How is DuckDuckGo onion search more secure than regular over Tor?

JASlinux · 04-14-2023, 01:18 PM

I am just trying to understand, Tor is an encrypted VPN going through multiple nodes, so what does onion do to hide any more from an ISP or anyone?

Quote:

By using the .onion version of this search engine, your ISP (or any man in the middle, for that matter) will no longer have any records that you have visited duckduckgo.com at all, since all the routing happens over the TOR network, and not over the ‘clear’ Internet. They will, at best, know that you connected to the TOR network, but will have no clue what you are doing on there, what sites you visit, what terms you are searching, none of that.

https://evervee.me/how/duckduckgo-on...lt-search-tor/

maw_walker · 04-14-2023, 01:54 PM

Tor is not a VPN, Tor is technically an "overlay network". Your ISP can see that you are hooking to Tor but not what you are doing while on Tor. If you want to prevent your ISP from seeing the fact you are hooking to Tor, you can use a VPN first, then hook to Tor, but it's pretty slow that way.

Anything with an ".onion" address is ON the Tor network. I don't use Tor but I assume DuckDuckGo has a search engine that runs on that network and that is what you are referring to.

JASlinux · 04-15-2023, 12:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by maw_walker

I assume DuckDuckGo has a search engine that runs on that network and that is what you are referring to.

DuckDuckGo has two basic pages, regular & .onion (& at least two more lite versions like the regular). A Tor browser can use any of them, hence my question:

If either way your ISP can only see you're hooked to Tor but not traffic, how is specifically using a .onion site on Tor more secure than regular duckduckgo.com for search on Tor?

Options:

regular search on regular network [obvious privacy issues]
regular search on Tor [the question]
.onion search on Tor [the question]
(.onion on regular network not possible)

ntubski · 04-15-2023, 08:13 AM

Perhaps:

Quote:

But that means that "last mile" of traffic can be snooped on by an organization monitoring or even running the exit nodes - especially if your traffic is unencrypted. A ".onion" address points to a Tor hidden service, which is a server you can only access through Tor. This means that your browsing activity can't be snooped on by someone watching the Tor exit nodes

https://www.howtogeek.com/272049/how...dden-services/

JASlinux · 04-15-2023, 08:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ntubski

Perhaps:

https://www.howtogeek.com/272049/how...dden-services/

I read the bit about hidden services, homework to grasp.

Overall it seems like someone has to be trying hard to break that extra bit of security, most to fall victim to the low hanging fruit.

For what it's worth there's a fifth version of the homepage, start.duckduckgo.com, purportedly cleaner.

http://webapps.stackexchange.com/que...675/ddg#111686

maw_walker · 04-17-2023, 09:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JASlinux

DuckDuckGo has two basic pages, regular & .onion (& at least two more lite versions like the regular). A Tor browser can use any of them, hence my question:

If either way your ISP can only see you're hooked to Tor but not traffic, how is specifically using a .onion site on Tor more secure than regular duckduckgo.com for search on Tor?

Options:

regular search on regular network [obvious privacy issues]
regular search on Tor [the question]
.onion search on Tor [the question]
(.onion on regular network not possible)

Good question and I misunderstood your original question it seems. I have never searched on tor, only used it to hide my activities so I have no idea what using a regular search engine address (non onion) does while hooked to tor. I assume it would just work.