With Brave, you can now help Internet users in “censored countries” connect to Tor, here’s how

By pre-installing the Snowflake extension in its browser version 1.47, Brave gives you the ability to turn your computer into a proxy.

This allows other remote users to pass through your machine and internet connection to access the Tor network, even if it is blocked in their country.

Brave uses the principle of gateways

The Tor network provides free access to all types of websites, through a decentralized network of servers called “nodes”. Their list being public, some countries manage to censor this network.

While it has been using Tor since 2018 to protect its users from all forms of web tracking, Brave has gone a step further since its version 1.44. ” We found that our community increasingly asked us to support Tor bridges.” Managed by volunteers, these relays “allow you to connect to the network, even if it is censored “Explains the publisher in a press release. What he made possible, using his internal resources and those of the foundation Tor Project.

A simple feature to activate

To go further, Brave wants to strengthen the community of volunteers ready to join the effort. Its objective: to democratize access to the Internet more broadly and to support Tor. ” Starting with Brave 1.47, we’re making it easier for our users by allowing them to share their internet connections [grâce à] the Snowflake extension » that it is possible to «install one-click activate “, details the company. From Tor Project, it allows any internet user located in a country where Tor is not blocked to create a temporary proxy for another user. To activate it:

1. Make sure to run Brave in version 1.47 minimum,
2. Go to brave://settings/privacy,
3. Above “Use bridges”, enable “Help other users connect to the Tor network”.

Once the extension is configured, a snowflake icon appears in Brave’s extensions menu. A simple click on it gives access to a slider to activate or deactivate it.

Brave was keen to reassure that “ computers [et navigateurs, NDLR] used for this functionality only transmit encrypted messages between computers on the Tor network and remote users ”, of which they do not store any information. The machines of the volunteers do not connect directly to websites on behalf of remote users” and ” volunteer IP addresses are not published anywhere also recalled Brave.

Sources: Brave.com, support.brave.com, Bleepingcomputer.com