[tor-bugs] #2905 [Vidalia]: Adapt Vidalia UI to allow users to avoid connecting to the public tor network

[Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki]

#2905: Adapt Vidalia UI to allow users to avoid connecting to the public tor
network
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 Reporter:  anonym   |          Owner:  chiiph         
     Type:  defect   |         Status:  new            
 Priority:  major    |      Milestone:  Vidalia: 0.2.13
Component:  Vidalia  |        Version:  Vidalia 0.2.10 
 Keywords:  bridges  |         Parent:                 
   Points:           |   Actualpoints:                 
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Comment(by mikeperry):

 Replying to [comment:7 chiiph]:
 > I see your point, but say you have a totally unexperienced user, that
 wants to report some incident or whatever that may put her life in risk.
 So she hears about Tor, downloads TBB, opens Vidalia, and a popup shows up
 saying: "Do you want to use a bridge to access the network?" or "Is Tor
 banned on your country?" or something else more user friendly.
 > I imagine this will confuse the user.
 >
 > The problem here is that if the user doesn't know what to do, anything
 she does to find out more can be viewed as exactly the same as just trying
 to connect to the tor network directly, so it's kind of the chicken and
 egg thing here.
 >
 > And even if there are cases where a user's life might be at risk because
 of a bad software policy, I wonder how many users don't fit that profile
 and end up really scared of using tor because they don't want to die.

 We don't have to scare the user. We only need to inform them and give them
 an opportunity to avoid connecting directly to the public network. Going
 back to the TBB use case, at first run, the dialog could be:

 "Before Tor attempts to connect, we need to know some information about
 your Internet connection. Do any of the options below apply to you? If so,
 check those options for further configuration. If not, just click OK.

 [Insert current Vidalia Network config page here]"

 This message is not about terrifying the user. It is about simply giving
 them the opportunity to avoid directly connecting to the Tor network.
 Right now our TBB users have *no way* to do this, even if they have been
 properly trained to use bridges for safety/censorship resistance.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/2905#comment:14>
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