
Facebook is Blocking Connections from Tor Network - ArabGeek
http://arabcrunch.com/2013/06/facebook-blocks-log-ins-from-tor-browser-putting-thousands-of-political-activist-at-risk.html
======
yuvadam
The privatized 'public' space makes an inevitable move.

Facebook can no longer stake any preposterous claim to "help people connect
better". It is a business entity - always has been - and does not give half a
damn about "making the world a better place", or whatever corporate marketing
catchphrase they use right now.

Related to recent events or not, the privatized internet is continuing to
backlash with severe consequences for anyone dependent on Tor to ensure that
their tyrant government doesn't come knocking on their door just for speaking
their mind.

~~~
adventured
It's a lot more than just a business entity, unfortunately.

The government tends to look out for and protect its biggest corporate
partners, particularly those that play a strategic role (think: Boeing). The
major Internet services companies are now protected government sponsored
entities, just like Verizon and AT&T.

The Feds can never risk the potential that the massive orgy of data that
Facebook makes possible - both domestically and globally - might unravel or be
challenged by competitors that might threaten the 'total information
awareness' system they've built. I would argue Facebook's well being is now
considered a national security interest for the US Government, as there are
few other sources that provide easy access to the lives of a billion people
around the world.

I wish Facebook were merely a business.

~~~
paganel
> just like Verizon and AT&T.

As an European I never understood what is the "strategic" interest of
Washington to protect the telecom companies. This might have made sense 20
years ago, but now that these companies tend to become like any other utility
companies I don't see why the Government would care if they break up or if new
(possibly foreign) competitors appear.

~~~
extra88
Because I think yashkadakia's Google link was too oblique a response, here's
my answer: the concerns are that A) a foreign owned U.S. telecom might refuse
to provide the data NSA or other government agencies want (or reveal that they
had been asked) and B) a foreign owned U.S. telecom might do the same sort of
spying on behalf of their "home" country.

~~~
adventured
To add to this, the value of the duopoly of AT&T and Verizon, is also the ease
of having two targets that make up the extreme majority of all telephone calls
/ wireless data / and a lot of broadband access. If you're the government and
you want to spy on domestic calls and data, it sure beats having to deal with
a market in which dozens of companies split the marketshare. This last point
is also one of the reasons why the former telecom monopoly of the old AT&T was
allowed to be recombined after having been split into pieces.

------
cpa
It is not deliberate from Facebook. See:
[https://blog.torproject.org/blog/facebook-and-
tor](https://blog.torproject.org/blog/facebook-and-tor)

~~~
chucknthem
This needs to be the top comment. Way too many wacko conspiracy theorists in
this thread.

~~~
Torgo
Your definition of "conspiracy theory" is way too low. Many sites block Tor,
it is not even remotely out of the possibility that they could have blocked
Tor exit nodes, or will in the future. I run a Tor exit node on a static IP
address, I have firsthand experience with this.

~~~
chucknthem
That is a perfectly reasonable explanation, and not what I'm calling
conspiracy theory. I'll quote one from a reply to the current top comment.

>Google and Facebook are part of the military surveillance complex, it's as
simple as that. They are privatized surveillance companies who serve the US
government.

source:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5899813](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5899813)

~~~
Torgo
Ok, thanks for the clarification, I missed the context. As a side note I think
functionally they serve that purpose, but were never created to be so; they
simply cannot resist the compelling power of the state under which they have
been licensed as a taxable entity and are subject to its laws and leaders...

------
mooism2
Has anybody tried asking Facebook why they've done this?

Possible reasons:

1\. One or more governments (which ones?) have told Facebook to block Tor or
else. (Or else what?)

2\. A manual security review revealed more hacking attempts via Tor than
legitimate use, so Facebook decided to block Tor.

3\. After a sustained hacking attack via Tor, an automated Facebook security
system automatically blocked Facebook access from Tor.

Further questions: When did Facebook start blocking Tor? Any idea when they
might stop?

It's a pitifully poor article.

~~~
alan_cx
The article simply states the issue. Its not up to the writer to come up with
excuses for facebook, which if you are really hot on bad journalists you would
rightly write off a mere speculation. Its up to facebook to explain their
position. If their excuse turns out to be a reasonable reason, then lets hear
it.

~~~
k-mcgrady
It's up to the journalist to investigate and find out why Facebook is doing
this so he can write a more complete story.

~~~
aetimmes
Not necessarily - if their goal is to get Facebook to reverse the change
(which I imagine it is based on the fact that the website is based in an area
with a lot of civil unrest), then providing reasonable rationalization in the
article isn't what you want to do.

~~~
theg2
In that case this isn't journalism but propaganda (even if its the good kind).
Lobbyists do the same thing yet we all hate them for it, these guys shouldn't
get a free pass and get to call it journalism if they aren't portraying both
sides.

