The potential harms of the Tor anonymity network cluster disproportionately in free countries

Abstract

The Tor anonymity network allows users to protect their privacy and circumvent censorship restrictions but also shields those distributing child abuse content, selling or buying illicit drugs, or sharing malware online. Using data collected from Tor entry nodes, we provide an estimation of the proportion of Tor network users that likely employ the network in putatively good or bad ways. Overall, on an average country/day, ∼6.7% of Tor network users connect to Onion/Hidden Services that are disproportionately used for illicit purposes. We also show that the likely balance of beneficial and malicious use of Tor is unevenly spread globally and systematically varies based upon a country’s political conditions. In particular, using Freedom House’s coding and terminological classifications, the proportion of often illicit Onion/Hidden Services use is more prevalent (∼7.8%) in “free” countries than in either “partially free” (∼6.7%) or “not free” regimes (∼4.8%).

The Use of Dark Web as a COVID-19 Information Source: A Three-Country Study

“…Additionally, an anonymous online survey has been likely to better reach individuals who are active online users and utilize the Dark Web, as well as lower the threshold to report about such activity that might be considered generally deviant. Additionally, some Dark Web users might utilize anonymity-based browsers merely to access Surface Web and not to access malicious content located specifically in the hidden services of the Dark Web [77]. This multi-functionality of the Dark Web browsers such as TOR might also partially explain high prevalence rates in our data.…”

“…This multi-functionality of the Dark Web is important to recognize since user motivations might also differ from privacy concerns to engaging in malicious and illegal activities. For example, Jardine and colleagues [77] found that in politically repressive countries, the Dark Web is more commonly used to overcome privacy issues and censorship, while users in more politically free countries utilize the Dark Web more commonly for malicious purposes.…”

Risk Factors for Child Sexual Abuse Material Users Contacting Children Online

“…Tor is mainly used to access legal clear web content, as only 6.7% of Tor users access hidden onion services (Jardine, Lindner, and Owenson 2020). Although anonymity technologies are legal and widely used for everyday web browsing purposes, a large amount of CSAM is shared and viewed on the dark web using Tor (Setter et al 2021).…”

Assessing the Health of the Dark Web:

“…The popularity of Tor is due to the ease of use and the reliable anonymous access [10] resulting into 2 to 2.5 million users per day [8]. The I2P network is similar to Tor and facilitates anonymous website hosting by means of encryption and relays [3].…”

“…In 2017 it was estimated by one of the founders of Tor that the Dark Web comprises only 3% of the Tor traffic. In 2020 a research estimated that around 6.7% of Tor traffic was related to the Dark Web [8].…”