[tor-talk] Funding Tor Development trough Referral/Affiliate Marketing

[Scfith Rise up]

I didn't realize The Tor Project needed to investigate other options to raise more money. They have a decently paid staff, and plenty of beneficiaries. At least according to their 2013 tax filings. So, while your idea is interesting, this is a solution seeking a problem with the wrong entity. 

> On Jan 10, 2016, at 9:21 AM, Kolja Weber <weber at flokinet.is> wrote:
> 
> The amount of people buy stuff online via torbrowser should be quite low
> (besides at some some "silkroads") , any serious online shop like amazon
> will block Tor or VPN, otherwise the fraud order rate is quite high.
> At least the CC processor / paypal / whatever will block Tor.
> 
>> Dear all,
>> 
>> i've been told of some VPN services that are funding themselves by
>> "spoofing" the referral ID in their users traffic, for hundreds of
>> different websites for which they made an agreement for Referral /
>> Affiliate Marketing, when they earn a commission.
>> 
>> I'm wondering if that couldn't be a very interesting model also for
>> TorBrowser, whereby the TorBrowser would automatically inject a referral
>> ID (in the HTTP header or URL parameters), whenever a user connect to a
>> certain amount of sites when they can buy something, and whenever the
>> user buy something, the Tor Project Inc. get back a commission a way of
>> financing the organization.
>> 
>> That kind of model could be implemented with a custom plug-in within the
>> Tor Browser.
>> 
>> I don't see any risks for the end-users because:
>> * For the end-user there would be no difference, as he would buy anyway
>> what he want to buy at the same price.
>> 
>> * If the end-user is buying something, he's already giving up his
>> identity details to the shopping site
>> 
>> * The website of the shop (being Amazon or others) will anyhow be able
>> to identify that the user is coming from Tor network by looking at the
>> IP address, so there would be no private information disclosure.
>> 
>> What i don't know, is how many persons buy stuff online by using the Tor
>> Browser!?
>> 
> 
> 
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