Why don't our ISPs report our TOR usage to LE? [USA] : DarknetMarketsNoobs | Torhoo darknet markets

ISPs see Tor use but usually don’t report it—too many users, not always illegal. LE might work with ISPs for specific cases, but it’s not widespread. Tor bridges are smart, even in "free" countries, to keep your traffic private. Laws don’t always protect as claimed.

Using Tor is not illegal.

They would need a lot of wasted ressources to filter out the targets they want. They might have a list or an annual report I guess.
I try to use Tor often to make it "more normal" to the eyes of my ISP and expand the pool of users. Just like VPNs, they became more popular and are not considered extreme anymore.

i am with you and trying to prove myself wrong because it goes against the bible.

if the worst happens and you get a visit by LE, having a tor record on your ISP can only hurt your plausible deniability, correct?

if you trust your vpn more than your isp, wouldn't running a vpn on a router and then a hard connection to pc running tails be better? (i've been trying to understand why this is weaker opsec but it still doesn't make sense to me yet)

thank you ahead of time.

Use OBFS4 bridge always. Masks your TOR traffic as just regular John Doe traffic. :)

This is why using public wifi sources can be a good idea. Some discussion of getting directable antennae and utilizing network at some distance from your computer. Don't think ISPs really give a shit most of the time as someone simply using Tor is not illegal though. Then again, maybe Tor use is being documented.

Tough to say. If you really want to be careful, I feel as though the antennae idea is pretty great if you are able to find public wifi accessable from a private location

/u/HeadJanitor addressed this as an update on /post/8efe6154e761c03f6fbb

To clear any confusion and shed some light, most Dread users are deathly afraid of connecting directly to Tor, their VPN is a crucifix because their Internet Service Provider absolutely cannot find out they use Tor.

It's like the mentality that, "when you are a criminal, you kind of think 'everyone' else is a criminal, as well."

* When in reality *
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Tor is primarily intended for allowing you to browse ordinary websites anonymously, and only about 3% of Tor traffic is to onion sites.

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☛ Tor is a humanitarian project enabling people in restricted and censored parts of the world to read the news published by others countries and connect with friends and family because their country has forbidden freedoms to engage with the outside world.

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☛ → If you read the original Tor specification, "onion sites" are practically an after-thought; almost the entire proposal is about using onion routing to reach the open web with privacy.

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☛ Nothing on the Tor project's front page or their about page even mentions "onion sites" or the darknet or markets.

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There exists a type of character in the world that values their privacy greatly. I just happen to be one of those people.
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Additionally, looking through the comments on that post:

Of the entire Tor network, right now, approximately 3% is darknet users.

So, what is released is for the 97% -- which makes complete sense.

I think right now we're at 2.7%
I believe our record high (Darknet users) was at 6%+

According to that, approximately 3% is DN users. Although I'm not sure where that statistic is coming from exactly, I don't think /u/HeadJanitor is pulling that number out of thin air. Contrary to your assumption:

95%+ of people who use tor on a daily basis are doing something illegal, I don't have a source on that but it's very obvious.

ISPs reporting TOR usage to LE would be like Walmart reporting every customer who walks into the store for shoplifting. Just cause someone uses TOR doesn't mean they're doing anything illicit. In fact, I actually do know people who use Qubes/TOR regularly for no other reason than they greatly value their privacy. I'll admit, I even fell into the same line of thinking at first. When I overheard them talking about using Qubes/TOR, I later had a private conversation with them casually just asking what they used it for and why. They're someone I know decently well and trust, so they had no reason to lie when they said they genuinely just value their privacy and don't use it for anything illicit or nefarious.

With respect to the question posed by /u/EduPurposesOnly

if you trust your vpn more than your isp, wouldn't running a vpn on a router and then a hard connection to pc running tails be better? (i've been trying to understand why this is weaker opsec but it still doesn't make sense to me yet)

First off, this would require you to trust your VPN to that extent. Secondly, my understanding of TOR over VPN (the use of a VPN to connect to TOR) is essentially that in doing so, you're routing all of your traffic first through the VPN and then through the TOR network. Meaning your VPN can see ALL of your traffic and what you're doing on the TOR network. Not just that you're connecting to the TOR network. You're sending all of your requests through your VPN first before they're sent on to the TOR network. Whereas if you're just connecting directly to the TOR network via TOR browser, it's encrypted and sent into the relays. So yes, your ISP can see that you're connected to TOR, but they can't outright see what you're doing on TOR. For all they know you just like your privacy while you're looking at cat memes. I'm not an OpSec professional by any means and I'm sure there are people here who can better address this. But figured I'd toss out my two cents in the meantime based on my understanding.

As for VPN over TOR (which I believe would be the term for the set up of connecting to TOR on your computer which is then connected to a router running the VPN), this set up I'm not as sure about and would love to hear input from others as to how this impacts OpSec. I had considered doing this, but most routers don't have the processing power to run a VPN without extremely limiting your connection speed. So unless you want any/all of your devices to be constantly limited by the processing capabilities of a router CPU... Plus, then you're limiting yourself to only ever being connected to a singular router with that VPN set up that's still connecting to your ISP. Instead of using Wi-Fi where you can use publicly available Wi-Fi connections from various places making it much harder to tie it to you specifically. Even with your home Wi-Fi, there's the added plausible deniability to a certain extent if your network is unsecured or that someone could have hacked your password or was someone visiting that you gave the password to not knowing they were going to connect to TOR. A constant, single point LAN connection to a router would be much harder to try and deny.

Again, I'm not an OpSec professional, but based on my current understanding, ISPs aren't going to report you just for using TOR because it wouldn't make sense to and if you get a visit by LE, then odds are you're already under investigation and you probably have a lot bigger problems on your plate than just a record from your ISP showing you connected to TOR. Could your usage of TOR potentially be used against you as evidence? Maybe depending on the situation, but essentially would be as a footnote, probably not even noticed compared to the pile of evidence LE would have besides that before they came knocking at your door. Will your usage of TOR be the thing that puts LE on your trail and initiates an investigation into your activities and puts you behind bars? No more than shopping at Walmart incriminates you as a shoplifter just by going into the store.