Edit: fixed mobile typos

~~~
extra88
I've now been able to reach the page to read is myself. How is this
propaganda? What's the other side to exposing activists to observation by
oppressive regimes?

------
runn1ng
news.ycombinator does this too.

edit: at least for me, it's impossible to log in to HN and when I occasionally
succesfully log im, everything I post while being on Tor is instantly dead.

~~~
untog
This point might be more important than anyone gives it credit for. Six days
ago PG said that someone was running an "abusive distributed crawler" through
Tor. Quite possible that Facebook would ban for the exact same reasons.

------
gregd
When I worked for Netscape.com (the social news site) and later Propeller.com,
we made a conscious decision NOT to ban known TOR IP addresses, even though a
metric shit-ton of spammers used it.

------
gesman
"Activist" \+ brains != relying on middleman's platform

~~~
betterunix
Wrong. If the majority of potential supporters are on Facebook, an activist
needs to be on Facebook.

~~~
gesman
Then VPN access paid for by bitcoins will do. Tor is not the only game in
town.

~~~
betterunix
Yes, because a public record of all transactions could not _possibly_ be used
to track anyone down.

------
tlrobinson
Slightly off topic, but I discovered yesterday Tor provides AMIs for running
bridge nodes on EC2:
[https://cloud.torproject.org](https://cloud.torproject.org)

It's really easy to set up, and only costs ~$3 a month if you have your free
tier available.

------
nickpyett
Just tried loggin in to Facebook with TOR and it works (from the UK). Is this
a region only thing?

------
celticninja
kind of pointless using Tor to access a site that has all your personal
information on it.

~~~
darkarmani
What personal information exists in facebook?

~~~
superuser2
Associates. Thoughts. Articles you liked. Articles you didn't like. Private
messages. Contact information. Photos. Location check-ins. Causes you support.

The whole _point_ of Facebook is to share some private information with a
selected group of friends.

~~~
talmir
That might be the "whole point" but that is not how everyone uses it. I have a
facebook account myself which contains nothing but a username, a generic artsy
avatar and a list of popular facebook pages I like to keep tabs on. I dont
share any personal information and I dont have "friends" on facebook.

This is all purely out of convenience. If I wanted to go full on stealth mode
I could have used Tor at which point my account would not give facebook any
information apart from a couple of "like" clicks from a super generic gray
faced account.

Activists can create these accounts and have a place where they can tell the
world about their experiences without risk of being found out. They dont need
to give out their IP addresses, they dont need to give out addresses. All they
need is a cause and a way to speak and, given luck, people will start
listening.

Now at least one small avenue of communication has been closed.

------
zackmorris
I find this a bit ironic because the future of the web is a free self-
organizing darknet. Someday data that users wish to share will be stored
cryptographically in a true "cloud" sort of like bitcoin, and I'm not really
sure what the value of facebook will be in an environment like that. Maybe the
ability to store things temporarily or delete them somehow?

Facebook seems to connect you to anything except the future..

~~~
redblacktree
On what do you base this speculation? To me, the trend seems to be just the
opposite. Internet use for the average person is increasingly non-anonymous.
Only techies use Tor, PGP, etc.

~~~
hobs
Yep, your parent presupposes people get better at computers. Moore's law does
not apply to people.

~~~
drcube
I disagree. Only 20 years ago the GP would be saying "Only techies use email,
web, etc."

People get better at this stuff, but slowly. The current privacy issue is
growing in the public consciousness, spurring action from "techies". Maybe 20
years from now easy to use encryption will be the norm, even among regular
people.

~~~
hobs
That's a fair point. However, I still see the contraction of skills being
greater as the web caters to those without them, and people's skill
atrophying.

For instance, Facebook messaging vs instant messaging. For most standard users
I know, they have literally lost any reason to use an alternate client, and
many of them will probably never become familiar with one as a result.

Anyway, its a wait and see situation, hopefully we are both around to see!

------
forcer
Isn't HTTPS connection enough to protect from snooping regimes? If the foreign
government won't block FB access completely, user can go to
[https://www.facebook.com](https://www.facebook.com) and will know that their
data can only be seen by Facebook? Of course if government is blocking FB
access, then I understand the need of TOR.

~~~
wyck
You're missing the point TOR isn't about encryption, it's about anonymity.

If you're in a situation which can threaten your life, the latter is clearly
more important.

~~~
untog
But in that context, using Tor to sign into Facebook kind of removes that
'anonymity' angle.

~~~
lambada
Yes, unless the Facebook account has only ever been accessed via Tor, and the
personal information (name, age etc) faked.

I'm unsure if Facebook blocked signups from Tor however.

------
rcavezza
If this isn't political, the timing of this is terrible for Facebook.

------
sidcool
It's probably a government request. But let's give them benefit of doubt. My
guess is that there's a business reason behind it. Probably they want to track
you.

