Over 1 Million People Use Tor To Check Facebook Anonymously Each Month (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader writes: More than one million people have used the Tor anonymizing browser to login to Facebook, according to Facebook. Facebook expanded its support for Tor earlier this year as it rolled-out support for the Android Orbot proxy, providing Android Facebook users easier access to use Tor. In October 2014, Facebook created a dedicated onion address for Tor access, once again, making it easier for users to connect via Tor. Tor said some 525,000 people accessed [Facebook] via Tor in June 2015, rising to more than one million this month. "This [Tor] growth is a reflection of the choices that people make to use Facebook over Tor, and the value that it provides them. We hope they will continue to provide feedback and help us keep improving," Facebook added. Users may use Tor to access Facebook because of the location obfuscation feature, as well as to ensure their identity doesn't leak to intermediaries -- such as ISPs or "an agency that surveils the Internet."

Comments

Anonymously?! Haha

[topham]

Facebook is on Tor so the CIA can do network analysis of known origin data. Sure sure, some people jump through proxies first VPn or otherwise, but most don't.

anonymous browser to login...

[Anonymous Coward]

am I missing something here???

Re:anonymous browser to login...

[thegarbz]

Yes you are. Just because I can login to some website and post some comment under some strange pseudonym to discuss religious, cultural, political, or otherwise sensitive topics doesn't mean that I necessarily wish to allow those communications to be read by the government.

What you're missing, is that some governments are hostile to speech while at the same time in no position to subpoena a company to hand over user details. In that regard having a secure anonymous connection between yourself and a server which resides outside of reach of said country is important even if the transaction with the final server is not anonymous.

Re:T.O.R.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you're trolling, but here's a serious answer anyway.

there's no reason you need to using T.O.R.

Only in the sense that there was "no reason Rosa Parks needed to ride on the front of the bus".

I won't comment on the dubious wisdom of logging into Facebook under TOR. But in a general sense, anything that frustrates the surveillance state and returns power from the state back to individuals has critical social benefits that make it worthwhile, even if it is inconvenient.

There's "no reason" only if you don't give a shit about human rights.

Re:Translation

[rmdingler]

Headline: "Over 1 Million People Use Tor To Check Facebook Anonymously Each Month"

Translation: "NSA Adds Over 1 Million People To Secret Watch List Each Month"

Amen. More noise to sift through.

The fear is that the initial outfits will collect and parse all of our information. This is not worth worrying over. The toothpaste is pretty much out of the tube... the collection of everything is efficient and ongoing.

We are saved from a realistic fruition of the 1984 prophecy not by compassion, plenty of warning, or good governing; but by the endless, insatiable greed of the governors.

Re:T.O.R.

[digitig]

The reason for accessing Facebook over TOR is noise. The more innocuous traffic on TOR, the harder it gets for anybody looking for the less innocuous stuff.