"80% of visits to Tor hidden services are related to child porn"

[TopWargamer]

Source: http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/1/7478163/80-percent-of-visits-to-tor-hidden-services-are-related-to-child-porn

Study: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1308.6768v2.pdf

 

The Tor network is infamous for the illegal activity that happens on it, and the following study only proves this, sadly. At Hamburg, a paper was presented at the Chaos Computer Club Conference that details Tor hidden services. The researchers examined around 40,000 hidden services on Tor, and found that 80% of the requests dealt with child porn. The even more surprising part? Child porn hidden services on Tor only make up around 2% of available services.

 

However, it is very possible that some of the traffic could be fake, a bot, or of law enforcement (more on this in a second). The study measured directory requests, so unreliable websites and people who visit websites many times in a single browsing session may have skewed the results. As for law enforcement, they keep an eye on these child porn websites in order to track down the people behind them. Of course they can't do it all by themselves, so the use of bots as to account for some traffic. 

 

I'm going to go with the later and say that most of that traffic is from bots. The Tor network is very large and quite a few people may use it, but I doubt that 80% of the traffic is for child porn. I'm sure it's high up there, but not that high. Tor is a sketchy place, so who knows. What do you think?

[XTankSlayerX]

Holy cow, it could make sense but damn.

[xXxYOLOxSWAGxXx_420BlazeIt]

Source: http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/1/7478163/80-percent-of-visits-to-tor-hidden-services-are-related-to-child-porn

Study: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1308.6768v2.pdf

 

The Tor network is infamous for the illegal activity that happens on it, and the following study only proves this, sadly. At Hamburg, a paper was presented at the Chaos Computer Club Conference that details Tor hidden services. The researchers examined around 40,000 hidden services on Tor, and found that 80% of the requests dealt with child porn. The even more surprising part? Child porn hidden services on Tor only make up around 2% of available services.

 

However, it is very possible that some of the traffic could be fake, a bot, or of law enforcement (more on this in a second). The study measured directory requests, so unreliable websites and people who visit websites many times in a single browsing session may have skewed the results. As for law enforcement, they keep an eye on these child porn websites in order to track down the people behind them. Of course they can't do it all by themselves, so the use of bots as to account for some traffic. 

 

I'm going to go with the later and say that most of that traffic is from bots. The Tor network is very large and quite a few people may use it, but I doubt that 80% of the traffic is for child porn. I'm sure it's high up there, but not that high. Tor is a sketchy place, so who knows. What do you think?

Tor is an important service for humanity in general, but some people are going to use it to do bad things. It is the exact same with any service or product. Money and effort should be spent on eliminating the source of the child pornography, not on shutting down/destroying an important service that is used by some bad people to do bad things.

[eelnico09]

Not surprising, go to google, and type "TOR Onion links" and the 3 options google offers to complete it is:

 

Tor onion links 2013

Tor onion links cp (child porn)

tor onion links 2014

 

So.... yeah, not surprising.

[thatguyjerry]

I really don't think these numbers are anywhere close to accurate. Sure, there is plenty of it on Tor, but most of Tor is commercial for illegal services (excluding child pornography) or informational forums. It's kinda hard to say what should be done about it though because no one really has any authority over it unless the suspect in question resides in the country where their activity is illegal, but, obviously, Tor makes it difficult to figure those things out. I believe bots account for the majority of the 80%

[Toddwjp]

even so, this isnt an excuse to remove it. 

[Silent_Xaxal]

Keep Tor. Eliminate Child Porn and the desire for it. Way too many people caught up in blaming the service despite the fact that the service has no direct links to the offending material.

[Deletive]

Thats messed up; and people think 4chan had this demographic (which I don't believe they do). 

I really just hope that traffic is law enforcement. I think this should be a higher priority then piratebay.

[thatguyjerry]

Thats messed up; and people think 4chan had this demographic (which I don't believe they do). 

I really just hope that traffic is law enforcement. I think this should be a higher priority then piratebay.

It would be if it caused someone who has a lot of money to lose a lot of money, but no one is. Now we just gotta sit here with the results and say "well this sucks" while everyone pays attention to some million/billion dollar company complain.

[fringie]

I started using Tor recently to access torrenting sites (virgin media block quite a few - the only one I could access before was TPB using proxies) but anyone know how to stop yourself from being a host? Normally I'd be fine with it but I don't want my ISP thinking I look at child pr0n..

[WMW]

I don't believe that the infrastructure that can potentially contribute to the spread of child porn is what causes child porn. It existed before the internet, it will exist after tor.

[Psykomantis00]

90% of money in the US has trace amounts of cocaine on it. We should petition to ban money as clearly most of it is going towards drugs. 