~~~
bpatrianakos
I really doubt they care about tracking you _that_ much. Tor is so
infrequently used that it's not worth the trouble to force you to log in
without it just to track you. Maybe if teenage girls were using Tor I might be
inclined to agree but right now it's just not worth the effort for a few
nerds.

------
SeanDav
How about using TOR to connect to a VPN and then to Facebook, so Facebook only
sees the VPN but you still "protected" by TOR.

Is this possible/practical?

~~~
VaibhavBehl
well facebook won't be able to see you(your IP loc), but VPN is not completely
safe as they are required to keep logs + there's also Money trail(credit card)
leading directly to you, negating the effect of Tor whatsoever.

------
rayiner
Why the hell would someone using TOR use Facebook?

~~~
unreal37
Before the downvote brigade comes out in full force, stop and think a second.
The US government is building its own map of all our social connections for
everyone worldwide, not just suspects but everyone. It will know the names of
everyone you know, how well you know them, even down to the date that you met
them and dates that you were in the same location together.

Why WOULD anyone who cares about their anonymity use Facebook? I am wondering
why I use Facebook even.

~~~
diminoten
> I am wondering why I use Facebook even.

Because, as much as you shout and holler about your privacy being violated,
and as much as you act like you value said privacy, you're more than willing
to give it up for a modicum of convenience.

You, me, and everyone else. Anyone who still uses a 3rd party to handle
unencrypted data they expect to remain private is simply uninformed. Period.

~~~
unreal37
There needs to be a way to have a foot in each world. Total online privacy and
anonymity when you want it, and ability to use facebook, twitter, hacker news,
and other sites where you know and expect to be tracked.

Like Chrome's "incognito mode" that extends beyond cookies to an anonymous
network identity. Like using Tor through a VPN tunnel, I guess.

~~~
diminoten
I think we should separate the things which aren't so important to protect (FB
conversations, Reddit comments, Netflix traffic, etc.) from the things which
MUST be private and secure (bank data, classified data, misc. data which you
want guarantees about security on). Different sandboxes for different things.
There's no reason my Pinterest account needs to be as secure as my
government's troop deployments.

------
cinquemb
Are there better ways to retain network integrity that don't use ip address
logging/monitoring ?

------
kfcm
Has everyone made certain they're running the most current version of Tor?

------
Gonzih
Sometimes I have issues with ycombinator from tor. Am I only one?

~~~
Ixiaus
Someone is aggressively crawling HN with TOR ips so they've banned TOR ips.

------
Meglis
is it possible that fb got some heat from above, and forced to do that?

------
ArabGeek
this means that facebook do not care about the fat of its users, as now
thousands of activists in tyrant regimes might risk their identities be found
and that means they will go to jail.

~~~
hnha
what exactly forces them to use Facebook instead of something remotely private
and secure?

~~~
alan_cx
Popularity.

If activists want a potential mass audience, facebook is an essential part of
of that. Something private will not get to most people. Its the exact same
reason it is hard to compete with facebook. Its is a virtual monopoly.

"Force"? No. But by using that word you are in the same disingenuous camp the
"what have you got to hide" people. I mean, why bother about privacy at all,
no one is "forced" to use the internet. Why bother about anything facebook
does, no one is forced to use it.

I could go on, but I'm not forced to....

~~~
gngeal
_If activists want a potential mass audience, facebook is an essential part of
of that._

Well, why not clear it through an individual that will put it up there so that
the private dealings of everyone else won't leak?

~~~
redblacktree
This is a good idea. Perhaps an individual in a state that values freedom of
expression more highly.

------
throwaway10001
Google, IIRC, does not let you search from TOR either. If they can't track
you, you're no good to them.

~~~
kevination
That's not true. It redirects to
[https://encrypted.google.com/](https://encrypted.google.com/) and works just
fine.

~~~
serf
True, sorta.

In my past experiences, if you're on tor (or proxy'd through a known portal),
and have Javascript disabled entirely, Google will sometimes (not always) give
you an error stating that your IP is a known abuser. If you DO have JS
enabled, I have encountered the "Your IP is known to be abusive, so type in
this captcha in order to continue" and then it forwards to
encrypted.google.com.

I get similiar behaviour with VPNs & Google.

~~~
jonknee
To be fair it's quite likely your IP _has_ been abusive. There aren't that
many exit nodes and it doesn't seem unlikely that a lot of Tor users have
suspicious or malicious behavior.

~~~
hack_edu
Though to the point, the IPs of all exit nodes are publicly available and
presented by the Tor project itself.

