The onion router: Understanding a privacy enhancing technology community

Abstract

Internet technologies have made mass surveillance prevalent and much easier to carry out, while at the same time making personal privacy more difficult to protect. The ubiquity of personal data processing has raised public awareness about the infringement of information privacy. To protect users' information privacy, several initiatives have been developed to provide Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs). One of the most wellknown PETs is the Onion Router (Tor) network, which provides users with online anonymity. The Tor network is supported by a group of volunteers who contribute their resources to sustain the availability and quality of the service. However, Tor Volunteers may find themselves in a tough spot at times because Tor network is often monitored by law enforcement, which makes this PET community different from any other open-source initiatives. To explore this volunteer community's motivation for providing their services despite the risks, we conducted an online survey. Our study results reveal that one of the main motivations for these volunteers is to advocate and provide privacy for online users. In addition, Tor-relay operators report on their views about anonymous networks, the challenges they face, and how their belief in providing an opportunity for everyone to access information without interference or censorship is a key component of their volunteer participation.

A Trust Based Efficient Blockchain Linked Routing Method for Improving Security in Mobile Ad hoc Networks

“…It would appear that a huge database that contains the historical backdrop of the considerable number of trades made between its clients since the making of the blockchain [1]. The extraordinary element of the blockchain is its decentralized engineering as it is facilitated by a solitary server yet by certain clients [13]. The parts of the blockchain needn't bother with middle people so they can check the legitimacy of the chain and the data and are furnished with security methods that ensure the framework.…”

“…Huang et al [13] proposed an Intrusion Detection System technique to beat the issues made by the malicious nodes. The irresponsible node utilizes the other node to send and get parcels yet it doesn't take part in the routing to moderate its energy and assets.…”

A Blockchain‐Based Contractual Routing Protocol for the Internet of Things Using Smart Contracts

“…Financial incentive models have been introduced in various works [17,18,[21][22][23][24]. For example, Ad-hoc VCG [17] provides a game-theoretical setting for routing within mobile ad-hoc networks in which a node accepts a payment for forwarding data packets from other agents provided the payment exceeds its cost.…”

“…This method is vulnerable, as attackers can forge a proof message to be sent to a central management system to generate rewards. The Onion Router proposed in [23] is based on [24], a blockchain-based reward mechanism for anonymous routing. This routing needs a centralized network since it requires that nodes be assigned to their specific relay nodes, after which only these nodes will receive the data.…”

Protecting privacy on the web

“…As institutions for public good, libraries can help users understand the privacy implications of the contemporary web and, where possible, libraries can provide realistic means by which users can mitigate privacy threats. This includes informing users of privacy-based search engines such as StartPage and Duck Duck Go, IP address obfuscation through Tor relays (Acar et al, 2014;Macrina, 2015a;Huang and Bashir, 2016), library workshops that advocate and educate for privacy-related topics (Gressel, 2014;Macrina, 2015b), emerging standards such as the Tracking Preference Expression (Do Not Track -DNT) [30], and independent, third-party browser tools that can help mitigate tracking, such as Disconnect and Better [31]. With third-party tracking so prevalent and sophisticated, browser add-ons and extensions are imperfect tools for ensuring privacy (Libert, 2015;Merzdovnik et al, 2017;Starov and Nikiforakis, 2017), but they do add some measure of protection.…”