ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020
The potential harms of the Tor anonymity network cluster disproportionately in free countries.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Investigating child sexual abuse material availability, searches, and users on the anonymous Tor network for a public health intervention strategy.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- The use of the Dark Web as a COVID-19 information source: A three-country study.Technology in society · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
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Abstract
The Tor anonymity network allows users to protect their privacy and circumvent censorship restrictions but also shields those distributing child abuse content, selling or buying illicit drugs, or sharing malware online. Using data collected from Tor entry nodes, we provide an estimation of the proportion of Tor network users that likely employ the network in putatively good or bad ways. Overall, on an average country/day, ∼6.7% of Tor network users connect to Onion/Hidden Services that are disproportionately used for illicit purposes. We also show that the likely balance of beneficial and malicious use of Tor is unevenly spread globally and systematically varies based upon a country's political conditions. In particular, using Freedom House's coding and terminological classifications, the proportion of often illicit Onion/Hidden Services use is more prevalent (∼7.8%) in "free" countries than in either "partially free" (∼6.7%) or "not free" regimes (∼4.8%).
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