Strength in Numbers: Double Your Donation with Mozilla’s Match

by Sarah | October 23, 2018

*Note: The Tor Project's postal address has changed since this post was published. Find the most current address in our FAQ.

 

Strength in Numbers. That’s the key to ensuring privacy and freedom online.

2018 has been a great year for the Tor Project. Censorship and surveillance are increasing around the world, but we have banded together to take a stand against invasive and restrictive online practices with hopes of bringing privacy and freedom online to all.

The organization grew both in size and budget. The network grew both in users and relays. We built up our UX and Community teams, and they visited some of our most vulnerable Tor users--in places like Colombia and Uganda--gathering information face-to-face to make Tor more accessible. We used that information to build Tor Browser 8, the most user-friendly Tor Browser ever. And to reach even more people in repressed areas of the world--where most access the internet exclusively through their phones--we released the first Tor Browser for Android.

We’re excited to continue this important work in 2019. And we can’t do this without our community, our partners, or without our supporters.  

The Tor Project has a bold mission: to take a stand against invasive and restrictive online practices and bring privacy and freedom to internet users around the world. But we can’t do it alone.

Countries like Egypt and Venezuela have tightened restrictions on free expression and accessing the open web; companies like Google and Amazon are mishandling people’s data and growing the surveillance economy; and some nations are even shutting off the internet completely to quell possible dissidence. 

Today we launch our end-of-year campaign, Strength in Numbers. Your support, along with the support of many others, can ensure the Tor Project’s success into the future and ensure we can keep listening to the critical voices of those who need Tor the most.

This year, with your support, we can also:

  • Increase the capacity, modularization, and scalability of the Tor network, making improvements and integrations into other privacy and circumvention tools easier and more reliable;
  • Better test for, measure, and design solutions around internet censorship, allowing people around the world living under repressive governments to access the open web safely and privately; and
  • Strengthen our development of Tor Browser for Android, now in alpha, and make sure it’s in tip top shape to reach the rising number of people around the world who only access the internet from a mobile device which may have low bandwidth and a costly connection.

As part of our year end fundraising campaign, Mozilla will be matching every dollar donated to Tor, so your impact will be doubled.

Donate button

Make a donation today, and you can be counted as one of the stakeholders bringing safe and private internet access to people worldwide.

Because of Mozilla’s generous support, there’s never been a better time to make a gift to the Tor Project. Every little bit helps. Because there is Strength in Numbers.

Thank you for your help, and thank you, Mozilla.

 

Comments

Please note that the comment area below has been archived.

Bitc0in (not verified) said:

October 23, 2018

Permalink

How come you don't have a way to donate via bitcoin? Ironic that there is no anonymous way to donate to a project promoting anonymity.

"Ironic that there is no anonymous way to donate to a project promoting anonymity."

But not funny, ask Zwiebelnfreunde (Onion-friends) in Germany, police took all the financial administration of all people donating to Torproject and tails with some sort of nonsense story.

'Using Tor is suspicious', 'donating is terrorism level' (in their eyes). So there you are, 'we see you privacy terrorist internet user, and we are gonna get you'!

So, no anonymous option for anonymous donating to Tor and tails is de facto surrending to western surveillance system (19 countries) that exchange their data with the Palantir database software system.
We just can not see the (worldwide) personal consequences from tiny things like donating some money, even if it is completely legal.

'Happy' border trespassing after donating.
'Happy' times in nowhere land between borders.
'Happy conversations with the people over there who are above the law and don't have to explain anything to anybody.
'Happy traveling in the so called 'free western world'.

Don't be a happy naive donating person because the chances of being happy for a long time are small, very very small in our upcoming A(rtificial)I(ntelligence) world.
Ai will never forget your donations, among many other things.

And nobody can or will answer the question if 'donating to Tor or Tails' is one of those nice hidden parameters in this judgy Ai risk-assessment tool called Compas or in Palantir, that make you guilty forever.

Ai bias
https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-cri…
It says, "There’s software used across the country to predict future criminals. And it’s biased against blacks."
But can be also read like "And it’s biased against privacy-lovers, privacy-activists, privacy donators, Tor and Tails supporters."

