining. Even UN sites were redirected.

Also, more than 100 news websites are blocked in Egypt, including Al Jazeera, The Huffington Post Arabic, Mada Masr, Almesryoon, Daily News Egypt, Turk Press and Iran’s Alalam News.

“The blocking of media organizations’ websites has had a severe impact on their operations, and some have even suspended their work altogether as a result of persisting censorship,” said Mohammad El Taher, director of the AFTE research unit.

While it’s been known that Egypt has undertaken widespread censorship of websites, this is the first time a comprehensive study of the methods of censorship have been undertaken. Find out how Egypt censors: https://blog.torproject.org/egypt-internet-censorship

How to Do Effective and Impactful Tor Research

As we mentioned in our previous post about Tor research topics, Tor greatly benefits from the research community. When researchers work closely with the design and development of deployed systems, this not only results in better research, but also better systems. For project maintainers, research that identifies vulnerabilities, creates new solutions to existing problems, and verifies proposed designs helps improve projects and make them safer for end users. TLS 1.3 is one recent example of where a symbiotic research/practitioner relationship has improved the protocol's design and safety.

However it is all too common that good research ideas don't make their way into practice. Within Tor, we have found that integrating new research findings isn't seamless or predictable, and good ideas are often lost or deemed incompatible without significantly more analysis and research.

The purpose of this post is to discuss what good research needs to do in order to ensure it has the best chance of being adopted by Tor or any other large software project.

We have structured this post in terms of an ordered list of goals for research. Each successive goal is more difficult to accomplish than the previous one. At the end of this post, we will look at a positive example of excellent research that successfully accomplished all of these goals and give overall takeaways.

Find out your list of goals, in order of increasing difficulty, when conducting relevant research: https://blog.torproject.org/how-do-effective-and-impactful-tor-research

Open Research Topics: 2018 Edition

Here we update the list of open Tor research problems, to bring focus to specific areas of research that the Tor Project thinks are necessary/useful in our efforts to upgrade and improve the Tor network and associated components and software. It is organized by topic area: network performance, network security, censorship circumvention, and application research. Each topic area provides information about current and desired work and ideas. We conclude with information about doing ethical and useful research on Tor and with suggestions on how to best ensure that this work is useful and easy for us to adopt. Check them out: https://blog.torproject.org/tors-open-research-topics-2018-edition

Watch The Onion Report from HOPE

Find out all about what different teams at Tor have been up to by watching The Onion Report from HOPE. Filmed July 20th in NYC with Steph, Alison, George, David, and Matt: https://livestream.com/internetsociety/hope/videos/178158095

New Onion Services Add-On: Vanguards

Earlier this year, the Tor Project released its first stable Tor and Tor Browser releases with the new v3 onion service protocol. The protocol features many improvements, including longer and more secure onion addresses, service enumeration resistance, improved authentication, and upgraded cryptography.

However, while this new protocol closes off some attacks (particularly enumeration and related targeted DoS attacks), it does not solve any attacks that could lead to service deanonymization.

The core Vanguards functionality ensures that all onion service circuits are restricted to a set of second and third layer guards, which have randomized rotation times.

If you want to beef up the security of your onion service, this add-on is for you: https://blog.torproject.org/announcing-vanguards-add-onion-services

New Releases

Tor 0.3.3.8 This release backports several changes from the 0.3.4.x series, including fixes for a memory leak affecting directory authorities. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/tor-0338-released

Tor Browser 8.0a7 This release features important security updates to Firefox and updates firefox to 52.8.0esr. In addition we fixed some issues with UI customization and YouTube videos play. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/tor-browser-80a7-released

Tor Browser 7.5.4 This release updates Firefox to 52.8.0esr, HTTPS Everywhere to 2018.4.11, and NoScript to 5.1.8.5. In addition, we exempt .onion domains from mixed content warnings, fixed a fingerprinting issue and an issue with localized content. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/tor-browser-754-released

Upcoming Events with Tor

Join Our Community

Getting involved with Tor is easy. Run a relay to make the network faster and more decentralized: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide

Learn about each of our teams and start collaborating: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/WikiStart#Teams

Donate to help keep Tor fast, strong, and secure: https://donate.torproject.org

--

The Tor Project is a US 501(c)(3) non-profit organization advancing human rights and freedoms by creating and deploying free and open-source anonymity and privacy technologies, supporting their unrestricted availability and use, and furthering their scientific and popular understanding.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/torproject Facebook: https://facebook.com/torproject Instagram: https://instagram.com/torproject

Censorship Circumvention, Trackers, Onion Protections, New Releases, Events

Published on 2018-06-28

Breaking Through Censorship Barriers, Even When Tor Is Blocked

Last week, Venezuela blocked access to the Tor network. Prior to the block, there were over 30,000 people in Venezuela enjoying the privacy and security protections Tor provides: https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/59qvwz/venezuela-maduro-tor-network-censorship

Connecting to Tor is a luxury, but we have developed ways for people where Tor is blocked to continue to connect to the network. Using bridges and pluggable transports, people can break through censorship and continue to access the open web. For more information about using bridges, see:

https://blog.torproject.org/rompiendo-barreras-de-censura-incluso-cuando-tor-esta-bloqueado [Spanish]

https://blog.torproject.org/breaking-through-censorship-barriers-even-when-tor-blocked [English]

If you have basic command line experience, you can help out people in countries with heavy censorship by becoming a bridge operator: https://www.torproject.org/docs/pluggable-transports#operator

Don't Let Facebook or Other Trackers Follow You on The Web

In the early age of the internet, people enjoyed a high level of privacy. Webpages were just hypertext documents; almost no personalization of the user experience was offered (or forced). The web today has evolved into a system of surveillance capitalism, where advertising networks follow users while they browse the web, continuously collecting traces of personal data and surfing patterns to create profiles of users in order to target them.

