Anonymity
Anonymity of using Monero can be divided into 2 parts:
- from your wallet to a remote node running Monero daemon
- from the Monero daemon to the Monero p2p network
Monerobox supports both parts therefore provides users total anonymity.
Monerobox has integrate torsocks so that users can run Monero daemon over Tor.
After running with torsocks, all the network traffic(including receiving blocks from p2p network and broadcasting transactions to the network) of monero daemon will go through Tor network, therefore it is usually slower.
It is recommended that a user sync the blockchain over clear net and then switch to Tor network only after the syncing is done.
The switching can be done on the Admin page of the web UI.
Part 2: Tor hidden service
Tor hidden service is a service running on Tor network.
It provides two-way anonymity as the server and the client do not each other's IP address.
It also protects users on a public Wi-Fi from eavesdropping/content inspection as data are encrypted before leaving the client and the destination is unknown.
It is better than TLS/SSL because the destination of TLS/SSL is known to any one who is snooping on your network.
Monerobox is running a Tor hidden service(version 3) and the onion address of hidden service can be found on the System Status page of the web UI.
Users can connect to their hidden service with addresses like
plutmmnr5mutesdwqr3pen7zk6ww64xpdmbd33pcxaxjwlildq7f3cad.onion on port 18081.
How to connect to the hidden service
To connect to hidden service, users need either tor browser or Orbot on android.
To test the availability of the hidden service of your monerobox, you can use tor browser to access your onion address with URL such as:
plutmmnr5mutesdwqr3pen7zk6ww64xpdmbd33pcxaxjwlildq7f3cad.onion:18081/get_info
You will then be asked to login, the login credential is monero and password is monerobox.
Upon successful login, you will see the JSON response from the hidden service similar to below:
Unfortunately, Tor support on mobile wallet is rather premature.
On Android phones, users will need Orbot with Monerujo which does not work well with Tor.
Hopefully, Monerujo will solve the open issues soon and release a Tor friendly version.