Twitter’s Tor service, a version of the site accessible in countries where social networking is banned, has gone down after the company failed to renew its certificate.
Twitter’s Onion site’s certificate expired on March 6th, just days before the site’s one year anniversary. Pavel Zoneff, director of strategic communications for the Tor Project, a nonprofit organization beyond the global network of anonymity, told TechCrunch that the site “does not appear to be available anymore, with no plans to update it.”
Twitter’s Tor site now warns visitors that their certificate has expired. This is not recommended, this is not recommended. A Twitter error page is displayed.
“The Tor Project reached out to Twitter to consider bringing the Onion version of their social media platform back online,” Zoneff added. “For those of you who rely on Onion Services for an extra layer of protection and assurance that you are accessing the content you are looking for, you now have one less way to access it safely. But the need for Onion services, the use of privacy-focused browsers to protect people’s anonymity, and other forms of encryption still persist.”
Twitter launched its now-defunct Tor service days after the social network was blocked in Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. Tor is also known as the “onion router”. This is because we encrypt your internet traffic in many layers and route it to thousands of servers around the world, giving you anonymity and circumventing censorship systems.
Twitter did not disclose whether the launch of the Tor service was directly related to the blocking in Russia, but a company spokesperson told TechCrunch at the time that making the service more accessible was for the company to “continue.” It’s a real priority,” he said.
Twitter has since dismantled its communications department and was unable to comment on this article.
The company’s decision to expire its Tor service raises more concerns about Twitter’s commitment to user privacy and security under Elon Musk’s leadership. All of the company’s security, privacy and compliance leaders left the company less than two weeks after Musk’s tumultuous acquisition. Already inadequate security, Twitter has long-standing agreements with Twitter to ensure privacy protections, according to a complaint filed by former security chief Pyter “Madge” Zacco to a whistleblower. It also faces increased scrutiny from the FCC.
Twitter has taken its Tor service offline, but several other popular websites have onion addresses, including the BBC, Facebook, and TechCrunch. Cybersecurity researcher Alec Muffett, who helped Twitter launch its Tor site last year, has an extensive list available on his GitHub repository.
