Tor Browser 12.5 launches with accessibility improvements
Tor Browser 12.5 was released on June 22, 2023 to the public. The new version of the privacy-focused web browser that is based on Firefox ESR improves accessibility in several regards.
Existing users may select Menu > Help > About Tor Browser to check the installed version. The browser runs a check for updates when the Help page is opened and may download the latest version and install it, if an update is available.
Downloads are also provided on the official Tor Browser website.
Tor Browser 12.5
Accessibility has been a key focus of the update. Users of the browser find a new circuit display in Tor Browser 12.5. Tor Circuit lists the nodes of the connection from the browser to the target website.
Tor, by default, connects to three servers in different countries to help users stay anonymous while using the Internet.
A click on the new Tor Circuit button, situated on the left side of the site address, displays the details of the connection. Tor Browser displayed the information in the site information panel previously, which meant more clicks and less visibility for the feature.
The new display features flags, which helps identify locations of servers at a glance. The panel has also been updated for better compatibility with screen readers according to the blog post on the official site.
Existing users may also notice the new site icons for onion sites. Nowadays, access to onion sites is no longer exclusive to the Tor Browser. Applications like Brave support onion services as well and to take this into account, new icons were created to better reflect the diverse nature.
The third and final major change in Tor Browser, as announced on the official blog of the Tor Project, is an improved connection experience.
The team identified that some users of the browser found it difficult to connect to Tor when they navigated away from the startpage of the browser. A new Connect button is displayed in all tabs now next to the bookmarks button in the browser's address bar.
Tor Browser will also connect automatically when users configure a bridge in the Connection settings. The connection status is now also highlighted in the top right corner of the browser window if there is no established connection to the network.
The team notes that it completed the review of the browser's accessibility and started to implement fixes for issues that were discovered during the review. It is seeking testers that have access to screen readers and other assistive technologies.
The full post that lists the entire changelog of the Tor Browser 12.5 release is available here.
Now You: do you use Tor Browser? (via Born)
I use Tor for 95 percent of my web browsing, have been for a few years. Yes I have had some problems along the way but they got fixed eventually. This last update seems to have improved page load speed but download speeds are the same.
BTW Go through your settings people, a few of mine reverted to default after the update.
The honeypot browser. Stay away from it unless you want F.B.I at your stepdoor.
a nice release, glad you covered it here.
How the hell can be safe browsing using Tor nodes/onions or whatever they meant that are widely used by hackers and other kind of dangerous people so forth? :S
Isn’t it weird how Bitcoin is now acceptable even though the blockchain still has all those narcotic deals in it from the Silk road days, and how VPN’s are no longer demonized like they used to be along side Tor, but today Tor is still full of criminals (allegedly). It’s also weird how the biggest players on the dark web are Facebook and almost every news organization. Even more weird is the US Navy who built Tor in the first place. Ironically those that have never used it often claim that it’s full of criminals – try judging for yourself. It’s actually pretty boring.
Don’t you think it’s more to do with who has access to your browsing data than criminals? Just thirteen years ago Google moved to https. Initially they were pushed back and had to use https://encrypted.google.com because the traffic couldn’t be monitored. Similarly Facebook only moved to https just twelve years ago. Seems ludicrous now all those people complaining about using encryption.
Too many people got too used to the idea that they could spy on everyone and didn’t like getting pushed back – none of their business! Today TikTok is demonized but Facebook is not, so it’s okay to have American spyware, but not Chinese spyware on your phones…
What is the true role of those who spy? I mean it’s not preventing terrorism when they spy on the former German chancellor Angela Merkel or the French president Emmanuel Macron, is it? Perhaps if they used Tor then maybe it wouldn’t have happened. Just saying.
@Anonymous > “Today TikTok is demonized but Facebook is not.”
Facebook is still worst demonized than TikTok in very well deserved ways.
> “I mean it’s not preventing terrorism when they spy on the former German chancellor Angela Merkel or the French president Emmanuel Macron, is it?”
Merkel and Macron, the first blocking the east side to make Putin happy and the other blocking the south one to make Merkel happy. The worst couple possible years ago.
“Merkel and Macron, the first blocking the east side to make Putin happy and the other blocking the south one to make Merkel happy. The worst couple possible years ago.”
Not really opinionated one way or the other, but what’s that got to do with the United States spying on politicians and presidents? Are you saying it’s okay to spy on heads of state because of their different political views? Seems quite a different use case from catching criminals and terrorists, unless you actually believe that Merkel and Macron are terrorists…
@Anonymous, everyone spies, the problem is when you spy on your friends.
“everyone spies, the problem is when you spy on your friends.”
Agreed, and that’s one more reason to protect your privacy. You cannot trust anyone. Heck, even the Food Standards Agency in the UK has the right to spy on it’s citizens! More to the point these agencies often break the laws when gathering all this information:
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/uk-landmark-ruling-confirms-gchq-mass-surveillance-violated-human-rights
They always get away with it, deny any wrong doing, perpetually ignore the law, and when the rulings don’t suit they just change the laws to suit them – often retrospectively. You would be outraged if politicians did this, so why do they get away with it?
Personally I see no difference between security agencies and those that peddle ransomware, spyware, malware, and tracking – they all spy on other people. They all use the same techniques to hack, harass, manipulate, and destroy.
There is nothing good that come from this.
It’s a good point @John G. – the problem is that the criminals who use Tor bring a lot of unwanted attention and a lot of attempts at surveillance and de-anonymization to the network. The criminals also sometimes try to hijack the Tor infrastructure themselves to steal assets like digital coins.
It’s worth reading a few articles to get an idea of the magnitude of the problem. Bruce Schneier’s 2017 blog post ‘Someone Is Running Lots of Tor Relays’ is one. ‘Was threat actor KAX17 de-anonymizing the Tor network?’ by Pieter Arntz of Malwarebytes is another. ‘Is Tor Trustworthy and Safe?’ by Sven Taylor is a good summary of all the Tor court cases that highlights the privacy problems with Tor.
@Andy Prough, thanks for the provided blogs to read, that’s what I meant. :]
Literally just don’t go looking for it
You question demonstrates your total ignorance of the purpose of the TOR project.
If you would really like to learn and understand it go to https://www.torproject.org/
@Tachy, I beg your pardon, it’s not total ignorance but the info that appears in some sites, for example: “Tor provides more anonymity than a regular web browser by hiding your IP address and passing your web traffic through three layers of encryption. However, Tor is not completely secure. Using it can put you at risk of data leaks, spying, and man-in-the-middle attacks via malicious exit nodes.”, Updated Jun 12, 2023, so it’s a recent article by the way.
[https://www.top10vpn.com/guides/is-tor-safe/]
@ John G.
Your information is false and incorrect and your sources of information or proof or so-called “facts” is also incorrect.
Tor serves many purposes, just because some shady people use it, doesn’t mean it’s bad.
Following your logic, weapons are evil, because some deranged people use them to hurt others, same logic – cars and motorbikes are evil because some idiots hit people with them and kill them. Food is also evil, because you can choke on it, water is also evil, because you can drown in it.
Everything is evil and you should be very afraid, just hold your breath for 12 hours and don’t move a muscle, you may become a robot Power Ranger.
@testesweat, the use or Tor browser is suspicious by itself. One thing is the need of privacy that it’s a concern nowadays, and other very different is the need of be hidden to do prosecuted behaviors. That’s not the same. If you dislike demons, just not enter at hell.