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why cannot i use my TOR browser?

P

Phpmer

Inactive
Hello, new member, first post. I am having issues connecting via the TOR browser however (seems as if the forum is extremely interested in my IP address) it appears as if the forum wants me to provide them my IP address all the time. I value my privacy. Currently, the level of privacy is too low for me to continue posting and visiting here. TOR browser users are people too ! Forum owners should change policy to allow TOR users access to the community. I mean, one has to actively set up a web site to exclude TOR browser users. And for what purpose? Please change web site settings to allow TOR users like me to access the pages.
 
While I am not an admin, typically the reason TFL tracks your IP address is to help prevent spam posters. Once a spam poster is identified, the offending IP address/addresses can be blocked from accessing TFL. If you search through some of the threads in this subforum, that is the general theme you will gather.
 
Tor presents several problems for websites.

The first is that it doesn't send the HTTP_REFERER header. Without that, a site can't tell whether a form has been submitted by a logged-in user or a spambot. That affects everything from logins to post submissions.

The second problem is that Tor routes traffic through a proxy server. Proxy servers have their legitimate uses, but they're also tools for spammers, previously-banned users, and other shenanigans.

The third, and possibly most annoying, is that the Tor developers shift the responsibility and burden of fixing things to website administrators. The idea is that programmers and sysadmins should rewrite their software to make using Tor easier.
 
There are some plugins that try to prevent spam, and those might be blocking logins from tor (and probably any proxies that geoip resolves to an anonymous proxy), but I'm not sure. Is that what you're talking about, inability to login or post?

Nothing should be blocked if you're not attempting to login.

TFL also supports SSL (though embedded non-ssl images get converted to links). While that doesn't provide anonymity in TFL's logs, it reduces snooping capability of your ISP, wifi access points, and the NSA.
 
Unfortunately, this forum's owners have decided that TOR browser users cannot even access the forum to read let alone login and participate.

The idea that this is somehow a spam-prevention reason does not explain why one cannot simply view forum post using TOR.

I cannot continue on with this site w/o being able to use TOR for security reasons on my end.

I will check back later for one more try. If you do not see any postings from me you'll know why. This is the only forum I have visited that does not allow at least viewing via a TOR browser. Its very concerning indeed.
 
Unfortunately, this forum's owners have decided that TOR browser users cannot even access the forum to read let alone login and participate.
Click to expand...
It's not a crusade against Tor users. The problem is on Tor's end.

I downloaded it and tried to access this site. I got a notice that the fake IP Tor assigned me is flagged as a spammer. Out of curiosity, I went to my personal site, which runs Wordpress. I received a 403 error that, "your IP address appeared on the third-party Project Honey Pot list as a source of spam or other malicious activity."

Both the Akismet and Bad Behavior plugins report this IP as suspicious. These are the most common anti-spam plugins out there.

The results from Project Honey Pot are interesting. Tor is telling websites that I'm visiting from Germany, and that this IP is the source of pornographic spam.

If my experience is typical, well...yeah. Tor users are going to have problems on all sorts of websites.
 
Interesting. One of the spam plugins does block access to visitors who aren't even logged in, and I don't see a config setting to change that.

I don't think it should do that. However, the marginal benefit of allowing anonymous users visiting over tor is extremely low. Convince me that's wrong and I'll investigate changing it. A lot of hack attempts (including mass password guessing) are frequently done via tor, which is a major reason tor exit nodes end up in centralized IP blocklists.

It's not blocking tor nodes specifically. Some exit nodes have bad reputation and are blocked, while some don't and are allowed to visit. If you keep re-building the tor circuit, you should be able to see pages eventually. Or you can just use google's cache. Internet Archive probably has a mirror of TFL's posts as well.

I've given up on tor for the most part because it's slow and because of exactly this: lots of sites block it. Not to mention that tor exit nodes can log traffic and inject malware into any sites you visit that aren't encrypted. Most people use VPNs now; they're good enough for most privacy/anonymity purposes, unless you're doing something that rises above the noise to aggravate some government.
 
I tested a few Tor circuits and discovered that a few do seem to use a end node server which is blocked by The Firing Line.

Have you considered using an advanced CAPTCHA to prohibit computerized registrations and brute-force login attempts? If not, a read-only blacklist is a little harsh in my opinion. Even the most extreme should be a blacklist of the login and registration functions of vBulletin.

Honestly, I could see the reason for some users here to want anonymity.
 
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