The gateway operator
The only profile here where the exposure exists whether or not the operator intends any harm.
- What they want
- Traffic. Some want nothing else, which is what makes this profile awkward.
- How they earn
- Advertising, or credentials, depending on who is running it. From outside there is no way to tell which.
- What it costs them
- A server and a domain. The proxying itself is simple.
- How you meet them
- A site offering to open onion addresses in an ordinary browser, usually by appending a suffix, marketed as an easier way in.
- What gives them away
- Nothing, and nothing needs to. Everything you send passes through their machine in a form they can read.
- What stops them
- Using the proper client. A few minutes once, and the entire category disappears.
Why an honest operator does not fix it
A gateway that could not read your traffic could not forward it. The exposure is the mechanism rather than a flaw in it, so the question is not whether the operator is trustworthy today.
And an honest operator is still one who can be compromised, compelled or replaced. Any of those affects everyone who used the gateway, retroactively, because the traffic already passed through.
What else it costs
- Anonymity from the destination. The connection arrives from the gateway, so the protection is protecting them.
- Anonymity from your own network. You visited an ordinary clearnet domain, which is visible in ways an onion connection is not.
- The ability to verify anything. Signature checking assumes the page reached you unmodified. Through a gateway it reached you via a party who could change anything.
- Knowing where you actually went. The gateway resolves the address, and you are trusting it to have gone where you asked.
Why people use them
Because installing a browser is an obstacle and people route around obstacles. That is a reasonable instinct in most contexts and a costly one here, because the obstacle was carrying the protection. The alternative is Tor Browser from the project directly with the installer signature checked, which takes a few minutes once and removes every item on this page.