Therefor it is very important to have a way to donate anonymously, a way to convert some little real life cash into a digital payment anonymously.
Bitcoin does not give me that option.

But maybe it is an idea to have persons in every country that are already officially linked to Tor or Tails collecting the real money.
Or and make a smart deal with a pizza/exchange delivery service, half of the tip is for them, half for Tor project.
So moz:lla is supporting the service then: the Mozarella payment privacy project .
Positive re-framing , positive re-branding : Torbrowser will be the P:zzabrowser

Who can resist to donate to Mozarella project for a P:zzabrowser ?

H4l 9000 (not verified) said:

October 23, 2018

Permalink

So you're saying that the TOR network becomes safer, faster, and more secure directly because more people are using it?

In that case, why isn't everyone using it? It's free, and it can keep you safer on the web! It sounds too good to be true; but it isn't, because it's open-source. if there was a flaw or backdoor in the network, the developers and the unknown number of users would crowdsource the location of the problem, and fix it.

Indeed the Tor network becomes stronger the more people use it. The more people that use the Tor network, the harder it becomes to identify any one person. However, the more
people that use the network, the slower it will become, this is why we continually need more and more relays, exit nodes as well as bridges and finally PTs. Imagine if the
whole connected world jumped on to Tor, it would be great for anonymity, but not so great for performance. Getting back to the point "Strength in numbers", by using the Tor
network you are actively helping other users on the network to stay hidden.

I hate it when people spread misinformation like "Don't use Tor unless you absolutely need it", that's not true! In fact, the Tor project encourages everyone to use it! It
helps "normalize" the network, it'll look less suspicious if more people used Tor. It doesn't matter if is a life or death situation, or if you just want to
look at memes, or read the news, or watch youtube, or to post comments in an online community. It keeps you safe, and everyone else too.

As to why everyone doesn't use Tor, well I guess there are multiple reasons. First there's the stigma created by the media (only for criminals blablabla,
you've all heard it), then there's the simple fact that people don't know about it, then there's the prevalence of VPNs and their marketing, (no, it's NOT an anonymity
solution! If you want to "hide from your ISP", use an obfs4 bridge/pluggable transport), then there's people whose internet priorities don't include electronic privacy,
instead they value low latency and bandwidth. Also people think Tor is as slow as the 1990's internet, think dial-up. That's not true either. While you won't get gigbabit
speeds with Tor and perhaps not even fast ethernet speeds, it's not unbearably slow.

I'm sure there are more reasons than those listed, remember that Tor has limited marketing and promotion, and a bad reputation to overcome, it's the reason it's not as
popular as it could be. Still, if you look at Tor metrics, it's actually a lot more popular than the top online multiplayer games on steam combined! That's what an article I
read online said, and that's a huge success if you ask me.

Lets not forget that many download your images/ files don't allow the use of Tor Browser, not because they explicitly forbid it, but they make people jump all over captchas and/ or javascript links and then use sub-domains and even other domains to fetch the final file but use IP address match and since Tor Browser uses different path to each sub-domain and domain it ends up not allowing the use of it. Tor Browser is not allowing to keep the same path to different sub-domains and domains, that seems great until you arrive to one of this web sites that only allow you in if you seem to always come from the same IP... but Tor Browser doesn't have that available not even in a per tab decision.

Also not forget that search engine, hosting and relay company's like Cloudflare and Google and many others are very aggressive to Onion ("Tor") users, sometimes they make people go trough hundreds of captcha challenges, sometimes the captcha doesn't even work! Or the web sites don't even allow Onion ("Tor") users at all.

If you end up in a exit node that censors some web site (like exit nodes in Russia) and redirects you to other URL address will be in trouble! Because there is no way in the interface to force Tor Browser to find a new path and you can't ask for a new path in the user interface because you have been redirected to another URL and you can't ask for a new path before that. You are basically out of luck.

