[tor-commits] [torbutton/master] Bug 21263: Remove outdated information from the README
gk at torproject.org
gk at torproject.org
Tue Sep 18 11:30:29 UTC 2018
commit 02f3a9334acb1b1b72ee27c3e81013f8706f20d1
Author: traumschule <traumschuleriebau at riseup.net>
Date: Sat Sep 15 15:43:15 2018 +0200
Bug 21263: Remove outdated information from the README
---
README | 155 ++++++++---------------------------------------------------------
1 file changed, 17 insertions(+), 138 deletions(-)
diff --git a/README b/README
index 3b3af2d6..f4dc12d4 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -1,144 +1,23 @@
-Torbutton is a 1-click way for Firefox users to enable or disable the
-browser's use of Tor. It adds a panel to the statusbar that says "Tor
-Enabled" (in green) or "Tor Disabled" (in red). The user may click on the
-panel to toggle the status. If the user (or some other extension) changes
-the proxy settings, the change is automatically reflected in the
-statusbar.
+Torbutton comes pre-installed with Tor Browser and we urge you not to change it.
+We do not recommend to install it to Firefox because this is not a sufficient
+way to surf anonymously.
-Some users may prefer a toolbar button instead of a statusbar panel. Such
-a button is included, and one adds it to the toolbar by right-clicking on
-the desired toolbar, selecting "Customize...", and then dragging the
-Torbutton icon onto the toolbar. There is an option in the preferences to
-hide the statusbar panel (Tools->Extensions, select Torbutton, and click
-on Preferences).
+Torbutton guarantees that DNS requests are sent through the Tor instance that
+comes with Tor Browser. You should not change the proxy settings.
-Newer Firefoxes have the ability to send DNS resolves through the socks
-proxy, and Torbutton will make use of this feature if it is available in
-your version of Firefox.
+It’s strongly discouraged to install new Add-ons in Tor Browser, because they
+can compromise both your privacy and your security. Plus, Tor Browser already
+comes installed with two add-ons — HTTPS Everywhere and NoScript — which give
+you a lot of added protection.
- FAQ
+You can read more about it here:
+https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/
-1. I can't click on links or hit reload after I toggle Tor! Why?
+Also have a look at this page for already answered questions:
+https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/CommunityTeam/Support_discuss
- Due to Firefox Bug 409737, pages can still open popups and perform
- Javascript redirects and history access after Tor has been toggled. These
- popups and redirects can be blocked, but unfortunately they are
- indistinguishable from normal user interactions with the page (such as
- clicking on links, opening them in new tabs/windows, or using the history
- buttons), and so those are blocked as a side effect. Once that Firefox bug
- is fixed, this degree of isolation will become optional (for people who do
- not want to accidentally click on links and give away information via
- referrers). A workaround is to right click on the link, and open it in a
- new tab or window. The tab or window won't load automatically, but you can
- hit enter in the URL bar, and it will begin loading. Hitting enter in the
- URL bar will also reload the page without clicking the reload button.
+For other issues you should know about have a look at this blog post:
+https://blog.torproject.org/toggle-or-not-toggle-end-torbutton
-2. My browser is in some weird state where nothing works right!
-
- Try to disable Tor by clicking on the button, and then open a new window.
- If that doesn't fix the issue, go to the preferences page and hit 'Restore
- Defaults'. This should reset the extension and Firefox to a known good
- configuration. If you can manage to reproduce whatever issue gets your
- Firefox wedged, please file details at the bug tracker.
-
-3. When I toggle Tor, my sites that use javascript stop working. Why?
-
- Javascript can do things like wait until you have disabled Tor before
- trying to contact its source site, thus revealing your IP address. As
- such, Torbutton must disable Javascript, Meta-Refresh tags, and certain
- CSS behavior when Tor state changes from the state that was used to load a
- given page. These features are re-enabled when Torbutton goes back into
- the state that was used to load the page, but in some cases (particularly
- with Javascript and CSS) it is sometimes not possible to fully recover
- from the resulting errors, and the page is broken. Unfortunately, the only
- thing you can do (and still remain safe from having your IP address leak)
- is to reload the page when you toggle Tor, or just ensure you do all your
- work in a page before switching tor state.
-
-4. When I use Tor, Firefox is no longer filling in logins/search boxes for
- me. Why?
-
- Currently, this is tied to the "Block history writes during Tor" setting.
