The Tor Project gets a bad rap as being a playground for the guilty. That’s why Tor Project co-founder Roger Dingledine took the stage last week at DEF CON to bust popular myths and announce upcoming features related to the anonymity network that averages 2 million users a day.
Dingledine’s biggest beef when it comes to Tor misinformation is the network’s alleged association with the “dark web.”
“Most people use Tor to safely reach ordinary websites. A tiny fraction of Tor traffic makes up what overhyped journalists call the ‘dark web,'” he said. “Yes, there are bad people in the world. And some of them use Tor. But at this point with the millions of people using Tor every day, the average user is the average internet user.”
He estimated that only 3 percent of Tor users use the service to connect to hidden websites and services. He argued criminals don’t need or want Tor.
“Bad guys can easily build a temporary tool that can be used for a week that only 10 people use and they’ll never tell anyone about it. That’s the terrorist or the bad guy problem. They have so many more options beyond Tor.”
Dingledine said there are misconceptions about funding of the Tor Project by the U.S. government in some way compromises Tor’s core mission.
“If you only learn about Tor through some in the media, they have been spreading inaccurate memes such as ‘the Navy wrote Tor so how can I trust it?'” he said. “The very short answer to that is, I wrote Tor – not the Navy.”
