Lantern - An app to end censorship

Hello and thank you for telling us about the project.

But, sadly, there is a problem with it: it requires you to use a google accont which I find counter-productive.

If there is an alternative to using google, please tell.

Thank you.

It doesn't seem to have any advantage over Tor, unless it's faster, maybe. Isn't access with anonymity better than just access?

A number of red flags popped out to me, aside from the dependency on Google services (which they claim they will remove soon[1])

Readme[2] claims that it requires Oracle JDK specifically, and OpenJDK will not work. As is typical, they don't explain why this is the case. Now, I know Java people want everyone to use Oracle JDK as a matter of habit, so maybe it will work with OpenJDK and they just never bothered to test it.

Readme also states that the installer is built with proprietary tools. This isn't a problem if you build it from source. It may or may not depend on Chrome (apparently they removed this in a later version) or it may or may not bundle a Chromium based UI (which is not apparent).

The project also specifically targets Ubuntu "Linux" instead of GNU/Linux in general, which shouldn't cause problems but is a red flag for me in general.

[1] https://github.com/getlantern/lantern/issues/1717
[2] https://github.com/getlantern/lantern

"Readme also states that the installer is built with proprietary tools."

Normally, we don't even know whether the binaries on our system are really made of the correct sources or not.
Thousands of free software project may also use proprietary tools for compiling but don't state it explicitly in the readme file. Don't know if that's really a sensible consideration.

I believe it works in OpenJDK: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lantern-users-en/ac7gttkqjzo.

can't you just use TOR?

Honestly, The product sounds real good in theory, but is about bandwidth and accessibility to my computer so others could throttle on it, and for me it needs more {CLARITY} when it comes to privacy, security and integrity.

At least in thor is more clear and specific, If you follow the instructions of thor to avoid detection and maintain complete anomity, I dont see, why should install such product without been testing throughly.

Here is another concern, What does FSF has to say about it? The FSF is already sposoring thor and not lantern.

There is a old saying, when stuff sounds to be truth, is when you are been deceived and slime....

Thor had a rough start, but when they fix there errors, and fine tune such program it does the job.

Try to do a trace route using thor, or scan port a web site using thor, you will notice the origin IP is someone elses.....

gary02121993 wrote:
> Fight For The Internet (FFTF) told me about it via mail subscription.
> Here's the link: https://www.getlantern.org/

For those asking about the difference between Tor and Lantern, Lantern
is a censorship circumvention mechanism but not an anonymity network.

Lantern can also be used as a Tor "Pluggable Transport" as an
alternative to obfs3, scramblesuit, flashproxy and others. However,
obfs3 is still most recommended by the Tor project for censored users.

https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/PluggableTransports

Andrew.