Silk Road forums

Discussion => Silk Road discussion => Topic started by: joeblow2 on July 29, 2011, 02:53 am

Title: Why is SR forums asking me to unmask myself when asking for "most recent posts"
Post by: joeblow2 on July 29, 2011, 02:53 am
Hey SR Community,

For the past 3 days I have been intermittently getting the following drop down message about 25% of the time when I click the "view the most recent posts on the forum" link at the bottom of the front page:


Load external content?

***An external application is needed to handle:

http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?action=recent;start=70

NOTE: External applications are NOT Tor safe by default and can unmask you!

If this file is untrusted, you should either save it to view while offline or in a VM,
or consider using a transparent Tor proxy like Amnesia LiveCD, torsocks, or TorVM.***

This had never happened from the time I joined the SR forum until 7/25.  When I was instructed on using Tor I was told *specifically* not to open any file that would have even the possibility of unmasking me.  This included opening this kind of file on a cleartext version of Foxfire that was open concurrently with the one inside of the Tor Bundlle.

I hope someone who is in charge and knows the reason this is happening will make a post on this thread.

Is anyone else having this problems?    Or am I the only LUCKY one?  ;)

Title: Re: Why is SR forums asking me to unmask myself when asking for "most recent posts"
Post by: chronicpain on July 29, 2011, 03:18 am
I have gotten this message a few times. I never say ok.  but it does come up every once in a while. Its  not silk road either, I just tried to send an email with hushmail and got the same message not 2 minutes ago..
Title: external programs...
Post by: loginathome on July 29, 2011, 05:50 am
It really depends on what program you are using to display the file.

If its a simple text file, then you are probably fine...  Using an external program to show Tor files isnt necessarily bad.  You just have to know what type of file it is, and what risks that entails.  NEVER open PDF files in this manner, they can 'phone home' using your normal connection and tell whomever that this ip downloaded this file on this site via tor.

Thats a BIG risk, Just be careful and if you don't know what you are doing, then dont do it. 
If you are like me and you THINK you know what you are doing, its still best to not do it.

again, I'm lazy, CAPS == italics
Title: Re: Why is SR forums asking me to unmask myself when asking for "most recent posts"
Post by: RastaMan on July 29, 2011, 09:43 pm
No one is trying to reveal your identity,  it's the HTTP protocol.

You start to download the HTML file ... The connection start... But the line is slow thus it times out.

Your file is not fully downloaded thus it's not a valid HTML file, thus it's treated as a text file.


Remember: never download anything.