Re: [Tails-dev] review'n'merge: feature/7976-disallow-lan-in…

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Author: anonym
Date:  
To: The Tails public development discussion list
Subject: Re: [Tails-dev] review'n'merge: feature/7976-disallow-lan-in-tor-browser
On 05/26/2015 12:56 PM, anonym wrote:
> I guess we could see 1 as optional:
>
> * If we skip 1, then we can simply do what FoxyProxy does, i.e. add
> another bullet in the list of possible explanations for the
> connection error, e.g. "The Tor Browser blocks access to the local
> network bla bla".


I just realized that we may need to modify this page even if we do 1. If
we are on a network with a captive portal, start the Tor Browser despite
the warning that Tor isn't ready, and then enter the URL of our favorite
non-LAN web site, e.g. http://www.asdf.com, then we will still get the
"Unable to connect" page, but for a completely different reason, namely
that Tor was blocked from creating a circuit.

So, perhaps we should skip 1 and instead focus on a complete rewrite of
the "Unable to connect" page for all cases, and try to make it stand out
so users will not ignore it. Perhaps it would help if we changed the
header to "The Tor Browser was unable to connect", which is a bit less
generic; hopefully the words "Tor Browser" will be less easy to ignore.
And perhaps it could show the Tor onion (like in about:tor).

On this new page we would mention all common reasons for us getting
here, e.g.:

* Captive portal. In Tails we would also refer to the Unsafe Browser for
dealing with captive portals. Actually this whole bullet is only
relevant in Tails since "normal" Tor Browser users wouldn't even get
here since Tor Launcher would fail.
* LAN is blocked.
* "Tor circuits are sometimes slow and Tor exits are some times blocked,
retry with 'New Tor circuit for this site'"

Possibly some of the bullets from the original "Unable to connect" page
are still relevant. For reference, they are:

* The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a
few moments.
* If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network
connection.
* If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make
sure that Tor Browser is permitted to access the Web.

> * If we do 1, then we could dynamically change the page completely
> to something more specific given that we now know exactly what the
> error is, e.g.:


To show this very specific explanation when we have detected that the
user tried to visit a LAN address would still be nice. However, if we
can come up with the solve-it-all page above, that is harder for users
to ignore, then I don't think we need to bother about this.

Cheers!