[dmos62]

Are there any casual users of Tor around? Someone who does it not for the sake of safety, but just privacy?

I'd happily use Tor, but the last time I used it (which was ~5 years ago), it was terribly slow for regular browsing (not streaming, or anything considered bandwidth heavy).

[maeln]

I use Tor/Tor Browser quite often. I use it mostly for privacy, but also to test a few thing like price of plane tickets and such.

The speed is much better nowadays. Unless your unlucky and you circuit has a slow node in it (which the protocol try to avoid if i remember correctly), you should have a decent web browsing experience. Sure, it will be slower than your "normal" connection, but usually not by that much.

Although, if you plan on downloading large files via Tor, you will hit a bandwidth cap fairly quickly. You can look in detail here: https://metrics.torproject.org/torperf.html

Available bandwidth quadruple since 2014: https://metrics.torproject.org/bandwidth-flags.html?start=20...

[cyphar]

I use Tor fairly regularly, though I am a bit annoyed that the default add-ons on the Tor Browser are so outdated (no uBlock Origin and questionably-set-up NoScript). And if you want to remain anonymous it'd be a bad idea to add new extensions since that changes your fingerprint. The main annoyance is not the bandwidth (it's okay for most things, videos can be a bit painful) but the CAPTCHA you have to keep completing. If I have to see one more photo of traffic lights where the boxes don't line up with the poles I'm going to scream.

[superkuh]

Sure. I'm even a casual host of TOR hidden services. Every time I make a clear text website I'll also host a tor hidden service for it. Things like amateur radio sites. In a lot of ways once you get passed the controversy tor is more like the 1990s web than any evil underground. And at least on TOR you own your domain rather than lease it from some entity on a whim.

[kodablah]

I use it (Tor, not the browser as much) just to bust NAT to my local computer when sharing stuff. It's so easy to create an onion service that links to a local web server.

[brokenmachine]

Is that just sharing stuff with yourself, or sharing with others, because the recipient would also need to be using Tor to access it?

[octosphere]

I use Tor for about 30% of my browsing. Tor is handy if you are doing research on a topic and you don't want to leave too much of a 'data exhaust' or otherwise alert people to the fact that you are interested in certain topics.

I typically stay away from Tor when it comes to online banking or finance in general (logging into Amazon with Tor can raise some red flags for example).

In terms of speed, I have noticed personally that Tor has gotten a lot faster. Sometimes you get a slow circuit and have to spawn a new identity / rebuild a new circuit to get a faster one, sort of like 'circuit roulette'.

The rest of my surfing is for fairly innocuous subject matter and using Tor for it would be overkill. Again, Tor would be handy for privately researching general health issues, sexual health issues, mental health issues, etc

Tor is also handy for recon[0] in general too. For me privacy is how you present yourself to the world, and doing recon[0] in a certain community, or (anonymously) 'lurking' in a community is useful before you re-register an account and start posting as the 'real you'.

[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/reconnaissance

[neiman]

What do you mean by casual? I use it relatively often, when I want to access a website privately (I don't trust any VPN service that much). I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person doing that.

But maybe you mean if someone using it as the main browsing tool for privacy reasons? This I doubt, since it's indeed slow. I also don't think that Tor is meant to be used as your main browser really.

[dmos62]

That's pretty much what I meant my casual -- Tor as main browsing tool.

[belorn]

As a sysadmin I use tor regularly as a easy and free third-party perspective. If there is a problem but it works when I test it, I then go and test in tor in order to eliminate any potential effect in my local network.

Tor is also ipv4 so it is a convenient way to get a ipv4 web view inside a ipv6 enabled network, without having to deal with browser plugins or adjust the interface on the machine.

[crtasm]

Tor has had ipv6 exit nodes for at least 2 years.

[theHoatzin]

I use orbot https://guardianproject.info/apps/orbot/ on my phone. I route most of my phone's traffic through Tor and it doesn't impact speed much, granted I mostly use my phone for messaging and not so much for browsing or working.

[guest56781]

I use Tor in Android when lunching at Ikea Frankfurt as their free Wlan blocks some news sites such as presstv.com Via Tor I can read all world news while eating.

[gloflo]

All the time for everything that is not very personal and sensitive. Youtube is more than fast enough.

[pawal]

Yes, I use it often. My Debian installations use Tor for installing updates. Just as an example.