Feature #11310
Consider adding some Warning about using BitTorrent to download Tails
0%
Description
Hi,
In the assistant page when users want to download Tails, they are proposed to do it using BitTorrent.
As using bittorrent leads to almost like broadcasting to the whole internet that a given computer is going to download Tails, I wonder if it won’t worth a short Warning.
I can write some proposals if you think it worth it and can be integrated in a nice way to the pages.
Subtasks
Related issues
|
Related to Tails - |
Rejected | 2016-03-09 |
History
#1 Updated by intrigeri 2016-04-03 21:43:45
- Category set to Installation
- Status changed from New to Confirmed
- Starter deleted (
Yes)
#2 Updated by geb 2016-04-25 07:30:56
- related to
Bug #11209: DAVE and BitTorrent should be first presented with equal weight even in Firefox added
#3 Updated by geb 2016-05-09 11:05:24
- Assignee set to geb
Hi,
Just wanted to up this topic to gather opinions.
To describe a bit more the problem, BitTorrent relies on 3 distributions mechanisms for torrent metadata
- One being know as Distributed Hash Store (DHT - Distributed Array)
- One being know as Peer Exchange (PEX - Gossip)
- One being know as Trackers (Server(s) - Centralized)
Those mechanisms are designed to solve the metadata distribution problem in different ways for better redudancy.
All of them have to have the list of current computers that are currently downloading / uploading the torrent and make those informations accessible, for letting users connect to them and start downloading, so one can use those mechanism to know who is/was downloading tails.
I think it would worth to have a short warning about that in the download page and/or the FAQ, to inform users about this situation.
Do you have any opinion about that ? If you need any other informations, just let me know :)
#4 Updated by sajolida 2016-05-09 16:51:49
- Assignee changed from geb to sajolida
- Target version set to Tails_2.4
- Type of work changed from Discuss to End-user documentation
I’ll try to draft something.
#5 Updated by sajolida 2016-06-04 10:18:05
- Target version deleted (
Tails_2.4)
Taking it easy on this one.
#6 Updated by sajolida 2016-07-15 00:40:35
- Status changed from Confirmed to Rejected
- Assignee deleted (
sajolida)
So, one month has passed and actually, I don’t think we should bother doing this.
- If we added notes about who can see that you are downloading Tails for BitTorrent then it feels like we should add similar notes for the other download techniques. Otherwise people might not be able to really compare what’s acceptable for them or discard BitTorrent as scary and insecure without understanding really what’s going on. For example, once you installed the Firefox extension, it’s likely that any website that you visit can see that you have it installed and thus are a Tails user. For direct download, your ISP can see the incoming connection, for Tails Installer in Debian and Ubuntu, Debian and Ubuntu mirrors over HTTP, etc.
- In “/doc/about/fingerprint” and “/doc/about/warning/index.en.html#index5h1” we make it clear that we’re not hiding the fact that you are using Tails. I admit that this is meant for “using” Tails initially and not “downloading” Tails but I’m not sure the different is fundamental here.
Seeing this, I agree that it could be interesting to teach people about who can see what when they use those different download techniques, but honestly, it sounds quite complicated if we want to be fair to all techniques and provide useful ways of comparing them. It will add more info to our pages and push more mental work to the user, and it’s not something that we’re taking care of in our design goals anyway.
So I’m rejecting. But still, thanks for investigating this and teaching me about how BitTorrent works!