[tor-talk] What's better than Tor for criminals?

[Christopher Baines]

On 06/06/15 18:50, torlove at ruggedinbox.com wrote:
> I'm trying to understand what these options are and why don't we
> non-criminal tech savvy people have some of these better options?
> 
> Is this just talking about the option of using encrypted botnets, or are
> there other additional options that criminals use?
> 
> What are these criminal anonymity methods that are stronger than Tor?

The assumption here is that criminals are happy breaking the law (as
they have done so already, by definition) with their methods of anonymity.

This can range from simple things like theft, the criminal steals
someone else's computer, and uses that instead of their own. Or more
complex things like botnets, which are often much larger than the Tor
network in terms of number of nodes, and therefore its better for the
anonymity of the (criminal) operators if the botnet itself is used as
the mix network instead of Tor.

Obviously, most legal systems probably frown on both of the behaviors
discussed above. This is where Tor fills the gap, providing strong
anonymity, in a manor that does not require theft, running a botnet or
other "sensibly" [1] illegal behaviors.

1: The caveat here being that using Tor is not in some way illegal
somewhere, the FAQ [2] claims this is the case, but I have no real idea
if this is true.
2: https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en

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