Also that 1990's speed problem still exists! Is not just something of the past unfortunately. It will depend where the user is connect at that moment (bridges/ relays/ exit nodes).

Also Tor Browser seems to be choosing between a very few onion servers. I probably can make a list of all IPs where this instance will connect since they seem to be the sames ones over and over.
VPN's are bad for anonymity but some do have much more different servers than Onion Network ones.

The Tor Project could be selling all over the place (on the web site, ebay, physical shops,....) small TOR servers (maybe based on some interaction of Raspberry Pi) so that people could connect that in their business and homes either as Bridges, relays or even onion exit points. Something that Tor Project would keep always update with latest technology's, bug fixes and security patches. Something simple to configure or no configuration at all, and even switch between modes directly in a physical switch.
"They" want people to help them grow the network, but money alone won't be enough because there isn't a lot of Hosting Operators that allow Onion devices, so the end users need to host some part of the network at least as relays... but for that the current model is clearly not working.

Anon25 (not verified) said:

October 24, 2018

Permalink

This is the best change Google gonna have to bankrupt Mozilla and eat Firefox's market share. Just donate 100M to Tor :-)

Anonymous (not verified) said:

October 31, 2018

Permalink

Vital information for those living on a fixed income who must budget each month!

How confident are you that USPS is actually delivering your mail? Have you sent yourself test mail from various return addresses unconnected with Tor containing cheques? Last year my cheque was never deposited.

We have received several donations in the postal mail already this month - many of these have been from anonymous donors. Please make sure you use our current address:

The Tor Project, Inc.
P.O. Box 4903
Seattle, WA 98194 USA

If your check isn't deposited within a couple of weeks, please contact giving at torproject dot org. We appreciate your support!

Confused (not verified) said:

November 27, 2018

Permalink

I don't think that mailing address would work as given. Two pages at torproject.org give a significantly different address:

https://decvnxytmk.oedi.net/about/contact.html.en#mail

> The Tor Project
> 217 1st Ave South #4903
> Seattle, WA 98194 USA

https://qmcgghbwqt.oedi.net/donor-faq

> The Tor Project, Inc.
> 217 First Avenue South #4903
> Seattle, WA 98194
> Phone number: 206-420-3136
> Contact person: Shari Steele, Executive Director

That last line is certainly wrong.

Please clarify.

Anonymous (not verified) said:

December 05, 2018

Permalink

[Third attempt to post important correction]

@ Sarah:

Thanks but that is NOT your address!

According to

https://decvnxytmk.oedi.net/about/contact.html.en

the mailing address of TP is:

The Tor Project
217 1st Ave South #4903
Seattle, WA 98194 USA

This a box in a Mailboxes Etc store (under heavy fed surveillance naturally, and very close the USGC Maritime Surveillance Center) and the street address is needed.

You gave the address as:

The Tor Project, Inc.
P.O. Box 4903
Seattle, WA 98194 USA

But mail addressed to that address will not be delivered because that is not a proper US address.

This may explain why TP is not receiving some donations.

This kind of mistake should not happen.

OPZ9 (not verified) said:

October 28, 2018

Permalink

il codice c'è mi pare, solo ho avuto un momento di down. non capita spesso che cada Tor project... mha... Anonymous ha tutto??? Sarebbe la fine.

Anonymous (not verified) said:

October 30, 2018

Permalink

"so if you give today, you can double your impact"

In getting financially tracked and put under surveillance by governments.
Thats not the kind of impact that we like.

I think you are expressing the fear (well founded, alas, on the basis of the Snowden leaks) that USG will mark you for extra-intrusive surveillance if they notice you sending money to Tor Project. I hope you did not mean to imply that you believe this fear is a valid reason not to congtribute. Because, it seems to me, Tor is almost the only technical tool left which is helping prolong the long death of democracy and freedom around the world. With enough contributions from ordinary people, Tor can survive long enough for us to document our own deaths from global warming, nuclear war, economic collapse, global famine, etc., and I think we'll find that has value. We'll soon want to express our grief and fury during our cruel and needless death throes, and Tor, if it is still available, will allow us to do that. But if the enemies of the truth, justice, and happiness have their way, the rest will be miserable silence.

hello (not verified) said:

November 01, 2018

Permalink

do consider safe guards being arranged in the event that mozilla etc. is compromised somehow, perhaps discreetly, that would protect the torbrowser yes?

thanks!

