Calling out Revolver.News, Reclaim The Net, and Session
These 3 organizations have recently written articles about the importance of protecting anonymity online:
- Revolver.news — Big Tech Unleashes a Sophisticated New Weapon in Their War on Online Anonymity
- Reclaim the Net — US lawmakers play with the idea of social media ID verification, following proposals from other countries
- Session — The anonymity argument: Debunking the real name fallacy
But they make it difficult for people who want to protect their anonymity on line from viewing their website.
How?
They throw up a series of CAPTCHA tests if you are using TOR.
What is TOR?
TOR’s mission is to advance human rights and freedoms by creating and deploying free and open source anonymity and privacy technologies. They do this by:
- BLOCK TRACKERS — Tor Browser isolates each website you visit so third-party trackers and ads can’t follow you. Any cookies automatically clear when you’re done browsing. So will your browsing history.
- DEFEND AGAINST SURVEILLANCE — Tor Browser prevents someone watching your connection from knowing what websites you visit. All anyone monitoring your browsing habits can see is that you’re using Tor.
- RESIST FINGERPRINTING — Tor Browser aims to make all users look the same, making it difficult for you to be fingerprinted based on your browser and device information.
- MULTI-LAYERED ENCRYPTION — Your traffic is relayed and encrypted three times as it passes over the Tor network. The network is comprised of thousands of volunteer-run servers known as Tor relays.
- BROWSE FREELY — With Tor Browser, you are free to access sites your home network may have blocked.
The post linked above contains a couple of really good videos explaining what TOR is and how it works in simple English. Those trying to spy on us try to make out it is a terrible tool used only by hackers with terrible intents — but watch the videos and you will see all it does is protect your IP address from those trying to spy on you and collect data on you to sell to others.
What is Captcha?
According to CloudFlare a CAPTCHA test is designed to determine if an online user is really a human and not a bot. . . Users often encounter CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA tests on the Internet. Such tests are one way of managing bot activity.
But here is the kicker. CloudFlare itself says:
These tests can be fooled by bots
So CAPTCHA tests are not very good at the job they were designed to do — identifying BOTs because BOTS can fool them. But CAPTCHA is extraordinarily good at making websites near unusable for people using TOR to protect their privacy and anonymity as they surf the web.
Why would they want to make life difficult for TOR users?
Money in a word. You see many companies (ISPs, probably CloudFlare, etc) make money from selling the IP addresses of people surfing the web. TOR throws a spanner is this money making scheme and hides your IP address from these companies, so they look for ways to stop you using it — hence CAPTCHA under the pretense of preventing BOTs.
Innocent Mistake
I do not think this is a purposeful action by Revolver.News, Reclaim The Net, and Session. It is just that they all appear to use the CloudFlare service and one of the defaults in the CloudFlare service to protect your sites against bots is CAPTCHA. Who wouldn’t want to stop BOTS attacking their website — but CloudFlare does not make clear that BOTS can fool these CAPTCHA tests and the CAPTCHA tests drive visitors using TOR away from their site.
My Request
I am asking Revolver.News, Reclaim The Net, and Session (and any other website owners) to check their CloudFlare settings and turn CAPTCHA off to improve the experience of visitors protecting their IP addresses through the use of TOR.
Pot calling the kettle black
I chose to post my blogs on Medium because it did not throw up CAPTCHA tests at me. But as I write this, I live in fear that they suddenly turn them on — life has a habit of working out that way. So at the risk of great embarrassment, I bravely click the Publish button.
Conflict of Interest Disclosure
Writer and family members do not hold any financial interest in the businesses manufacturing, developing, and/or selling any of the products or services mentioned in this article. Nor are we compensated in any way e.g. commission or affiliate program if you decide to purchase these products or services.
