Provide .onion link for Tor users

Vlad

f321x_ Thanks for the suggestion. Tor is relatively new for me. Can you point to DDG onion address information/resources as well any additional information in terms how is something like this typically done?

f321x_

Vlad The DDG onion address is https://duckduckgogg42xjoc72x3sjasowoarfbgcmvfimaftt6twagswzczad.onion you can open it with a Browser supporting Tor, for example the Tor Browser https://www.torproject.org/download/

There are ways to automatically redirect a user accessing the page (kagi.com) with the Tor browser to the .onion address with a tag on the page. https://tor.stackexchange.com/questions/15421/redirect-to-onion-if-site-was-accessed-from-tor

Besides the benefits i already listed these are additional benefits users get by accessing a .onion service instead of the clearnet address when browsing over Tor:

Using onion services mitigates attacks that can be executed by possibly-malicious “Tor Exit Nodes” — which, though rare, are not nonexistent — and also the fact that you are using a “.onion” address demands that the person is using a TorBrowser, thereby are also mitigating:

national web blocks

TLS-man-in-the-middle

SNI filters

DNS censorship and tracking (both upon the client side, and that potentially impacting exit nodes)

a lot of fundamental cookie-tracking and digital-fingerprinting issues

…and a bunch of other risks to which non-Tor-browsers are prone

Here you can find documentation on how to make a webservice available over Tor, looks pretty simple for normal infrastructure at least:
https://community.torproject.org/onion-services/setup/

KagiForMe It is def not perfect to login to services while using Tor from a anonymity perspective and should be avoided if you are not trusting the service you login to to reveal your identity to law enforcement for example, but this should be clear to Tor users if they try to be as private as possible.
I still think there are many benefits of using kagi over Tor as you can use kagi fully anonymous (private email + private payment and extra subscription for Tor only use for example) and have other Tor benefits of for example your government not seeing you accessing free information (if you life in China for example), or no risk of evil DNS, and better overall privacy when browsing through many webpages

KagiForMe

f321x_
But wouldn't that require you to log in while connected to Tor, which is a major de-anonymisation risk?

Vlad

f321x_ Can you refer to DDG official documentation on the Tor support and onion link? Could it be that was created by user community?

f321x_

Vlad They seem to be pretty low key about their onion service. When searching "ddg tor" on ddg you see it as a search answer. They also redirect to the .onion service from their domain at https://ddg.gg/?q=!ddt

Also found additional docs on the automatic redirect from clearnet page to onion page when using the Tor browser, it's called "Onion-Location": https://community.torproject.org/onion-services/advanced/onion-location/

Vlad

f321x_ Why would they be low key about this?

How does one set this up from a technical perspective (I have close to zero knowledge about how tor/onion works)?

KagiForMe

Vlad
TOR TL;DR:

When the user wants to visit a website, they dont connect automatically to the website, but they encrypt and nest their data three times. Now the request is send over three different "nodes" run by volunteers through the network. Every time a node is passed, they decrypt one layer and forward it to the next node. Only the last node knows, where to send the data (and if using https not even the content). To the website, it is the last node who requests the data, not you with your personal IP.

[The onion thing comes from the layered encryption, like an onion.]

I think (but am no expert here, so please correct me!) that a so called onion service is not on the clear web. They have a different adress scheme (asdf.onion) and work this way:
When the third server in the chain sees, that it is an onion link, they don't connect to a normal website, but they route the data through the volunteer run servers to the website, which is itself "hosted ont he network"(?).

f321x_

Vlad I don't see a critical reason to be low key about providing a service also on Tor. Maybe they don't see it as necessary to make a big announcement as Tor users are mostly tech affine persons and providing an onion service is essentially just a different domain for another network but not a huge thing to announce. Also other popular services like facebook, reddit and X (twitter) also provide onion links.

You can see how to make a service available on Tor (host an onion service) in these guides:
https://riseup.net/ca/security/network-security/tor/onionservices-best-practices
https://community.torproject.org/onion-services/setup/
https://tor.stackexchange.com/questions/15421/redirect-to-onion-if-site-was-accessed-from-tor

KagiForMe

With that being said, I don't think hosting an onion service is that difficult after all. (There should be lots of documentation, and I don't think it's that hard.

The main benefit of an onion service is, that the entire traffic is hidden in the Tor network, not just "your side".(again ?)

f321x_

@Vlad after using Kagi for around 6 months now the missing of this feature still impacts me. I try to use the Tor Browser as much as possible to archive good privacy when browsing, unfortunately i can't use Kagi as most of the time i get a 403 response. This is really annoying and it would be great to be able to use Tor either directly with a onion link or at least make it possible to use the normal clearnet Kagi without getting a 403 😃

Vlad

f321x_ This is completely new to use and we do not know what this entails from a technology implementation perspective so we would ideally like to see more demand for this first.

bauruine

Vlad
There is a tool to create a onion mirror of a clearnet site https://tpo.pages.torproject.net/onion-services/onionspray/. It works as a reverse proxy to your site and is used among others by the BBC, The Intercept and Brave.

The main issue is that you block most of the Tor exits with a HTTP error 403
Error: Forbidden Your client does not have permission to get URL / from this server. If this is easier to fix please do it. That would make an onion service less needed.

Vlad

bauruine

you block most of the Tor exits with a HTTP error 403

It is not us, but our cloud provider{ GCP). I think this entire thread is in an effort to find a solution although it is not clear how would an onion address solve it, if the resources are still hosted on GCP?

lillian

Hi, if it is not possible to fix Google's load balancer blocking Tor/VPNs, I would really like to see an onion domain for Kagi.

While I have used Tor for privacy/anonymity in the past, I am continuing to use it to contribute to the network - in simple terms, the more people use Tor for their day-to-day browsing, the safer any given user is.

I would have suggested the Enterprise Onion Toolkit, of which the aforementioned Onionspray seems to be a modern fork.

Vlad it is not clear how would an onion address solve it, if the resources are still hosted on GCP?

I'm not very familiar with GCP's services, but ideally if you run Onionspray next to your other services hosted on GCP, it would see you requesting the kagi.com domain rather than the Tor exit, so it wouldn't block the request.

xkc7

I would also love to see native Tor support. In addition to Duckduckgo, Startpage recently launched its onion service. As I regularly use the Tor Browser, this would be one of my top features. I don't think an onion service requires too much effort but I could be wrong.

xkc7

I'm not sure if this fits your needs, but there is also an excellent article on how to set up a Tor service using alt-svc by Jonah Aragon (https://www.jonaharagon.com/posts/securing-services-with-tor-and-alt-svc/).

f321x_

For me its really a show stopper now, can't really use Kagi in tor browser as most exit relays are blocked and other search engines like DDG work fine. Please consider users of Tor, would especially make sense for Kagi as the user has to sign up. So Tor would provide some privacy here.

meskio

I use Tor Browser as one of my main browsers, and the fact that often kagi gives a 403 error is very annoying and makes me reconsider if kagi is the right option for me. Would be nice if either kagi finds a way so we can use the service over Tor.

If the onion address is set up contacting the kagi servers directly, without passing over the GCP http servers, it will give Tor users an option to bypass the blockade and be able to use the service.