Using the web today, you are a target. And because of the rampant tracking across websites, each time you use the internet, you become an easier target.

By tracking you across different applications and sites through cookies or open web sessions, your personal preferences and social connections are collected and often sold. Even if you do not accept cookies or are not logged into a service account, such as your Google, Twitter, or Facebook accounts, the web page and third-party services can still try to profile you by using third-party HTTP requests or other techniques.

Within the HTTP request, various selectors can be included to communicate user preferences or particular features, in the form of URL variables. Personalized language or fonts settings, browser extensions, in-page keywords, battery charge and status, and more can be used to identify you by restricting the pool of possible candidates among all the visitors in a certain time frame, location, profile of interests. You can then be distinguished, or fingerprinted, across multiple devices or sessions and then the profile the tracker has on you is expanded.

By the sites and applications themselves, the story is spun to sound as if they’re doing you a favor: they say this collection allows them to customize your experience. You see ads more relevant to you, Facebook and others say.

Even if you think of an advertising network as a recommendation system, this same system is also influencing what you see. It’s changing your experience of the internet.

But at what cost is this customization? When confronted with transparency around what this “customization” takes, it “poisons” the ad. So of course these companies are pushing back against transparency, but we need to keep pushing them and doing what we can to prevent them from continuing to exploit us online.

Learn about how Tor Browser can help: https://blog.torproject.org/dont-let-facebook-or-any-tracker-follow-you-web

Privacy International Protects Partners with Its Onion Address

This guest post is written by Ed Geraghty, Technologist, Privacy International.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with [their] privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon [their] honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

  • United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) 1948, Article 12

The right to privacy is a qualified, fundamental human right. We at Privacy International (PI) work hard with our network of partners to ensure this fundamental right is protected - it is essential to autonomy, the protection of human dignity, and is the foundation upon which many other human rights are built.

This is becoming ever-more important in an age of ubiquitous, indiscriminate mass surveillance, especially as more and more aspects of our daily lives - interactions with friends, family, companies, and the state - are dependent upon technology. In order for individuals to fully participate in the modern world, developments in law and technologies must strengthen and not undermine the ability to freely enjoy this right.We challenge governments' powers by advocating and litigating for stronger protections. We lead research and investigations to shine a light on powers and capabilities, and to instigate and inform debate. We advocate for good practices and strong laws worldwide to protect people and their rights. We equip civil society organisations across the world to increase public awareness about privacy. We raise awareness about technologies and laws that place privacy at risk, to ensure that the public is informed and engaged.

Tor is an important tool in our arsenal - a technology which allows people to communicate, use the internet, and browse the web in a manner which evades censorship.

Many of our partners work in challenging environments, with massive state surveillance and/or ongoing censorship programmes. Giving them an ability to securely browse the web (both clear and onion) in a way which allows them to evade dragnet surveillance also allows them to conduct investigations securely.

Find out what else running an onion address provides the Privacy International community: https://blog.torproject.org/privacy-international-protects-partners-its-onion-address

New Releases

Tor 0.3.3.7 This release backports several changes from the 0.3.4.x series, including fixes for bugs affecting compatibility and stability. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/tor-0337-released

Tor Browser 7.5.6 This release features important security updates to Firefox, updates Firefox to 52.9.0esr, and includes newer versions of NoScript and HTTPS Everywhere. Moreover, we added the latest Tor stable version, 0.3.3.7. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/tor-browser-756-released-

Upcoming Events with Tor

HOPE. New York City, USA. July 20-22, 2018. https://hope.net/

The 18th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS). Barcelona, Spain. July 24-27, 2018. https://petsymposium.org/2018/index.php

Tor Community Night. Barcelona, Spain. July 24, 2018. https://blog.torproject.org/events/tor-community-night-barcelona

Def Con. Las Vegas, USA. August 8-12, 2018. https://blog.torproject.org/events/roger-and-steph-and-others-def-con-las-vegas

Join Our Community

Getting involved with Tor is easy: you can help us make the network faster and more decentralized by running a relay. https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide

You can learn about each of our teams and start collaborating: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/WikiStart#Teams

If you want to make a contribution but don’t have the time to volunteer, your donation will help keep Tor fast, strong, and secure: https://donate.torproject.org

--

The Tor Project is a US 501(c)(3) non-profit organization advancing human rights and freedoms by creating and deploying free and open-source anonymity and privacy technologies, supporting their unrestricted availability and use, and furthering their scientific and popular understanding.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/torproject Facebook: https://facebook.com/torproject