Topic: The forum is penalizing Tor users (Read 530 times)

Its good practice although probably unnecessary to check whether the tor browser is leaving any fingerprints, and to check it with sites like these. Just in case you've changed a setting which compromises it. Remember, things like maximizing the window on tor browser can compromise privacy when you're browsing sites which collect that information. 

Going over @Alex-Sr’s thread that keeps track of the number of registered users per month (see Statistics of user registrations on Bitcointalk 2017-2019), the recent average registered users is around 675/day so far (en of June) this year:

401 is averaged since 2009. It's probably twice as much now (down from several thousand new user registrations per day during the height of the ICO craze). So, yeah, either way that's too much work for us mods


If you care about privacy enough to inconvenience yourself with mobile Internet, maybe Tor is what you need. Otherwise your ISP can still locate where you are and who you connect to.

Okay using my firefox browser I visited this: https://www.vpninsights.com/webrtc-leak-test
It indeed detected my real IP 

But when I tried with TOR browser directly, it could not detect it.

Thanks TryNinja, ETFbitcoin and Welsh.

My advice would be if you care about privacy then don't substitute Tor Browser for firefox extensions, and settings. Tor Browser is bulit on the firefox browser, but has been refined to do exactly what needs to be done to keep your privacy intact. You can't emulate that with extensions or settings without having the same issues Tor Browser is subject too.

There are settings within Tor Browser to make it restrictive, and therefore improve browsing experience for some websites.

I don't think your browser's cache has anything to do with WebRTC.

What you need to do in this case is disable it: https://www.privacyend.com/disable-webrtc-in-various-browsers/
And maybe install some extra privacy extensions: https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/make-your-firefox-browser-a-privacy-superpower-with-these-extensions/

Okay, I was not aware about it at all. How about if I clear my history and cache every time I restart my Firefox? Do I start clean again in this case?

IP's are kept depending on the way they're recorded, and the settings you've enabled.

Full IP is usually around 6 months, if you haven't selected limited retention which is then usually around 3 months. Partial IP is kept for around 2 years. City geolocation probably to assist with recovery is kept for longer than the others, and that's around 6 years. As mentioned above this can be found at: https://bitcointalk.org/privacy.php

There are ones that are very open about what logs they keep and have been independently verified

https://nordvpn.com/blog/nordvpn-audit/

I'm not recommending them over any other but they're the one that come to mind. Regardless, if you didn't want to use a vpn just go with the burner option.


It's much faster than tor. in my experience Tor is a pain to use and not recommended for every day use. 4g is very fast even on a mobile connection. It's also not that expensive.Credit can be purchased for $10 a month and if you can afford the internet then you can afford this option, but protecting your privacy is going to come at a small cost but some may feel it's worth the money. Of course you can continue using tor but have to bare its restrictions. There's no guarantee that tor is fully safe either. I think the admin of this forum has mentioned the possibility of tor being compromised in some capacity before.


Phones are very cheap these days. New ones can be bought from $20 dollars. You can even buy used ones for less. Using a new phone every time is probably overkill unless you're up to some shady business but if you just want to protect your privacy a new sim every now and again will suffice. Just buy a new one every time you need to top up or chnage it every few months or so but again this is probably overkill.


It restricts them in the sense that you can't sign up via tor - or you can but not without paying a fee.

With a proxy or VPN you always have to trust a third party. They can say they don't keep logs, but you can never be sure.

While bots get better at it, I can't even imagine what they'll be like in a few years. Half an hour of clicking to prove you're human?

Why do you need to use tor when there are plenty of other faster options? If you want to protect your privacy and remain anonymous then there are other ways to do it. Use a proxy that doesn't keep logs, or use the internet on a pay as you go burner phone. Get a new sim card or even phone every-time your data runs out. You can even combine them and use a proxy over the burner phone. Probably overkill though just to browse a forum.

I doubt most bots use tor as it's very impractical. Tor is probably just abused by a lot of people like proxies are hence why the forum restricts it.

lol I enabled it but it is valid from current login only.
It will store atleast for three months but geo location for 6 years.

Take a look at the bottom of this page. You can find the default values there which apply before you limit IP retention in your settings as theymos has already mentioned.

The server and the software of this forum prune IP of users sometimes?

You can login via Tor. I just tried it and it worked on the first attempt, though it took a couple of minutes to solve the captcha. You login once, get the captcha code, and then never have to deal with a captcha again: all via Tor.

Enable limited retention in your settings.


The main issue with Tor Browser here is that it doesn't save cookies between restarts, so Cloudflare and Recaptcha treat you as a completely unknown person each time. I think that it's sufficient to use Tor Browser but in its settings disable "always use private browsing mode". This definitely does impact your privacy, though. You'd ideally want a different browser instance (or profile, if Tor Browser supports it) for each site where you want this disabled.

Thank you for the tip, I was unaware of that.
Gonna test it soon.

I updated my last post with the instruction.

You still need to face the captcha but it less irritating than the direct TOR browser. Yeah, you get the same privacy level. It's just different browser. You are in fact using the same TOR connection instead of the regular connection you have.

@Royse777 This bypass the captcha problem but let to be pleased of the same Tor privacy level?

@actmyname thanks I didn't know of the no-captcha login link! The problem is that my real IP is now recorded in the database. Only future logins are Torred!

Average registrations per day: 401.57
5 * 401.57 = 2007.85

Moderators still have not gone through all of my 2000 reports from a few days ago.

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There is a no-captcha link available for signing into specifically your account: https://bitcointalk.org/captcha_code.php. As for the IP block (or evil points) that penalizes banned users.