Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook Inc., has finally opened up to users of the Tor network, which lets people browse the Internet anonymously.

Tor, which was launched in 2002, gives people a way to surf the Web without giving away information such as their IP address and location, which can be used to identify them. It doesn’t just let people stay anonymous, it also allows them to browse websites that might be censored in the country they’re accessing the web from.

The software is controversial because it’s been used by people involved in illegal activities online – such as those viewing child pornography or using illegal marketplaces like the Silk Road. But it can also be a force for good, protecting people from political oppression and censorship.

It was sometimes possible to access Facebook.com using Tor in the past, but using the network the site often failed to load properly, and sometimes wouldn’t load it at all. That’s due to Facebook’s advanced security measures, which wrongly sees Tor users and their constantly-changing IPs as a botnet and attempts to block them.

“Tor challenges some assumptions of Facebook’s security mechanisms — for example its design means that from the perspective of our systems a person who appears to be connecting from Australia at one moment may the next appear to be in Sweden or Canada,” explained Facebook security engineer Alec Muffett. “In other contexts such behaviour might suggest that a hacked account is being accessed through a ‘botnet,’ but for Tor this is normal.”

To get around this, Facebook has now made a special URL available: https://facebookcorewwwi.onion (note it will only work with a Tor-enabled  browser) through which Tor users can now access the world’s biggest social network. Interestingly, Facebook has also provided an SSL certificate to confirm the site’s authenticity, the first time anyone has done so for a Tor .onion web address.

Cynics will certainly notice the irony here – one of the world’s most invasive web services allowing users to access it via anonymity software, but then again it can afford to do so. Due to its insistence on people using their real names, Facebook knows who you are anyway, no matter if you choose to mask your IP or not.

It’s also worth pointing out that Tor might not be as anonymous as it once was – as The Guardian revealed last year, the NSA is making a concerted effort to crack Tor’s defences and in some cases it’s been able to identify people who are using it.

photo credit: alles-schlumpf via photopin cc