Passing language code to check.torproject.org

[Steven J. Murdoch]

[ Cc'ing or-dev in case anyone else wants to contribute ]

Jacob,

Since the Tor Browser Bundle uses Torbutton, Firefox reports that it
is using US English to websites. This is good because it hides what
country a particular user is coming from, and so increases the size of
the anonymity set.

Tor Browser Bundle has check.torproject.org as the homepage, which is
currently only in English. However, even if it were translated, it
cannot automatically show the right language, because of TorButton's
language cloaking.

I think the simplest solution is for the default homepage for Tor
Browser Bundle to be set to include the language code, e.g.
 http://check.torproject.org/?lang=zh-CN

This will allow the check page to display the right language, while
not leaking that to other sites.

The down-side is that check.torproject.org will get the country code,
but I think that is less of a problem. The site would only learn that
a particular anonymous user has configured a certain language with the
Tor Browser Bundle. 

This is less sensitive than knowing that a particular user has set
this language and is interested in this particular website.

Any thoughts? If there are no objections, I'll add this to the next
version of the bundle. Currently check.torproject.org appears to
ignore the language code, so it won't make a difference now, but will
be ready when the site is translated.

Steven.

-- 
w: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/sjm217/