Onion Routing

Not all Privacy Enhancing Technologies are new – but this one is probably new to you. Onion routing was developing in the 1990’s by the US government and is the basis for the Tor Network. Onion routing does one thing very well: it masks your actual IP address. While you can use a VPN for this purpose, onion routing adds a different layer of anonymity – and it’s just a cool technology. Today I’ll explain how it works, how to use it, and the pros and cons of doing so.

In other news: Bitly is leveraging its URL-shortening empire to monetize your links; a major car company is experimenting with in-car pop up ads; a cautionary tale about law enforcement’s access to private phone data; Russian spies are using a clever new phishing technique to gain access to Microsoft 365 accounts; Apple pulls its Advanced Data Protection feature from the UK market in response to demands to ‘backdoor’ its encryption; and whatever your political beliefs, the chaos and careless changes made by the DOGE group are seriously undermining national security.

Article Links

1. [tedium.co] Broken Bits https://tedium.co/2025/02/07/bitly-terms-of-service-change/
2. [techstory.in] Stellantis Introduces Pop-Up Ads in Vehicles, Sparking Outrage Among Owners https://techstory.in/stellantis-introduces-pop-up-ads-in-vehicles-sparking-outrage-among-owners/
3. [arstechnica.com] No warrant or crimes—but Oregon woman’s nudes were shared after illegal phone search https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/no-warrant-or-crimes-but-oregon-womans-nudes-were-shared-after-illegal-phone-search/
4. [arstechnica.com] Russian spies use device code phishing to hijack Microsoft accounts https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/02/russian-spies-use-device-code-phishing-to-hijack-microsoft-accounts/
5. [bbc.com] Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgj54eq4vejo
6. [schneier.com] DOGE as a National Cyberattack https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/02/doge-as-a-national.html
7. Tip of the Week: How Onion Routing Works: https://firewallsdontstopdragons.com/how-onion-routing-works/ 

Further Info

• Safe link shortener: https://kutt.it/
• Read before using the Tor Browser: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/tor/ 
• Tor Browser: https://www.torproject.org/download/ 
• Onion sites that don’t suck: https://github.com/neilzone/onion-sites-that-dont-suck 
• My book: https://fdsd.me/book 
• My newsletter: https://fdsd.me/newsletter 
• Support our mission! https://fdsd.me/support 
• Give the gift of privacy and security: https://fdsd.me/coupons 
• Recommend news stories: send to news [at] firewallsdontstopdragons.com 
• Send me your questions! https://fdsd.me/qna 
• Get your Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons Merch! https://fdsd.me/merch 

Table of Contents

Use these timestamps to jump to a particular section of the show.

• 0:00:07: News preview
• 0:02:19: Broken Bits
• 0:13:50: Stellantis Introduces Pop-Up Ads in Vehicles
• 0:20:28: Oregon woman’s nudes were shared after illegal phone search
• 0:28:03: Russian spies use device code phishing to hijack Microsoft accounts
• 0:35:07: Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row
• 0:45:58: DOGE as a National Cyberattack
• 0:59:54: Tip of the Week: Onion Routing
• 1:11:53: Wrap-up