It is impossible now to access Bitcointalk with TOR

[RickDeckard]

That's really strange, because apparently I and everyone else have had no problems accessing the forum via Tor since the attack stopped.

Just to add as another testimony - I too haven't had any kind of blockages nor problems accessing the forum via Tor today. I in fact open multiple pages that I had saved regarding bitcointalk (10+) and not even in one of them did I had any kind of prompt to tell if I was a robot or not.

Usually when I had those problems I did what ranochigo suggested - especially new circuit - and it would clear, but I reckon that it may not always work.

[Lucius]

~snip~
Maybe I will try to reset my computer, the entire windows just to be sure that any other application is not blocking anything. Before that I need to find some free time :-D

@AB de Royse777, do you have any new details regarding your problem? You should always take into account that something else can have an impact on Tor, but the only thing that comes to mind is to look in the settings of your antivirus/firewall and maybe restart your modem.

Can you explain in a little more detail how to see through which CF servers the traffic goes - and are there any settings that @AB de Royse777 can try to overcome the problem?

You should be able to see the alt-svc header in the get request for the initial load of Bitcointalk.org. This should be automatic and I'm not aware of any settings that can overwrite this. If you're consistently encountering that CAPTCHA challenge, then I'm inclined to think that it would be some other issues. Without knowing how exactly it is setup, I'm afraid I can't provide much inputs over here.

Clearing cache, refreshing circuit and changing the security level are things that I would recommend trying.

Honestly, I'm not really an expert in such technical things, but I played a little with "Inspect (Q)", which shows a lot of information about the page you are on, and there is a "Network" tab, among other things. I don't know if any of this information can help to detect the problem, but I assume that it could be of some help.

[UmerIdrees]

I guess I am not the only one or am I? For last a few days when I try to access Bitcointalk with TOR I continue to redirected to Cloudflare human checking window. I was in the same loop for the last a few hours today too and now I had no way but to buy a VPN and posting this topic using the VPN. I am not a VPN friendly person. TOR is my trust.

Strangely i do not use tor (also no VPN) to access bitcointalk but after reading your post, i just login to check my BTT login from TOR and i faced no issue at all.



The error meessage that you shown, can sometimes come when you internet is not working well or is slow.
By the way, why it is so important to use VPN or TOR to access bitcointalk ? I got this impression from your post and i am really curiuos to know about it.

[LoyceV]

The forum has enough money to invest in forum related issues and this is a major issue.

I don't think money is the problem:

With regret, I am (for now) admitting defeat on the DDoS front, and we will soon be using using Cloudflare to protect against DDoS attacks. ~

I really don't believe in willingly putting a man-in-the-middle in your HTTPS like this, but my homebrew DDoS mitigation has been one of my biggest time sinks for the last 6 months or so, and the necessary servers are still pretty expensive. If I had more manpower, then I would prioritize maintaining our own DDoS protection, but with me as the only sysadmin and current-software developer, it's become unsustainable.

I especially dislike Cloudflare, which I'm almost certain is basically owned by US intelligence agencies. I considered several alternatives to Cloudflare, but the smaller ones (eg. Stackpath and OVH) didn't strike me as reputable/competent enough, and the enterprise-targeted ones like Incapsula and Akamai are around $3500/month. Even though $3500/month seems absolutely ridiculous to me, I was seriously considering Incapsula due to its pretty good reputation, but then they were having all sorts of technical issues while I was trying to set it up. So I gave up for now and went with Cloudflare.

The Internet is seriously flawed if everyone needs to huddle behind these huge centralized anti-DDoS companies in order to survive...

If you have a better solution than Cloudflare, you should post it. Until then, Cloudflare is a necessary evil.

For what it's worth: I can access Bitcointalk through Tor at the moment.

Privacy of the forum users comes first or the expense?

There's more to it than just money. A .onion domain without Cloudflare has been suggested before.

Quoting a previous message, hope that theymos will see it:

We are also ready to provide technical assistance in Cloudflare-less DDoS protection setup if it's the case.

Since that post, I've seen several posts about eXch's own website being inaccessible.

Maybe you can use the 'Captcha bypass code' feature (https://bitcointalk.org/captcha_code.php) when logging in to Bitcointalk again.

That only removes the forum's own Captcha, not Cloudflare.

I don't think that theymos will buy the idea because of the reputation of the forum. Having an onion version might take the government's eyes to the forum and some kind of legal compliances would be required.

Many normal websites also have a .onion domain. It's not only "for the darknet", it's actually useful for honest people who want privacy too. Examples: Protonmail, Blockchair, Facebook.

I guess now I need to get used to with VPN. It's the last thing I wanted but to maintain the business, from the responsibility I am taking the risk otherwise I would take a break from Bitcointalk until the DF thing was settled.

Once you've compromised your privacy, it's lost forever. If your VPN can't be trusted, it's too late after using it only once.
You could use a virtual desktop on a VPS, and access that through Tor. But that's slow and annoying to work with.

[AB de Royse777]

The error meessage that you shown, can sometimes come when you internet is not working well or is slow.

My internet is absolutely fine.

Anyway, I still haven't got time to reset my computer. There must be something that is no going well with my computer.

