How can I preserve my privacy

Scuttlebutt does not require to use your real name. You can use whatever you like. Connecting to other peers to exchange gossip messages will reveal your IP and might be used to de-anonymize you.

Luckily scuttlebutt has built in support for TOR. You need to be running the TOR daemon for scuttlebutt to relay messages through the onion network. If you want secure scuttlebutt to ONLY connect to other TOR nodes, you need to pass a –tor-only flag when running sbot.

You can find a list pubs available over TOR at the wiki. Please note that you might need to contact the person running it for an invite.

Please note this is not an easy way to game the system or spam it. Scuttlebutt already has a great system for blocking users.

Please note that even when using TOR the (normal rules)[https://www.whonix.org/wiki/DoNot] for staying anonymous still applies though.

What other cool things can I do with TOR?

Glad you asked.

If you configure TOR as a hidden service and redirect port 8008 to localhost 8008 then your sbot service will be available over TOR. Add the following to /etc/tor/torrc:

HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/ HiddenServicePort 8008 127.0.0.1:8008

And reload tor, then your onion address will be available in /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/hostname.

Besides hiding your IP and doing end-to-end encryption, TOR also does location transparency. Meaning your hostname will always stay the same no matter where you are connected, and anyone can connect to you directly. No need to open ports in your firewall!

This means that its possible to do p2p connections without pubs and talk direcly to your friends. If you create an invite from your machine (you probably need "allowPrivate": true in ~/.ssb/config), replace the ip or hostname with your onion adress and send that to a friend. They will be able to connect directly to you and start receiving messages straight away, assuming your machine is running of course.