Starting this month, we're running a campaign to increase the number of Snowflake proxies run by volunteers. Snowflake is a new way to defeat internet censorship bundled in Tor Browser Alpha. You can help users in censored countries to connect to Tor by running a Snowflake proxy! For Snowflake volunteers: If you use Firefox, Brave, or Chrome, our Snowflake extension turns your browser into a proxy that connects Tor users in censored regions to the Tor network.
Note: you should not run more than one snowflake in the same network.
support.torproject.org/censorship/how…

NEW: We've published a research report of OTF Fellow Babatunde Okunoye titled, "Censored continent: understanding the use of tools during Information controls in Africa: Nigeria, Cameroon, Uganda, and Zimbabwe as case studies." The research was conducted between 2019-2020, and answers three questions:
1) What are the tools used during Internet censorship events in Africa?
2) How and why are they used?
3) What are the usability challenges encountered by users of these tools?

Suffering from onion service DoS? Here is a thread on how we would like to fix the problem for good. 🧵 (1/8) Over the past few years, Tor developers have read days of network logs trying to understand and fix the DoS threat. Because of our protocol's inherent asymmetric nature, there is no easy fix, and a more fundamental approach is needed to address it. (2/8)

In May and June 2020 we found and removed a group of Tor exit relays that were messing with exit traffic. They left almost all exit traffic alone, and we don't know whether any users were successfully attacked.
blog.torproject.org/bad-exit-relay… The attacker intercepted HTTP connections to a small number of cryptocurrency exchange websites. This situation is a good reminder that HTTP requests are unencrypted and unauthenticated, and thus are still prone to attack.

🔴We're live on the @rightscon digital stage for the panel 'The case for privacy by design: privacy law shortcomings and the role of privacy tools' with @FreedomofPress and @EFF.

rightscon.course.tc/2020/events/st… "Privacy by design means that the choice is meaningful in the way that is presented for the user," - @htsuka

Many important global news organizations use onion services to offer .onion versions of their sites and give their users the privacy, security, and censorship circumvention benefits of Tor. ProPublica (@propublica) launched their onion service in 2016. "Readers use our interactive databases to see data that reveals a lot about themselves... Our readers should never need to worry that somebody else is watching what they’re doing on our site."
propublica.org/nerds/a-more-s…

PrivChat is a brand-new fundraising event series held to raise donations for the Tor Project.
We will bring you important information related to what is happening in tech, human rights, and net freedom by convening experts for a chat with our community. 🧵
blog.torproject.org/introducing-pr… We held our first PrivChat in June, and brought together Carmela Troncoso (@carmelatroncoso), Assistant Professor at EPFL; Daniel Kahn Gillmor, Senior Technologist for @ACLU; and Matt Mitchell (@geminiimatt), hacker and Fellow at Ford Foundation.
📺

Time to update: Tor Browser 9.5 is out now.

This Tor Browser release is focused on helping you understand and use onion services.

blog.torproject.org/new-release-to… Tor Browser 9.5 allows website publishers to advertise their onion service to Tor users by adding HTTP headers. When Onion Location is enabled, Tor users will be prompted to opt-in to upgrade to the onion service.

NEW: Meet the Tor Community portal! blog.torproject.org/community-port…

Tor's Community portal is home to info and resources for you, the people who make Tor possible.

What used to be buried, scattered across our website, and outdated is now organized, refreshed, and easy to use. The portal is organized in six sections. The first is Training, we're you'll find slides, risk assessment templates, and materials to help organize your own Tor training with your group or org.

#GivingTuesdayNow is a global day of giving taking place today in response to the unprecedented need and financial hardship caused by COVID-19. There are a multitude of ways to help keep Tor strong during this crisis: 1. Make a donation of any amount, in whatever medium or channel works for you, including in 10 different cryptocurrencies. At $25, you'll get a sticker pack. At $75, you'll get a 'Take Back the Internet with Tor' t-shirt. donate.torproject.org

As a nonprofit, we rely on supporters like you to help keep Tor strong.

