Jesse_V

Welcome to Tor! Here is my advice:

• First, you should use the Tor Browser Bundle that's shown on www.torproject.org. They use a custom version of Firefox with a lot more security baked in, so it's quite safe.
• Secondly, don't reveal personal information online, otherwise it defeats the purpose of using Tor.
• Third, be careful with Adobe Flash, Javascript, and downloaded files because they are all avenues of attack on your anonymity.
• Fourth, don't torrent over Tor. It slows down the Tor network and the torrent protocols aren't safe and have been known to leak your real IP/identity.
• Fifth, if you don't trust Tor, encrypt any documents before sending them through. That way it prevents malicious exit nodes from wiretapping your files. This is not a necessary thing, but it is encouraged.
• Finally, if you ever have a need to have absolute anonymity with full protection, check out the Tails OS. You can boot that off a flashdrive. It's a distribution of Linux aimed at anonymity and security and it forces all traffic through Tor.

Actually, Tor exit nodes are protected under US law, specifically 17 U.S. Code § 512 part A, which makes them exempt from "notice and takedown" action, just like the carriers of the Internet backbone. In a nutshell, I'm not responsible for what comes out of the exit, and the relay doesn't log any of the traffic which means that seizing it will do nothing. I haven't received any indication that they are interested in doing this, but if they visited me I would let them know all about this. If they wanted to seize the computer I would hand it to them, but the machine would just boot into the command-line so there's not much for them to find because nothing is there.

Non-exit relays don't generate any reports because they just take encrypted information in and pass encrypted information out. There's no way for me or my ISP to know what is really passing through.

I put the exits on the first of February and since then I've been forwarded only one complaint: a downstream automated system noticed that the digital fingerprint of a virus was coming out of my exit. There's nothing I can do about that and there's no way that I can know where it came from, so I just replied that it's a Tor exit node.

Tor operators have several defenses that can help them ward off complaints. My DNS entry clearly states that it's a Tor exit, and if they visit that registration they are shown a webpage that further explains that. Then they know that I'm not actually responsible, so it's a waste of time to file a complaint.

Well, there are several other anonymous networks that people can contribute to or use, such as FreeNet, GnuNet, and others, but right now Tor is the biggest player. There are plenty of VPNs out there, but the problem with VPNs is that you have to trust them and they are a single point of failure. In my opinion this makes them untrustworthy and not ideal for real anonymity, especially for any sensitive activity.

Some of Snowden's documents revealed that the NSA recognizes Tor as the king of low-latency high-security anonymous networks, which I think is really saying something.

The Silk Road, and the new iterations that have been created after it, are all hidden services that exists completely inside Tor. You have to be using Tor to access it, and the clever thing about Tor hidden services is that the client has no way of knowing the IP address of the server, and the server cannot know the IP address of the client, yet the two can talk to each other. This makes hidden services useful for both legal and illegal activity. From what I understand, the Silk Road was taken down through actual detective work from the FBI, rather than a break in the Tor protocol itself. The owner made several mistakes that led to his arrest.

There is certainly a tradeoff in doing police work like that. On one hand, you take down the illegal activity but you also end up drawing attention to Tor, which may lead to more legal or illegal activity. We have now seen several new version of the Silk Road, none of which I have visited, but I don't know how popular they are, so I can't directly answer you question.

One thing to keep in mind is that Tor is used for many legal purposes. I'm confident when I say that Tor is used more for good purposes than it is for illegal activity. Tor is primarily used for providing anonymity to its users, and it achieves that through routing Internet traffic through a series of relays, sort of like using multiple VPNs in a row. In this way, you can access the Internet completely anonymously, which can be very useful for many perfectly legal purposes.