The Tor Network

Tor is an overlay network that allows anonymity and access to the darknet, but I use it to proxy my apps through it, including Discord.

I've encountered a lot of problems while using Tor for anonymity, mainly with Cloudflare or rate limits, especially on Discord.

I even got my account locked once because I proxied Discord through it, but I will still always use it :).

You can achieve this by either using torsocks (CLI) or running a Tor SOCKS proxy. Once you have that set up, you can simply do the following:

I'll use Vesktop because it's the cutest Discord client or something.

exec electron31 /usr/lib/vesktop/app.asar --proxy-server="socks5://localhost:9050" $VESKTOP_USER_FLAGS "$@"

torsocks [application's name]

Or something along those lines.

Xmpp

Xmpp is a decentralized communication protocol. If you want to chat with me, email me your address at lOvOl@airmail.cc.

Privacy vs Anonymity

To me, I feel like anonymity is more important than privacy. This is why I don't mind using Discord the way I do, as I proxy it through Tor.

I think I care more about hiding who I am than what I do. I generally don't have anything to hide, and I am pretty transparent. I would still prefer using a private and anonymous chatting platform though like simplex.

Hypothetically speaking, a bank can be (though unfortunately often isn't) a private place to hold your data, but you are still not anonymous in the sense that they know who you are. This is why I'm not the biggest fan of Signal or similar apps, because they force you to use a phone number. I still use Signal, but I try to limit using it for mainly this reason.

I wouldn't mind using dumb phones and having prepaid SIM cards, but they're trackable. I wouldn't mind using VoIP numbers, but they're often blocked from being used. I don't like the fact that phone numbers are still relevant, especially since they're an OPSEC nightmare.