There are several opportunities for you to help us make privacy and freedom the default online.

1) Donate cryptocurrency. XLM donations will be matched this month by @StellarOrg. donate.torproject.org/cryptocurrency 2) Become a Defender of Privacy. Pledge a modest amount each month, and we'll send you exclusive gifts like this patch. donate.torproject.org/monthly-giving

Why should you support Tor? Millions of people rely on Tor everyday to exercise their digital rights to privacy and freedom.

Plus, many privacy, security, and anti-censorship applications rely on Tor to function.

An entire ecosystem relies on Tor. ⬇️ The Tor network is one of the backbone technologies of @SecureDrop, the whistleblower submission system. It's used by over 70 orgs including @CBC, @Forbes, @theintercept, @nytimes, and @washingtonpost to securely accept documents from anonymous sources.

If you make a donation to Tor this #GivingTuesday, you will help the Tor network team:

1) Improve the security of the Tor network. We've been looking at new designs from the research world for better padding schemes and improved cryptography. blog.torproject.org/giving-tuesday… 2) Scale the Tor network to support all who need it. As more people choose to protect their privacy, we need to make sure that Tor can handle the load -- but we'll have to make changes in the software's architecture to do so.

As part of @TheGivingBlock’s #BitcoinTuesday, you can now donate bitcoin to @torproject across the Lightning Network using @bottlepay ⚡

Get your free wallet at bottle.li. Then you can send us sats these 3 ways 👇 1. Use Social Send directly in the @bottlepay dashboard:

Glad to see @washingtonpost mention Tor Browser in an article about fingerprinting. "It’s a privacy-first browser that goes to great lengths to make each user’s device look the same" -- That's true. washingtonpost.com/technology/201… But we'd like to correct how it says Tor is "only useful for highly technical people because it breaks common websites." 1) Tor is useful for people of all technical abilities, and all kinds of people use it. It's built from Firefox and similarly easy to use.

Time to update: Tor Browser 9.0, based on Firefox 68 ESR, is out now.

In addition to the needed patch rebasing and toolchain updates, we made big improvements to make Tor Browser work better for you. blog.torproject.org/new-release-to… Tor Browser 9.0 includes sleeker integration of Tor settings within the browser and includes a New Identity button in the toolbar to make this important feature more accessible. You can also request a New Identity, and a New Circuit, from within the [=] menu on the toolbar.

We've got big news.

After months of work, Tor Browser is now stable on Android.

Tor Browser 8.5 brings the highest degree of privacy and censorship-circumvention available to Android users. blog.torproject.org/new-release-to… You can download Tor Browser for Android from our website or Google Play. It should be available from F-Droid within the next day. play.google.com/store/apps/det…

Ola Bini is a long-time privacy activist and should be released immediately. We are very concerned about the implications of his arrest and his safety. #FreeOlaBini #Ecuador blog.torproject.org/ecuador-free-o… The very troubling context of Ola Bini’s arrest includes the arrests and violations of the rights of both Chelsea Manning and and Julian Assange.

This has been a long time coming.

Check out our website's fresh new look: torproject.org With this refresh, torproject.org is now available in 7 different languages: English, German, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Italian, and Russian. And there are more on the way.

So close! We want to raise $5k today, and we just hit $4k -- thank you!

The Tor onion has now made its way from North America to Oceania 🌏

We have just under 3 hours to raise $1k more, and we'll release a surprise!

Help make it happen: torproject.org/donate/donate-… #OnionTravels We've got just 2 hours left to raise $750, and we can release the surprise tomorrow! Thanks to all who have given and gotten us this far.

If Tor disappeared, what would happen?

Not only would millions lose access, but the diverse ecosystem of privacy, security, and anti-censorship applications that rely on the Tor network would cease to function.

An entire ecosystem relies on Tor.
blog.torproject.org/strength-numbe… More than 75 news outlets, including @AJENews, @AsociatedPress, @CBC, @guardian, @nytimes, and @washingtonpost, rely on @SecureDrop and the Tor network to provide their sources and journalists with a safer way to communicate.