Connections from Tor

Submitted by altarego on March 3, 2016

Hello,

I was asked to describe some problems I had connected with Tor usage.

When I attempted to create my account over Tor, the process kept failing and claiming that I had filled in the authentication captcha incorrectly. This kind of blocking is common and CloudFlare does it a lot - by this I mean blocking that doesn't tell you you are blocked, but simply asks you to fill in challenges all of which seem to be impossible to solve until you give up or choose a less secure method.

When I attempted to create my first post, it was automatically rejected as spam.

I circumvented these problems by adding an additional, non-Tor proxy to the end of the Tor circuit.

I didn't have problems making my second post directly from Tor, I'm pleased to say. Perhaps these blocks are designed to stop bot accounts being created, but once an account is deemed genuine enough the blocking stops?

Even so, I think the authentication challenge on account creation is enough to prevent bot posting and rejecting Tor connections is not helpful. Certainly, with the warning that libcom.org is monitored by police, it would be very sensible for users to put in place measures like using Tor to thwart some kinds of monitoring.

I hope this is helpful information, and thank you to the admins/moderators for their hard work in maintaining this site.

jef costello

8 years 1 month ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by jef costello on March 3, 2016

I'm not sure if this is the case but something as simple as blocking tracking in browser can stop some captchas from working. All the google captchas used to fail if you had anti-tracking.

Khawaga

8 years 1 month ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Khawaga on March 3, 2016

I didn't have problems making my second post directly from Tor, I'm pleased to say. Perhaps these blocks are designed to stop bot accounts being created, but once an account is deemed genuine enough the blocking stops?

An admin will be able to answer definitively, but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with blocking bot accounts. There was lots of spam a few years back, and authenticating accounts as genuine became the way to deal with it. Certainly fixed the spam issue.