As part of our semi-structured interviews, we asked our participants to draw how they believe Tor and onion services work. The resulting drawings are shown below, one row for each interview participant. The first column shows the mental models for Tor while the second column shows the corresponding model for onion services. Not all interviewees drew a sketch of onion services.
Regardless of their level of technical expertise, all our participants understood that Tor relies on sending network traffic over various hops before it reaches its destination. However, our recruitment strategy is biased towards participants that exhibit above-average knowledge about security and privacy.
| Tor sketch | Onion service sketch |
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Last update: 2017-12-15