When a website can be accessed via a clearnet and a .onion url, is there a benefit to making use of the .onion url?
Context:
I am considering pointing a “.onion” url to my instance (mander.xyz).
I did some tests with and it seems like mlmym works well with JavaScript disabled. Since JavaScript is often disabled in the tor browser, I could make the .onion url point at that front-end instead.
This would be fun to do, but I wonder if there is a practical benefit to the “.onion” url as opposed to simply accessing the clearnet url via the tor browser.
EDIT: I went ahead and created an onion URL to try out, but I would still like to know if there is an actual advantage to .onion urls:
http://mandermybrewn3sll4kptj2ubeyuiujz6felbaanzj3ympcrlykfs2id.onion/
Yes this has several benefits:
- some users prefer not to reveal their IP to your server
- some users prefer not to be tracked by their internet provider (or by Google via DNS on Android, or by local wifi users or by who knows who)
- your onion site is censorship resistant (some users in Russia or else might need it)
- your onion can be ddos-resistent (if you enable POW)
- your clearnet site might be unavailable for other reasons (unrenewed DNS entry or expired certificate)
I think staying inside the tor network helps reduce the load on exit nodes, which helps all tor users who need to access the clearnet. I think there is even a HTTP header that can be put on the clearnet site that will put a button on the tor browser that tells users that there is a onion available.
Ah - does the exit node participate at all when accessing a .onion? Or is it skipped altogether?
And the HTTP header thing is very cool, I did not know about that!
I have added the header to the site and it works!
I just added the following line to the location / {} block in the https server section:
add_header Onion-Location http://mandermybrewn3sll4kptj2ubeyuiujz6felbaanzj3ympcrlykfs2id.onion/$request_uri;
