[tor-talk] What is tor used for?

[cmeclax-sazri]

On Thursday 03 November 2011 00:23:48 toruser at tormail.net wrote:
> so far it has me wondering if tor is really used for the humanitarian
> purposes the technology has the potential of aiding.  i would really
> appreciate hearing real stories and highlights of how has helped in the
> use cases torproject lists.

Bob is in West Africa (typically) and is looking for victims to scam. He 
creates a character, Dave, who is a dying widower/NNPC banker/whatever, and 
sends thousands of emails with his script.

Alice gets the email purporting to come from Dave. She creates a character, 
Carol, and accesses Carol's email only through Tor. She answers Dave's email 
from Carol's account.

Several weeks later, Carol sends Dave a fake Moneygram transfer. Bob goes to 
MG and is told the MTCN is invalid. Dave writes back to Carol, who changes a 
few digits and sends the number again. Bob still gets no money.

After a few rounds of this, Carol asks Dave if she can send a wire transfer. 
Dave sends her Bob's bank account. Alice reports it to the authorities. Carol 
sends a transfer from her fake bank to Bob's real bank. Four days later, Bob 
still has no money.

A week after Alice reported it, Bob's account is shut down. Bob is angry. He 
looks at the headers of Carol's emails and finds that they are all around the 
world. He calls his confederates in all places the emails came from and 
orders them to hunt down Carol. They find no one resembling her. His head 
explodes.

Next week, police, acting on a tip from the bank, arrest Bob. They search his 
house and find items sent by Margaret, his victim. (This is rare, but has 
happened at least once.) The money in Bob's account is sent back to Margaret.

A lot of Alices are using Gmail (which has resulted in a hitlad attacking 
Mountain View), but some use Tor.