Comment by saurik

And yet, Tor--even in its browser form--uses three hops, despite not having global passive adversaries in its attacker model. I guess I thereby don't understand your thesis, which seems--to me--a bit muddled... you are saying Tor does not solve all problems (it would have to be the opposite to make sense... Tor hops would need to protect concrete models that Obscura doesn't solve, providing an excuse for the fewer hops) and you are saying users give up anonymity in other ways anyway (which is both a non-sequitur and also a bit wrong, as I will assert someone can be happy giving their real name and driver's license to Facebook but not be happy divulging their current IP address, as the many varied forms of private personal identification are not inherently fungible; and like, Tor being a browser doesn't even solve this: that solves yet a different problem that is out of scope for the hops)...

...but the only reason you cite for why 2 and not 3 is that 3 is slower than 2. You know what's even slower than 3? 4! ;P But AFAIO Tor doesn't, in fact, think "more hops is better than fewer": they believe there is a single correct number of hops, and that if you add even more hops you actually can cause new problems with their structure? Regardless, I think we all agree that 1 is slower than 2, and yet 1 definitely isn't enough ;P.

So, for a given attacker model, I contend that there seems to be a lower bound on the number of required hops... and therefore either there is a specific attacker Tor solves that this doesn't, or they are wrong on the number of hops required to protect against their attacker model. I am willing to buy either, but do feel this needs to be explained by projects that go with 2, as the Tor people seem very sane to me ;P.

(Regardless, I am very curious about the structure of the "partnership" with your company... would you be open to partnerships with other companies? Is there anything special you added on your side to make this partnership work that maybe could be generalized and taken advantage of by other projects? I am not convinced at all by Obscura, but I do like Mullvad, and have been wanting to work with you all for quite a while now ;P.)