- If you have enabled that setting, all formfill functionality (both saving
- and reading) is disabled. If this bothers you, you can uncheck that
- option, but both history and forms will be saved. To prevent history
- disclosure attacks via Non-Tor usage, it is recommended you disable
- Non-Tor history reads if you allow history writing during Tor.
-
-5. Which Firefox extensions should I avoid using?
-
- This is a tough one. There are thousands of Firefox extensions: making a
- complete list of ones that are bad for anonymity is near impossible.
- However, here are a few examples that should get you started as to what
- sorts of behavior are dangerous.
-
- 1. StumbleUpon, et al These extensions will send all sorts of information
- about the websites you visit to the stumbleupon servers, and correlate
- this information with a unique identifier. This is obviously terrible
- for your anonymity. More generally, any sort of extension that
- requires registration, or even extensions that provide information
- about websites you visit should be suspect.
- 2. FoxyProxy While FoxyProxy is a nice idea in theory, in practice it is
- impossible to configure securely for Tor usage without Torbutton. Like
- all vanilla third party proxy plugins, the main risks are plugin
- leakage and history disclosure, followed closely by cookie theft
- by exit nodes and tracking by adservers (see the Torbutton
- Adversary Model for more information). However, even with Torbutton
- installed in tandem and always enabled, it is still very difficult
- (though not impossible) to configure FoxyProxy securely. Since
- FoxyProxy's 'Patterns' mode only applies to specific urls, and not to
- an entire tab, setting FoxyProxy to only send specific sites through
- Tor will still allow adservers to still learn your real IP. Worse, if
- those sites use offsite logging services such as Google Analytics, you
- may still end up in their logs with your real IP. Malicious exit nodes
- can also cooperate with sites to inject images into pages that bypass
- your filters. Setting FoxyProxy to only send certain URLs via Non-Tor
- is much more viable, but be very careful with the filters you allow.
- For example, something as simple as allowing *google* to go via
- Non-Tor will still cause you to end up in all the logs of all websites
- that use Google Analytics! See this question on the FoxyProxy FAQ
- for more information.
- 3. NoScript Torbutton currently mitigates all known anonymity issues with
- Javascript. While it may be tempting to get better security by
- disabling Javascript for certain sites, you are far better off with an
- all-or-nothing approach. NoScript is exceedingly complicated, and has
- many subtleties that can surprise even advanced users. For example,
- addons.mozilla.org verifies extension integrity via Javascript over
- https, but downloads them in the clear. Not adding it to your
- whitelist effectively means you are pulling down unverified
- extensions. Worse still, using NoScript can actually disable
- protections that Torbutton itself provides via Javascript, yet still
- allow malicious exit nodes to compromise your anonymity via the
- default whitelist (which they can spoof to inject any script they
- want).
-
-6. Which Firefox extensions do you recommend?
-
- 1. RefControl Mentioned above, this extension allows more
- fine-grained referrer spoofing than Torbutton currently provides. It
- should break less sites than Torbutton's referrer spoofing option.
- 2. SafeCache If you use Tor excessively, and rarely disable it, you
- probably want to install this extension to minimize the ability of
- sites to store long term identifiers in your cache. This extension
- applies same origin policy to the cache, so that elements are
- retrieved from the cache only if they are fetched from a document in
- the same origin domain as the cached element.
-
-7. Are there any other issues I should be concerned about?
-
- There is currently one known unfixed security issue with Torbutton: it is
- possible to unmask the javascript hooks that wrap the Date object to
- conceal your timezone in Firefox 2, and the timezone masking code does not
- work at all on Firefox 3. We are working with the Firefox team to fix one
- of Bug 399274 or Bug 419598 to address this. In the meantime, it
- is possible to set the TZ environment variable to UTC to cause the browser
- to use UTC as your timezone. Under Linux, you can add an export TZ=UTC to
- the /usr/bin/firefox script, or edit your system bashrc to do the same.
- Under Windows, you can set either a User or System Environment
- Variable for TZ via My Computer's properties. In MacOS, the situation is
- a lot more complicated, unfortunately.
-
- In addition, RSS readers such as Firefox Livemarks can perform periodic
- fetches. Due to Firefox Bug 436250, there is no way to disable
- Livemark fetches during Tor. This can be a problem if you have a lot of
- custom Livemark urls that can give away information about your identity.
+For a list of all torbutton announcements see
+https://blog.torproject.org/category/tags/torbutton
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