[tor-talk] Tor users trackable with common proxy?

[Roger Dingledine]

On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 04:15:37PM +0800, Koh Choon Lin wrote:
> I would like to ask for members of this list about the following statement:
> 
> "The authorities in Singapore are understood to have the ability to
> track down a person online even if he or she uses anonymizing
> facilities such as Virtual Private Networking, TOR onion routing, or
> other forms of proxy servers, and even if encryption is involved. This
> is because all internet traffic in Singapore is directed through a
> common proxy choke with date, time and IP stamping operation in
> place."
> 
> http://www.sgpolitics.net/?p=7343

Yeah, this paragraph smells like FUD. It all comes down to what they mean
by "track down a person online". Concentrating all their traffic through
a single proxy means that it's easy for them to see where your traffic is
going. In the case of Tor, they will see that your traffic is going to a
Tor relay (if they know how to look. If you're using a Tor bridge, they'd
have to notice the Tor protocol; if you're using obfsproxy, they'd have
to notice the obfsproxy protocol). But in all of these cases, they'd need
to break Tor in order to learn what actual destination you're asking for.

In short, it sounds like one of those cases where they're trying to
scare you away from using Tor, so you'll do something they can break
more easily.

--Roger