Facebook Goes Underground, Is Now Available on Tor

Users who want more privacy out of Facebook - and this can be quite a serious concern for many - can now access the social networking service through the Tor network, as confirmed by the company on Friday.

This would be done by connecting to Facebook's onion address (http://ift.tt/1wNmVPE), which allows Tor users to access Facebook 'in the dark,' without any problems. This matters because while it had since become possible to use Tor to log into Facebook, users would typically encounter issues, such as getting locked out of the site due to the service erroneously detecting that the user's account had gotten compromised.

However, former Tor Project privacy and security researcher Runa Sandvik now says that the Facebook onion site works, without users having to worry about the suspicion issues of old. But it won't make a user completely anonymous, even if it does allow for a more secure user experience. 'No, you're not anonymous to Facebook when you log in, but this provides a huge benefit for users who want security and privacy,' said Sandvik, who helped oversee the project. 'You get around the censorship and local adversarial surveillance, and it adds another layer of security on top of your connection.'

In addition, Facebook's onion site is able to 'circumvent censorship and surveillance' that takes place close to the user's location, particularly in countries with high levels of restrictiveness. This would have a user's Facebook activity not matching up with their identity on the service and not being detected as such by surveillance systems, as the service makes use of SSL encryption.

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