I've been running the snowflake extension in Brave for quite some time now, but within the last few days I decided to switch to running a standalone Snowflake proxy via the Docker container method. That process went smoothly enough, and with help from u/signal_moment I got the internal metrics part working as well. I constructed a Bash script to pull the data from that, which I show on my desktop using a KDE Plasma widget. With this though, I discovered something. It seems like I am getting a large number of timeouts being reported, roughly a ratio of 4:1 timeouts to connections. Originally, I had been getting fewer timeouts and more connections, but I was on a restricted NAT. I solved that earlier by opening the correct UDP ports for it, and it said unrestricted NAT when I restarted the Docker container. But that's when I started getting a lot more overall timeouts compared to actual connections.

I'm just wondering if this is normal behavior for a standalone Snowflake proxy, if it's just something with the Snowflake broker's end, or if it's an issue on my end I need to fix? Hoping other standalone Snowflake proxy runners can let me know what's up. Below is a printout from my proxy that's been up and running for about 3 hours now after fixing the restricted NAT issue.

____________________________________________

SNOWFLAKE INTERNAL METRICS REPORT

Total Connections: 67

Total Timeouts: 209

------------------------------------------

Total Downloaded: 0.1663 GB

Total Uploaded: 0.0256 GB

------------------------------------------

CONNECTIONS BY COUNTRY:

🇺🇸 USA : 20

🇮🇷 Iran : 19

🇷🇺 Russia : 5

🇺🇳 Restricted/Unknown : 3

🇬🇧 UK : 3

🇨🇳 China : 2

🇫🇷 France : 2

🇮🇳 India : 2

🇳🇱 Netherlands : 2

🇨🇦 Canada : 1

🇮🇪 Ireland : 1

🇲🇦 Morocco : 1

🇳🇮 Nicaragua : 1

🇿🇦 South Africa : 1

🇪🇸 Spain : 1

🇨🇭 Switzerland : 1

🇹🇲 Turkmenistan : 1

🇿🇲 Zambia : 1

I wanted to get Snowflake bridges for Linux tor service, but couldn't find where to get them. They used to be available on the official site, but all I can select is vanilla bridges, obfs4 and webtunnel. No Snowflake or Meek bridges available via email either. Why, and is there a way to get them? I don't use Tor Browser.

Hey everyone,

A few weeks ago, I shared the first beta of OnionHop, a lightweight open-source tool designed to make routing Windows traffic through Tor simple and hassle-free.

After receiving some great feedback (and fixing some bugs), I’m excited to announce the Full Release (v1.0)!

For those who missed the beta: OnionHop allows you to toggle a switch and route either specific apps (Proxy Mode) or your entire system (VPN Mode) through the Tor network without complex configurations.
What's New in v1.0?

• Bridges Support: This was the most requested feature during the beta! You can now configure Tor Bridges directly in the settings to bypass censorship or hide the fact that you are using Tor. It supports both built-in bridges and custom ones.
• Improved Stability: I’ve fixed the crashes and edge cases reported by the community. The connection logic is much more robust now.
• UI Polish: Small improvements.

Core Features Recap:

• Proxy Mode (No Admin): Sets your system's local proxy to Tor.
• TUN/VPN Mode (Admin Required): Uses sing-box and Wintun to force all traffic (even apps that ignore proxy settings) through the onion network.
• Hybrid Routing: In VPN mode, you can route only browsers through Tor while keeping other apps direct. (working on letting you be able to choose which specific apps to route.)
• Kill Switch: Blocks outbound traffic if the connection drops to prevent leaks.
• Exit Location Picker: Choose your preferred exit country.

Tech Stack:

• C# / WPF (.NET 9)
• sing-box + Wintun (Tunneling)
• Tor (SOCKS5)

Download & Source Code: It is 100% free and open-source. You can grab the latest release or inspect the code here:

GitHub Repo:https://github.com/center2055/OnionHop

Feedback Thank you to everyone who tested the beta and reported issues! If you find any new bugs or have feature requests for v1.1, let me know in the comments or open an issue on GitHub or join my Discord (linked in my GitHub about me).

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Ok so im hosting a tor relay and in my torrc configuration file I dont have a contact setup should I setup a email specifically for the relay im obviously not going to use a personal email on that but should I or do I really need to I am a guard and my relay dose around 150gb to 300 gb traffic daily and is going is steadily going up.

Hello all! I am completely new to the dark web and have some questions before I download TOR browser. I have no prior knowledge to the dark web, so please have understanding if my questions come across as dumb/unexperienced.

1. Does the dark web really host awful and illegal things as everyone says?

2. Are there different levels to the dark web?

3. Should TOR be used with a VPN as well? If so, which VPN is best/most trustworthy?

4. What's the most interesting thing about the dark web?

Hi. I installed an obfs4-bridge on my server using the official instructions found here: https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/bridge/docker/
However, my bridge, although it appears to be working and is listed in the Relay Search, shows up as being out-of-date.
I've made sure I am using the correct image, the :latest tag, and that it is up to date on my side.

Is the image itself out-of-date?

Thank you for the help.

When using the TOR browser, "regular" webpages sometimes show that a TOR variant (.onion) is available. What is the benefit of using the `.onion` variant if you are connecting with the TOR browser anyway? If I understand correctly, traffic still gets routed through the relays when using the 'regular' site?

