Tip: How to use MyMonero over TOR

Hey Steemit,

I'd like to share this quick tip with you. I will admit it is a crude one but I think it should be known none the less. This trick also works for many other sites that block TOR.

MyMonero is the web wallet for Monero - the most popular privacy-oriented cryptocurrency. Now usually web wallets are not recommended, but this one uses your spend-keys client-side only so it's safer than most. You still have to surrender your 'view key' to the site, this somewhat compromises your privacy but as long as one also uses a VPN/TOR it should be fine. Of course it's even better to run a node yourself, sadly that is getting harder and harder with a several GB large blockchain. I will not get into why privacy is so important let's keep that for another article.

Now, if you try opening MyMonero through TOR, you will likely see this message:

Brilliant... so TOR is blocked. How ironic that a wallet for a privacy-focused coin blocks requests from TOR (network for privacy)! Their explanation given uh, bad exit nodes could steal your moneroj maybe does not satisfy me. Impostor sites are going to be an issue no matter if you're using TOR, they can also happen with VPNs, virus on your router, misspelled URL's, phishing via AdWords, etc. Really how this should, in my opinion, be addressed, is to educate users to always check they're on a secure HTTPS connection to mymonero.com and verify the certificate (green 'lock' icon in most browsers). This is the only way to be sure that you're really on MyMonero.

So how can we get around the TOR block? It's simple, as I found out by accident one time: press TOR browser's 'new identity' button and go to mymonero.com again, do this enough times until you've arrived on a working site. To do it quicker, set mymonero as your start page and use Ctrl+Shift+U shortcut for 'new identity'.

Wait, what?

Why does this work? My best guess is that MyMonero uses a public directory of TOR exit nodes to detect if you're using TOR, and they update their list maybe once a day or so. But the list of nodes changes all the time, so it's possible you'll hit a node that is not on MyMonero's list yet and won't be detected.

This method does have a varying degree of success - sometimes we can get in after a few tries, other times not. I suspect this has to do with the time of day, i.e. how long ago their tor exits list was last updated. The longer the time difference, the higher the chance for hitting an 'unknown' exit.

Do let me know if this worked for you! Until next time, phelix