[ForsakenLive]

I know a lot of people that use the Tor network and they are not doing child porn with it...

The numbers seem a little fishy, nodes and bytes are not all there is regarding the amount of people that checks the service.

It could be quite spread across the network and copied a lot of times, still it's not the way the article puts it.

[qwertywarrior]

@TopWargamer

this i what the Tor guys had to say

https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-80-percent-percent-1-2-percent-abusive

[Shroomster]

Keep TOR. Shutting it down would be like shutting down ebay for some of the sellers being scammers.

[killcomic]

This sounds like a load of bull. Just an excuse to remove a service that governments and businesses find difficult to keep their paws on.

It's the old "Look how evil they are! We must stop them for the good of the people!" argument they throw at anything the can't control or doesn't suit their interests.

[JAKEBAB]

I swear that would be the worst job to be a cop and see those sites id probs wanna vomit everytime as much as i hate this i dont want tor to go away and its not like taking tor away will stop this sick problem i just hope it somewhat helps catch these sick people.

[Fate]

Keep TOR. Shutting it down would be like shutting down ebay for some of the sellers being scammers.

80% of ebay users aren't scammers though.

(playing devil's advocate)

[AlwaysFSX]

90% of money in the US has trace amounts of cocaine on it. We should petition to ban money as clearly most of it is going towards drugs.

Well if people would stop sorting it with money we wouldn't have a problem.

[Mooshi]

Kiddie porn, hard drugs and other illegal things funded via the darling known as the bitcoin. I highly doubt many use TOR for legitimate reasons.

 

Unless you live in a nation that's actually oppressed to the point of needing a secret way to communicate, there isn't much justification to use it unless you are doing something suspect. Otherwise you'd use simple stuff like no script or use DuckDuckGo vs Google.

[jaggysnake57]

Tor is an important service for humanity in general, but some people are going to use it to do bad things. It is the exact same with any service or product. Money and effort should be spent on eliminating the source of the child pornography, not on shutting down/destroying an important service that is used by some bad people to do bad things.

even so, this isnt an excuse to remove it. 

I don't believe that the infrastructure that can potentially contribute to the spread of child porn is what causes child porn. It existed before the internet, it will exist after tor.

 

important service for humanity...its the fucking internet not healthcare.  really this is some stupid bullshit....its simple if you give criminals (regardless of crime) a way to operate without being caught then they will use it and what makes it worse is tors point blank refusal to work with authorities to shut down these sites..shutting down tor will not stop child porn but it will certainly slow it down considerably....

 

tor needs to start co operating or be shut down simple

[Toddwjp]

important service for humanity...its the fucking internet not healthcare.  really this is some stupid bullshit....its simple if you give criminals (regardless of crime) a way to operate without being caught then they will use it and what makes it worse is tors point blank refusal to work with authorities to shut down these sites..shutting down tor will not stop child porn but it will certainly slow it down considerably....

 

tor needs to start co operating or be shut down simple

 

 

tor offer an an almost anonymous internet service to allow those in countries that don't have a free internet to use it to communicate. this is what it was developed for and this is what it still does. regardless of how people abuse the system it is a crucial part in  attempting to maintain or provide free speech. they cannot co-operate with law enforcement because that would A. remove trust B. how does tor decide which claims to be investigated are true, or only illegal because of a law that in many countries would be argued as unjust.

[jaggysnake57]

tor offer an an almost anonymous internet service to allow those in countries that don't have a free internet to use it to communicate. this is what it was developed for and this is what it still does. regardless of how people abuse the system it is a crucial part in  attempting to maintain or provide free speech. they cannot co-operate with law enforcement because that would A. remove trust B. how does tor decide which claims to be investigated are true, or only illegal because of a law that in many countries would be argued as unjust.

 

 

if its purpose is to allow people to communicate in oppressed countries then why does it not try to shut down child porn sites?  ill tell you why because its making too much money from them not to.....all this "helping people in other countries" is crap and is tors way of gaining support

[IdortMasterRace]

I started using Tor recently to access torrenting sites (virgin media block quite a few - the only one I could access before was TPB using proxies) but anyone know how to stop yourself from being a host? Normally I'd be fine with it but I don't want my ISP thinking I look at child pr0n..

 

How about tell your ISP to do one and mind their business?

[IdortMasterRace]

I highly doubt many use TOR for legitimate reasons.

 

Going to post some extraordinary evidence for that extraordinary claim?

 

And yes, if you live in even the United States or United Kingdom, you are being forced into a secret way of communication. You make out as if this is third world issues, and not something happening everyday all over the world.