I guess now I need to get used to with VPN. It's the last thing I wanted but to maintain the business, from the responsibility I am taking the risk otherwise I would take a break from Bitcointalk until the DF thing was settled.

Once you've compromised your privacy, it's lost forever. If your VPN can't be trusted, it's too late after using it only once.
You could use a virtual desktop on a VPS, and access that through Tor. But that's slow and annoying to work with.

I already tried and you already got it that the experience was annoying.

@AB de Royse777, do you have any new details regarding your problem? You should always take into account that something else can have an impact on Tor, but the only thing that comes to mind is to look in the settings of your antivirus/firewall and maybe restart your modem.

I have tried everything, my last option as you can read is to reset the system. It will be so time consuming for me that I am still trying to find a good time to do that.

[Lucius]

@AB de Royse777, do you have any new details regarding your problem? You should always take into account that something else can have an impact on Tor, but the only thing that comes to mind is to look in the settings of your antivirus/firewall and maybe restart your modem.

I have tried everything, my last option as you can read is to reset the system. It will be so time consuming for me that I am still trying to find a good time to do that.

Instead of resetting everything, I would still (given that you don't have too much time) go in the direction of trying to eliminate the problem step by step - for a start (if you haven't already) try to reinstall Tor, because as far as I can see the new version is available for download.

Also check if your AV/firewall might be blocking some of these things -> https://support.torproject.org/tbb/tbb-10/

[DYING_S0UL]

Instead of resetting everything, I would still (given that you don't have too much time) go in the direction of trying to eliminate the problem step by step - for a start (if you haven't already) try to reinstall Tor, because as far as I can see the new version is available for download.

Also check if your AV/firewall might be blocking some of these things -> https://support.torproject.org/tbb/tbb-10/

For some reasons BTT and TOR doesn't go that well for me. The last time I tried using TOR, I couldn't even connect to the internet! It just keeps saying establishing a connection or something, but never connects. The first few weeks it works properly but after some times this annoying bug occurs, which I have no idea why! Also tried the resetting reinstalling TOR or changing country or bridge firewall whatever it is. Nothing fixes. I guess something was blocking TOR from connecting.

[ChiBitCTy]

I have so many questions about Tor, and using it in conjunction with certain wallets, cell phones etc.  @theymos..I can never ask for anything really, or shouldn’t, as I’m lucky to just be here, but man..a general tech discussion board would be such a massive help for so many of us. Sure it would be great to ask just general tech stuff too, but I’ve got countless tech questions that do relate to bitcoin, that just don’t fit anywhere else. I don’t like bugging you, but just had to ask one final time if you would be so kind just to consider it again.  I mean hell I’d pay for the time it takes to code this in to btalk, a mod for the boards first year salary, whatever.

As you know being a highly skilled programmer yourself, if you aren’t one (like myself) then just googling stuff doesn’t work as so much out there is bs and I wouldn’t even know it. But here I know if I’m getting suggestions from Loyce, PowerGlove, etc..that it’s going to be solid assistance that I can trust.

Thanks for any further consideration 🙏

[LoyceV]

a general tech discussion board
~
I’ve got countless tech questions that do relate to bitcoin

Why not post those in Bitcoin Technical Support?

[Faisal2202]

-snip-
Therefore my best advice is to login with tor and tick on always logged in this will keep you logged in and prevent you facing future captcha issues. On the other hand while surfing the forum make sure you have strong internet and avoid hitting the button to view all the replies on a thread as that will cause a whole lot of cloudfare issues.

I have been using Chrome from the start but with VPN, and it works fine on Chrome because your ID stays active on Chrome and it does not logout, but on Tor, once you shut it down, your ID logout and you have to log in again and there you have to face the captcha problem but you have the option to ask Tor to remember the IDs but I don't think many use that feature due to the privacy issue.

I faced this issue a few times because I rarely use TOR and whenever I face this issue I delete the Tor or delete the data and cache (I am talking about the mobile version) and then I use it. BTW there is another way not quite equal to what Tor is providing but we can use Brave browser with Duck Duck Go essential extension on. I think Brave is also a good browser but their token and KYC-related issues have caused them great defamation so if you don't want to use Brave then Firefox is a good one don't forget to use the Duck Duck Go essential extension. Overall nothing can beat Tor. But I do agree with AB de Royse777 because this Cloudflare issue needs to be solved as a forum.

[uchegod-21]

Instead of resetting everything, I would still (given that you don't have too much time) go in the direction of trying to eliminate the problem step by step - for a start (if you haven't already) try to reinstall Tor, because as far as I can see the new version is available for download.

Also check if your AV/firewall might be blocking some of these things -> https://support.torproject.org/tbb/tbb-10/

For some reasons BTT and TOR doesn't go that well for me. The last time I tried using TOR, I couldn't even connect to the internet! It just keeps saying establishing a connection or something, but never connects. The first few weeks it works properly but after some times this annoying bug occurs, which I have no idea why! Also tried the resetting reinstalling TOR or changing country or bridge firewall whatever it is. Nothing fixes. I guess something was blocking TOR from connecting.

I have faced similar issue many times using Tor. The most annoying one is trying to pass captcha several times to no avail. I don't have patience with slow internet, it annoys me alot.