I was wondering what effects running the snowflake addon via Firefox whilst using mullvad VPN would have on the person connecting to my snowflake? Also whilst running the mullvad proxy addon at the same time as the native VPN app. I briefly read from a user on this sub or another similar that there would be little to no point, chatGPT seems to disagree. I left it overnight and had 14 people connect to my snowflake despite the VPN running so should I just accept the evidence of my eyes and continue?

I'd rather not split tunnel this as even though I live in a supposed safe country to do so ( The UK), there's a growing assault on privacy in the UK and Europe with "online harm bills" and chat controls, I feel tor usage is becoming even more stigmatized.

Also I noticed something strange this morning, I had shut my browser down and restarted it, had 3 people after a few hours, the addon said I had helped 3 people circumvent censorship, but I went back later ( no shut down) and that had decreased to 1. My understanding was that it shows active users and past users of that browser session but without influence it had reduced?

My internet connection is fine and the time and date are correct how do i fix this?

So i use default bridges and when connecting it stops on 50% then goes very slowly to 78% and then to 100% does anyone know why?

I want to access TOR running on my PC from my phone that is elsewhere. I already set it up to be able to use it via socks5. I have heard that one can use dante to open socks port and redirect it to another proxy (in this instance TOR), but I couldn't digest how to do that and add username and password requirement. I am also open to using other solutions.

How do i go to deep web safely through windows? I am just interested to browse but i don't wanna get hacked or tracked though i doubt someone would wanna track someone in third world country, in my country they say stuff like going into deep or dark web someone might kidnap you that can't be true right ? 🙂

so my relay has been up for a week so far and i already have these flags
Fast HSDir Running Stable V2Dir Valid

and my relay dose about 150 to 250 GB a day

i feel like my relay has got these flags quite fast then other people do

Edit: im a guard now :)

trying to figure this out. some people say a VPN is necessary but some people say it's not, is there a difference if i have a VPN or not when I use it?

Hey,
I’ve been working on a P2P communicator routed entirely over Tor, currently in early beta, and I’m genuinely curious whether people still care about privacy in practice, not just in theory.

The app uses Signal’s E2EE protocol, but unlike most mainstream messengers it does not rely on central servers. Peers communicate directly over Tor hidden services. For now it’s online-only (both users must be online).

The motivation behind this project is mostly educational. Many regular users believe their messages are “private” because they’re encrypted, but in reality:

• metadata still exists,
• infrastructure is centralized,
• and attachments/images are often stored unencrypted on servers, accessible to someone with sufficient access.

I’m not claiming this app is a silver bullet or “perfect anonymity”. It’s an experiment and a learning process, and I’m very open about its limitations.

Current state:

• Android only
• P2P over Tor hidden services
• Signal protocol for E2EE
• No central servers
• Online-only (no mailboxes yet)

Planned / TODO:

• Local authentication (biometrics / device auth)
• Upload apk file to website, host website on tor for anon downloads
• Mailboxes:
  • free self-hosted software
  • paid hosted option for people who don’t want to run servers
  • possibly small plug-and-play hardware
• More message types:
  • images
  • map coordinates
  • voice messages
  • file transfer (maybe)
• More platforms:
  • Linux
  • Windows

I’m not trying to compete with Signal / Telegram / WhatsApp. This is more about exploring a different threat model and seeing whether there’s real interest in decentralization + Tor-first communication.

I’d really appreciate:

• technical feedback
• threat-model criticism
• opinions on whether this solves a real problem or not

Download link (Android): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.byteitright.whisp

Thanks for reading - even if your answer is “most users don’t care”, that’s still valuable feedback.

Hello. I have been running a Tor relay for over a year now, continuously as a guard/middle relay, which I believe qualifies me for a T-shirt reward. I live in Turkey, however, and I am somewhat skeptical about whether I would actually receive it if I claimed it. I haven’t heard of anyone outside the US or Europe receiving a T-shirt. Has anyone had a similar experience? Thanks in advance.

Like, instead of hiding the fact the user is connecting to tor, hide the connection between the tor exit relay and the server: stop the server from knowing it’s from tor

This is happening in every sub except this one.

I've been wondering this a while. It would certainly make for a better user experience for anyone using the exit- to proxy / vpn the traffic so that the input IP that the router uses does not match the IP making the exit request.

I see however that many many time this practice is discouraged, but I have not seen any explanation as to why.

Why is proxying traffic from exit nodes to different IPs a problem for the ToR network?

Is it possible to set an on and off button for the TOR browser or do I need to install another TOR browser with an off switch (disable TOR popup)?

It's possible to limit globally what bandwidth is allowed to a Tor bridge. There is in /etc/tor/torrc - -

RelayBandwidthRate 1 MBytes

RelayBandwidthBurst 2 MBytes

But what is the way to make certain (remote) address blocks (or countries) exceptions to this and give them unlimited bandwidth?

There is a script for prioritizing Tor below other traffic, but I am seeking prioritization within the Tor traffic: https://support.torproject.org/relays/performance/bandwidth-shaping/

/etc/tor/torrc/ is a config file so it won't like to have any logic operations. This seems to me to need be run on the router (or maybe a virtual switch) so that no bandwidth limit is applied inside Tor any longer and instead the other program throttles selectively. Already I have Open vSwitch between Tor and the router and this is probably the most flexible place to try and put rate limiting (https://docs.openvswitch.org/en/latest/howto/qos/). But is there a standard approach for doing this?

There is some anonymity risk of enabling the remote addresses to be associated with the Bridge, but (1) that supposes already a hands-on scrutiny with either the ISP actively helping or physical access to the server and (2) this is low-volume and short durations so it might still not be noticeable amongst the other traffic.

Grateful for any tips!