for those who don't know:
snowflake is a project by TOR that allows people to access censored services. Anyone can run a snowflake proxy. I'm using their firefox extension. more details here: https://snowflake.torproject.org/
this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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What's the difference between this and a VPN? Aside from torrent sites what is actually censored?
This has nothing to do with torrents. Tor is a browser as well as a service of 3-chain proxies(triple vpn so that none of the three servers have all necessary information to find you or what you're accessing. Snowflake proxy is run locally and acts somewhat like a proxy running in your device helping others to access internet via you to circumvent censorship which happens kn their region and not in your region
I have almost no knowledge on this topic but if it's just their request going through your computer, is that not how vpns work? Also what happens if they're searching illegal topics in your region, like criminal stuff, I'd assume you could get in trouble for that?
I said "triple layered vpn" because its somewhat like a vpn. But triple layers means the other person is accessing the internet through your computer and also through other conputers as well so that you cannot compromise the anonymity of the user because you are only one in three nodes. If you are end node, you can get info about the sites they visit but no information about who they are(not even ip because only first node gets that). The first node can see who you are but does not know what sites you visit(only third node knows that) and second node does not know about both of theese but has the information to identify the two end nodes and also makes sure that first node does not know the last node.
Ok I see, so running this is basically like running a Tor node, with the same risks involved as well?
Snowflake is for places where the tor network itself is blocked. You can uncensored internet with tor but if tor is blocked, you have to use some bridges to connect to tor network. But bridges needs to be configured and people who host bridges have some expense to keep it online. Snowflake is a temporary bridge which anyone can enable anytime and stop anytime. People who tries to connect through snowflake can easily connect automatically to any active snowflake proxies and also find a new snowflake proxy when current one goes offline.
Here is the official note about it
I see, thanks for explaining