Tor Browser Bundle 3.5rc1 Released

Constantly removing functionality is just going to make users stick to old and less secure versions. What is "not safe" or "useless" in your academic discussions may not be so in every context, or the safety risk may be offset by another problem the user needs to solve.

For example, plenty of exit nodes ironically originate from countries that block certain websites. If I want to visit one of these websites and Tor happens to pick a circuit with an exit node that blocks it, then in this new TBB my choices are to wait ten minutes or to erase my entire browser session.

This is just one example of Tor becoming less useful over time, a process which started with the release of the original browser bundle and has continued since. Casual users who want to visit the "deep web" once to see if there are really secret alien drug dealing child porn stars and the mythical Syrian rebels who only use Tor once a month when they get injured on the battlefield are being promoted over habitual users who want to preserve their privacy consistently and aren't afraid to learn a bit about how Tor works. You're consistently pissing off the exact audience that knows Tor, might like to contribute to it, and will defend it from threats.

This new Tor Launcher is frankly uglier and less inviting than Vidalia too for any type of user. I don't understand why a superior program was replaced with an inferior version.

Things that really need to be changed:

1. Let users restart Firefox (after it has crashed) without reconnecting to the Tor network. Firefox will always be buggy so this is completely necessary. This was easy to do before Tor Browser was made to exit if not started from the main bundle executable.

2. Give us Vidalia back or an adequate substitute. Using Tor in practice is a frustrating gauntlet of IP blocks, CAPTCHAs, CloudFlare error pages, and exit node censorship. A little circuit control eases the pain. It would be even better if we could have .exit back and if users could pick the circuit their next connection would run through.

3. If you're not going to make it easier to run multiple copies of TBB on the same computer then at least quit making it harder. I could change the ports on the old one but this one just won't play nicely.

These would be small steps toward restoring the large amount of functionality that has been slowly stripped from Tor and TBB over time. Please consider wrapping warnings around features you think are dangerous instead of just outright yanking them. It makes TBB jarring to use. I am a BTC early adopter and would probably donate a good amount to Tor but not with the way it's been going.