You are concerned with a potential technical threat--- there are alas many other such which TP must confront and try to ameliorate day by day--- but there equally serious political threats. Bear in mind, TP is based in the US, where the very concept of unbackdoored encryption (which is fundamental to Tor) is under dire threat (regardless, it seems, of the outcome of the mid-term election):

thehill.com
Midterm vote to set cyber agenda
Jacqueline Thomsen and Olivia Beavers
4 Nov 2018

> The heated encryption debate could come to a head after the midterms. Privacy hawks and law enforcement officials have long battled over whether devices developed by the private sector should have loopholes to allow authorities to tap into devices or services in important investigations. But top Trump administration officials have ramped up pressure on tech companies in recent months to provide access to such systems, threatening to take action, including through legislation. The discussion around stopping what law enforcement officials describe as “going dark” could be upended if Australia passes a new anti-encryption bill into law. Critics have warned that bill could pave the way for similar legislation in the U.S. Australia, which is one of the U.S.’s five intelligence-sharing allies, would in part require companies to build a back door -- or face a steep fine. The bill has sparked an uproar among multinational companies like Google and Apple, which have opposed giving authorities workarounds to their encrypted products. The battle over encryption spilled into the public eye when the FBI and Apple fought over access to an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino terror attackers in 2016. And the debate was revived this year when Trump officials began wondering whether to press Congress for legislation mandating encryption back doors. While Trump sided with the FBI as a Republican presidential candidate, it is unclear what stance he would take if the encryption debate flares up again.

For more on the horrid precedent sent by USG's strongest FVEY partner, AU, see:

thehill.com
Australian bill spells trouble for data privacy around the world
Satyajeet Marar
4 Nov 2018

> .. the bill will effectively require tech companies and platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook to build “vulnerabilities” or “backdoors” into their own products and services so government agencies can access the private data of their users on-demand — with virtually no judicial oversight. Shockingly, the bill could even ban companies from informing their customers about these weaknesses.

Speaking of mandatory backdoors, Cy Vance Jr., who does not trouble to hide his presidential ambitions, is back with the same old same old. See

techdirt.com
Manhattan DA Cy Vance Says The Only Solution To Device Encryption Is Federally-Mandated Backdoors
from the picking-up-the-torch-the-FBI-accidentally-dropped dept
9 Nov 2018

> Because no one has passed legislation (federal or state) mandating encryption backdoors, Manhattan DA Cy Vance has to publish another anti-encryption report. An annual tradition dating back to 2014 -- the year Apple announced default encryption for devices -- the DA's "Smartphone Encryption and Public Safety" report [PDF] is full of the same old arguments about "lawful access" and evidence-free assertions about criminals winning the tech arms race.

Plus one.

nameless (not verified) said:

November 04, 2018

Permalink

to be more or to be safer ?

If you make a banner have someone who has a better grasp of the language check it first.

Drew (not verified) said:

November 09, 2018

Permalink

I notice that the 'tor conferences' info for 2019 is blank. Has there been any talk of where and when they might be held in 2019? I ask because I am very interested in attending, but I have to submit a request soon (company is doing 2019 budget now). Apologies if this is discussed elsewhere and I missed it. I looked around and could find nothing about it.

Thanks

Joe (not verified) said:

November 10, 2018

Permalink

As I understand, TOR is funded by the US DoD and encourage people to use it to obsficate some activities. Why is Joe public now expected to carry the DoD projects BMO donations and not funding through the normal tax/project allocation process?

RyNoC1209 (not verified) said:

November 10, 2018

Permalink

Someone please help me. I'm new to this part of the internet. Good people of tor network, help please. My phone has certain problems and let's just say I didn't follow protocol on hoping om first. I just want to get rid of, I believe they say entity's.