I tried Tor for the first time to see if I could find some public info on someone. A completely innocuous search for a government record immediately came up with a VERY inappropriate site with pics I wish I hadn’t have seen. I deleted all history, but I don’t want those thumbnails on my device. Idk if those thumbnails are saved or not. Doesn’t anyone know for sure?
I thought you would have to intentionally search for things like that, but I was wrong. It’s very disturbing how prevalent it must be to come up with just the search of a name.
No site data is not stored in your phone storage unless you download something. Browser do cache some resources but it is not accessible without root. For a safer side open the app details page and hit the clear cache button for your browser.
Don’t worry about it too much OP. The other guy is right about it being cleared eventually from your cache, but the FBI has more important things to do than go after people who were unwittingly exposed to what I presume are illegal materials.
I’ve got to ask though OP… is your post really accurate? You’ve got to try pretty hard to find that kind of stuff on Tor. .onion sites aren’t indexed like normal ones, and there are no huge search engines like there are on the clearnet. If you really were just looking for public records, Tor seems pretty unnecessary to me.
As I replied to the other comment, I simply searched a family member’s name. I didn’t really understand the results because they’re not like regular search engines. I clicked on the first one and I just saw a LOT of very underage pics. I freaked out and immediately closed the browser. I was shocked that it was so easy to accidentally come across those things.
I’m not doubting you or saying you’re lying but Tor’s default search engine is still just normal DuckDuckGo. There are some search engines that index .onion sites, but they’re not common and the overwhelming majority of them (in my experience) nuke any links to CSAM or related materials
Yeah i am with you on this op’s story has a lot of plot holes . And that’s not how you search onion sites.
Yeah dude is sticking to his story but searching someones name isn’t how you find CSAM. Funny it happened the first time he used tor too 🙄 searching a person’s name on DuckDuckGo.
OP for the sake of this earth I hope you’re young. Please don’t do that again. Don’t bother trying to change my mind, I’m not going to believe you, just don’t do it again.
Edit: In fact just delete this thread, because now you’re admitting (probably not via tor) you viewed CSAM. If you keep looking at it, then you will eventually get caught, and your name will be on an inmate search website. They put their top guys and girls on 2 things: child abuse onions which is where they use the serious 0days to catch everyone, and drug markets.
Yeah op didn’t think it through before posting. But also they could’ve been visiting other illigal onion sites for acceptible needs such as drugs and accidentally saw this and panicked.
Browser cache is saved to storage, though Tor tries not do that for privacy reasons. However, there’s no telling if it succeeds because of things like swap files and SSD sector relocations.
Android saves screencaps of applications when you go to the app switcher. If you opened the app switcher while the illegal stuff was open, a thumbnail of that thumbnail may still be on your phone. I don’t know how iOS handles these previews.
As for the legal risk to you: if you were using Tor, you probably won’t be arrested. It’s theoretically possible the authorities just happened to have infected that particular site with malware at the moment you visited it, but I highly doubt you would be that unlucky. In the worst case scenario, the police will take your electronic devices, scan them for further illegal material, find nothing, and let you go.
I’m not sure what name you have to search to find the kind of inappropriate pictures you’re talking about, but if sites are that out in the open about it, the pictures in question may not actually be illegal. Something being disgusting does not necessarily make them illegal; for instance, there are plenty of people who are grossed the hell out by sites like wikiFeet but there is nothing too illegal about it.
If do you think the images you found may be illegal (child abuse material and such), the relevant authorities might appreciate an anonymous tip. There are websites that will take reports like that through an online form you can fill out through Tor if you don’t want your tip to be traced back to you.
Thanks for your comment. I searched a name. I’m not going to post the name but it’s not a famous name. It’s a family member. The pics were of severely underage kids. I would love to tell authorities, but idk how you do that without looking guilty of something. I’m just totally shocked that it’s so easy to find those things, even when you’re not looking for them.
Oof, that’s awful.
Unless the police are already aware, you can consider telling the truth (maybe after consulting with some kind of legal profession) about searching the name and finding the pictures that way. I’m sure the police around me would be more interested in taking down such material than in a concerned family member keeping their eyes on the case, but you’ll have to evaluate how much you trust your local police department to do the right thing.
Again, if anything, you can probably report this stuff anonymously online if you use Tor browser.
I’m just totally shocked that it’s so easy to find those things, even when you’re not looking for them.
Lemmy has had some troll spam CSAM across various communities every few weeks. Some people are just fucked up in the head, posting illegal stuff online to get a rise out of people.
