This article seems seriously confused about how Tor works ("only the ISP used along with it can ascertain what activity takes place on Tor"), such that I don't trust the rest of what it's saying. There is probably no story here.
Likely a technical misunderstanding by the author. It is possible for an ISP to detect tor traffic[1], but not determine the contents of the traffic. My guess is that the author is not aware of this.
Considering the entire blog is about 'deep web' you'd hope the author is aware of this difference and made an error. But clicking on his bio it seems to be this authors first post there, so who knows.
Not even this much, actually. Tor doesn't do any sort of protection on the traffic; it just routes it cleverly. The packets themselves are still plaintext if you're not using an encrypted protocol (e.g. HTTPS) on top of Tor.
In practice, most people use Tor through the browser bundle, which includes an HTTPS-Only extension. But if you're routing random other protocols through Tor (e.g. XMPP, BitTorrent, etc.) be aware that Tor is not doing any protection of your plaintext; that's the responsibility of your client/protocol.
You're right with respect to the exit node, but here the story is about the entry node. The entry node would not be able to see the traffic contents, because they're encrypted with the exit node's key.
I helped make this diagram to demonstrate these details:
I live on the peninsula and it boggles the mind that, in sfbay, I effectively have one choice for wired internet access because dsl is so slow where I live.
As idlewords says:
San Francisco is an 8-mile square that aims to disrupt the world but can’t
wire itself for decent Internet. I guess it’s a hardware problem
I think the methods are crude but the motives are quite clear (if the story is true); Comcast doesn't like Tor for the same reason the NSA doesn't like Tor. Comcast doesn't have a good track record for handling traffic ethically, for instance attempting to monetize NXDOMAIN errors [1], throttling protocols they don't like [2], etc.
I don't think its beyond the pail to suggest they want to spy on their customers and sell their data to advertisers. They may even be under contractual obligation from RIAA/MPAA to disallow Tor as a part of Six Strikes, and are doing this either before or in lieu of a technical solution.
Even if money was the motivation its not like Tor is super popular. I doubt it's hurting any ISPs bottom line. My bet this is simply a political move, or one influenced by interested 3rd parties who do financially benefit from a destruction of privacy. Assuming it is real.
>>Users who try to use anonymity, or cover themselves up on the internet, are usually doing things that aren’t so-to-speak legal.
So what does Comcast think about people who use VPN? Maybe VPN also illegal now? Privacy is dead? Next up, curtains on the windows of your house are also illegal.
So it's really going to happen... slowly, in the name of piracy(but we know that's not really why), any form of encrypted communication will become illegal. Oh, and of course this won't apply to affluent.
If it's not a fabrication, it's more likely the customer was running a Tor exit node and that caused some problems and Comcast told him not to run an exit node. Which is somewhat reasonable, as it's a pain to deal with abuse complaints.
Good point -- it would be very easy for Comcast to disable entries on to the Tor network if they wanted to (as China does), since their IP addresses are public.
To be fair, not all tor IP addresses are public; there are bridge relays which are not publicly listed[0]. This is one of the tactics for getting around blocking of tor in countries such as China.
The article implied, but didn't make clear, that the customers were using Tor to browse the internet (as opposed to being a Tor endpoint). I could see comcast having an issue with customers who are endpoints, but, I'm not really sure why they would care / how they would know that someone was was using Tor.
Not sure. It's not as though using Tor circumvents the need for an Internet service provider. Maybe it's political.
> how they would know that someone was was using Tor.
It's easy to determine whether a user is using Tor based on the (known) connections that are made. It's the same way organizations can block Tor, or that the Tor client knows how to reach the rest of the network.
Me -> TOR encrypts data -> VPN encrypts data -> data goes through tunnel -> VPN decrypts data -> TOR encrypted data passes through first node -> TOR encrypted data passes through relay node -> TOR decrypts data as it passes through the exit node -> swish nothing but net
This gives protection from the ISP and from the VPN provider -- I have to trust neither.
It seems excessive; tor traffic already goes through 3 different nodes. And if the ISP is banning tor there is no reason they wouldn't/couldn't ban VPNs.
