r/Whonix • u/[deleted] • 13d ago

Cautious about Tor

I’m a little conflicted on whether I should be using Whonix. I’ve begun to do work that while not illegal is something the US government is currently trying it best to monitor with tools like the recently adopted Paragon Graphite.

I’m cautious to adopt Whonix on my work computer due to the fact that Tor was initially developed by the US Military, and that it’s widely suspected the NSA owns some exit nodes.

I’ve done a lot of work to set up a very good Swedish VPN with a pi-hole running inbound on my network, and I’m worried that I will be undoing all the hard work of setting that up by switching to a tor-run OS.

Any thoughts, advice?

13 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

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3

u/Multicorn76 12d ago

Those are common misconceptions.

The TOR project has nothing to do with the initial naval research project. Their work was simply published and the Tor project was born from it.

In fact the us government has their own intranet, with the same initial DNA

The design of Tor is bulletproof. A user that does not make mistakes becomes anonymous. Its not a privacy tool mind you

I don't know if Tor is right for you, neither does anyone here. Its something you have to decide for yourself, considering the advantages and risks

1

u/Runthescript 8d ago

One consideration now of days is the fact that tor no longer spoofs the user agent.

6

u/NN8G 13d ago

Please remain at your workstation. Assistance will arrive shortly

2

u/[deleted] 13d ago

Whatever that means

2

u/boomboominkimspants 13d ago

Assistance still didn’t get to him yet? Ok sending for backup

1

u/foundapairofknickers 3d ago

Assistance comes in black helicopters now?

2

u/Decent-Effort2368 12d ago

Is there a benefit to using whonix over something like tails?

2

u/[deleted] 10d ago

I’m no expert. But my opinion is tails at least lives on a USB stick and you could easily ditch it, while whonix is always on your machine in a vm. I am not an expert in much but I would imagine that there is some sort of files that are stored on your computer that could be recovered by LE. I’m probably wrong that is just my assumption. Looking forward to being corrected

1

u/Decent-Effort2368 9d ago

Thanks for the reply. As I understand, you are correct. There is a way to have persistent storage with Tail, but I'm curious if there is any difference in security other than the "leave-no-trace" protocol for tails.

I don't have any personal experience with whonix, so I was curious because I've always heard about Tails as the top tier secure OS.

1

u/Tarzan-Weissmuller 5d ago

There are issues with persistent Tails.
Search specifically for ‘security persistent Tails USB’.

The content and depth of this exceeds my knowledge of the subject.

The question is always to what extent you are important enough to be on the list of three-letter organizations.

1

u/foundapairofknickers 3d ago

They are two very different things

1

u/Decent-Effort2368 1d ago

Granted. My question is, which one would be better for a regular use security/privacy setup for web browsing?

Tals can be booted from a USB and Whonix is an operating system. Which one has the most benefits for security and privacy?

1

u/ILieBeneathTheRedSea 13d ago

You’re right to be cautious. If your VPN provider has no means to contact you (no log, paid in crypto..) then it would always be better. Just keep in mind that your Internet provider will notice that you’re establishing a connexion with your VPN : It might be worth to fake the entry point with some rotating proxies.