Question about Tor and clearnet

Support
1

Hello everyone,

First of all i’d like to congrats Whonix developers for the excellent job they’ve done, security and anonymity nowadays is the alpha and the omega. As soon as i got my hands on a working implementation of Whonix (gateway and workstation) i started reading everything from your topics so that i learn the basic concepts of this wonderful OS and so that i avoid silly mistakes i could do in the future. While i kept reading, i reached the “Do Not” section and i can admit something made me a bit worried. That was the paragraph “Do not Use Clearnet and Tor at the Same Time”. I know there is another almost identical topic (#2415) with this one but after reading it i could not get the answers i wanted so i decided to ask for my self.

Whonix developers suggest that while using Tor we should avoid using clearnet at the same time but thats not clear enough. Is this suggestion limited to using Tor and clearnet at the same time to view the same web pages or in general? Lets say i’m using clearnet on my host OS (Debian) and i’m browsing social media, some random web pages and listening on some music on youtube etc (Whonix is up and running at that time). Then i switch on Whonix and i start browsing some dark net web pages. Is that kind of surfing dangerous for my identity?

Thanks in advance.

2

To get right to the point it means you should never use Tor browser and your clearnet browser at the same time.

This kind of surfing can be dangerous for your anonymity. Keep in mind when you are using whonix by itself you can make mistakes that can compromise your anonymity. Using your clearnet browser along with whonix compounds the likely hood of de-anonymization

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3

So i should just close everything on my host OS and let only Whonix VM’s running to be sure that there are no de-anonymization risks?

4

That is correct, it would be even better to have 1 computer for only whonix use and have another for clearnet use. Another solution would be to use Qubes OS if you meet the system requirements.

There will always be de-anonymization risked. The best you can do is minimize them. :wink:

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