Rejection by various sites when using Whonix

User Support General
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I mainly use Whonix in Qubes, but various sites refuse tor access, so I end up using Debian or fedora.
This is a waste of the protection and anonymity of whonix.
How do you guys solve this problem?

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This is an unfortunate reality with Tor. Many exit nodes are blocked because people with malicious intent use Tor and ruin it for the rest of us that just simply don’t want to be tracked.

One alternative is to use a hardened browser with settings tweaked to match Tor as much as possible, such as LibreWolf with resistFingerprinting enabled, custom fonts disabled, webGL disabled, canvas disabled, as well as other settings (you can probably find resources to help with this).

The goal with the above browser config is have a browser fingerprint that looks as identical as possible to other users’. To test your setup, look up “eff cover your tracks” and run the EFF’s fingerprinting test tool.

Then, use one or more VPN connections, such as ProtonVPN. Generally, these connections are not as often blocked as Tor. Just bear in mind that a single VPN is inferior to three hops that Tor offers (or 6 hops for a hidden service rendezvous), so ensure that this fits within your threat model before doing this.

There is also I2P but I don’t know enough about it to dispense any advice.

Other methods may exist, but this generally works for me.

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Has anyone looked at running Brave screwed down as tight as possible?

Thanks

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In tor browser, just reset your identity and try again.

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Depends on what you mean.

I’m running Brave in disposable Debian 11 with Kicksecure, and you can disable scripts in the Brave Shields menu.

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depending on the site, I’ll sometimes try a free online proxy service within the torbrowser, for instance using the anonymize link in the results of a startpage search. there are plenty of other proxy sites. I don’t trust any of them, which is why I stick to using them in a Whonix disposible. ymmv.

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This just sounds like a normal aspect of using Tor, nothing Qubes-specific. There is an inherent trade-off between privacy and convenience. The folks at the Tor Project have done a lot of research on this, which is available on their website, if you’re interested. You basically have two options:

  1. Accept the reality that there is a trade-off between privacy and convenience, and choose to sacrifice some convenience for privacy by continuing to use Whonix and Tor.

  2. Accept the reality that there is a trade-off between privacy and convenience, and choose to sacrifice some privacy for convenience by using less private methods, such as VPNs.

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