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Privacy mode (Tor)

One command. Whole-session Tor. pai-privacy on flips every TCP connection and every DNS query on your PAI machine through the Tor network, at the iptables layer, with no per-app configuration. Your browser, your terminal, your AI tooling — all of it, Tor-routed, at once.

PAI Privacy Mode is an opt-in toggle that routes every outbound TCP connection and DNS query from your PAI session through the Tor network. One command (pai-privacy on) flips your whole session from direct-to-internet to fully Tor-routed. This guide documents exactly what the pai-privacy script does, what Privacy Mode protects against, where it falls short, and how it differs from running Tor Browser.

In this guide:

  • What Privacy Mode does at the packet level
  • How to enable, verify, and disable it
  • A side-by-side comparison of Privacy Mode and Tor Browser
  • A complete tutorial for a private browsing session
  • What Tor nodes are and how your traffic flows through them
  • Troubleshooting, limits, and common questions

Prerequisites: PAI is booted and has a working network connection. You will need sudo rights (the live user has them by default). No prior Tor knowledge is required.

[Session-only] [Requires sudo] [Not a Tails replacement]

What Privacy Mode actually does

When you run pai-privacy on, the pai-privacy script at /usr/local/bin/pai-privacy performs a sequence of system-level changes. The goal is simple: force every TCP packet and DNS lookup from your machine to go through Tor, and refuse to route anything directly.

Here is the exact sequence, taken from the script itself:

  1. Start the Tor service with systemctl start tor. If Tor is already running, this is a no-op.
  2. Wait for Tor to bootstrap by polling https://check.torproject.org/api/ip through the SOCKS5 proxy on 127.0.0.1:9050. The script waits up to 30 seconds. If Tor cannot build a circuit in that window, it aborts.
  3. Install iptables NAT rules in the OUTPUT chain so that:
  4. Traffic to 127.0.0.0/8 (localhost) returns immediately and is never redirected.
  5. Traffic owned by the debian-tor system user returns immediately, so Tor itself can still reach the internet.
  6. All other TCP traffic is redirected to 127.0.0.1:9040 (Tor's transparent proxy port).
  7. All UDP traffic on port 53 (DNS) is redirected to 127.0.0.1:5353 (Tor's DNS port).
  8. Append TransPort 9040 and DNSPort 5353 to /etc/tor/torrc if they are not already there, then reload Tor. This is what makes transparent proxying possible.
  9. Create the flag file /tmp/.pai-privacy-mode. The waybar indicator watches for this file and displays the onion icon when it appears.

When you run pai-privacy off, the script flushes the OUTPUT chain of the NAT table (iptables -t nat -F OUTPUT) and deletes the flag file. Tor itself keeps running in the background. No application config is changed, no network interface is reset. Your traffic goes direct again.

Note

Privacy Mode is session-only. The flag file lives in /tmp, which is a tmpfs on PAI, so a reboot always leaves you in normal (non-private) mode. This is intentional — the default posture should be the one you explicitly chose.

Why transparent proxying matters

Transparent proxying at the iptables layer means your applications do not need to know Tor exists. Firefox, curl, wget, Open WebUI, and anything else you launch will transparently have their traffic rewritten to go through Tor. This is a much stronger guarantee than per-app SOCKS configuration, where one misconfigured app can leak.

Tip

If you only need a single app to use Tor (and nothing else), use torsocks firefox or torsocks curl directly. Privacy Mode is the right choice when you want everything forced through Tor.

How traffic flows through the Tor network

Tor stands for "The Onion Router". It is a volunteer-run network of around 7,000 relays worldwide that anonymizes TCP traffic by bouncing it through a chain of three relays. Each relay peels off one layer of encryption — hence "onion" — and only the final relay can see your plaintext destination.

A Tor circuit has three hops:

  • Entry guard — the first relay. It sees your real IP but does not know where you are going.
  • Middle relay — passes traffic between entry and exit. It sees neither your IP nor your destination.
  • Exit node — the last relay. It sees your destination (the website) but not your real IP.

No single relay knows both ends of the path. This is what gives Tor its anonymity property.

sequenceDiagram
    autonumber
    participant You as You (PAI)
    participant ISP as Your ISP
    participant Entry as Tor Entry
    participant Mid as Tor Middle
    participant Exit as Tor Exit
    participant Site as example.com

    Note over You,Site: Privacy Mode OFF
    You->>ISP: TCP to 93.184.216.34:443
    ISP->>Site: Direct connection
    Site-->>You: Response (ISP sees destination, site sees your IP)

    Note over You,Site: Privacy Mode ON
    You->>Entry: Encrypted packet (3 layers)
    ISP->>Entry: Sees "connection to Tor", not destination
    Entry->>Mid: Peels layer 1
    Mid->>Exit: Peels layer 2
    Exit->>Site: Peels layer 3, sends request
    Site-->>Exit: Response
    Exit-->>Mid: Encrypt back
    Mid-->>Entry: Encrypt back
    Entry-->>You: Final reply (site saw exit node IP)

The left half of the diagram is your normal browsing. The right half is what Privacy Mode gives you: your ISP sees you talking to a Tor entry guard (and nothing about what sites you load), and the websites you visit see a random exit node's IP, not yours.

Warning

Tor is an anonymizing network, not a magic cloak. Your ISP can still see you are using Tor. In most countries this is fine. In some countries (China, Iran, and others), Tor use itself is a signal. For bridge/obfuscation options, see the Tor Project documentation.

How to enable Privacy Mode

There is one primary interface: the pai-privacy command.

# Enable Privacy Mode (route everything through Tor)
sudo pai-privacy on

# Disable Privacy Mode (direct connection restored)
sudo pai-privacy off

# Check current state and Tor exit IP
sudo pai-privacy status

Expected output when enabled:

Privacy Mode: ON
Tor IP: 185.220.101.47

Expected output when disabled:

Privacy Mode: OFF

Verifying it is actually working

Three independent checks confirm Privacy Mode is live:

  1. The waybar status bar shows the onion indicator (an onion icon labeled Tor) in the top or bottom bar.
  2. pai-privacy status prints Privacy Mode: ON and a Tor exit IP.
  3. Visiting https://check.torproject.org in Firefox shows the green "Congratulations. This browser is configured to use Tor." banner.

Tip

If you want a quick one-liner sanity check from the terminal, run curl https://api.ipify.org before and after toggling Privacy Mode. The IP should change from your real one to a Tor exit.

Privacy Mode versus Tor Browser

PAI ships both Privacy Mode (system-wide Tor) and Tor Browser (a hardened Firefox). They solve overlapping but different problems. Here is the same task done with each, so you can see when to pick which.

With Privacy Mode (Firefox through Tor):

# Turn on system-wide Tor routing
sudo pai-privacy on

# Launch regular Firefox — now Tor-routed
firefox https://news.example/ &

You get Tor-level IP anonymity, but Firefox still has your timezone, your font list, your canvas fingerprint, and your screen size. A determined tracker can still fingerprint you across visits.

With Tor Browser:

# Launch Tor Browser (bundled on PAI)
tor-browser

You get Tor-level IP anonymity plus aggressive anti-fingerprinting: spoofed timezone, standardized user-agent, canvas randomization, NoScript by default, and a letterboxed window so screen size cannot identify you.

With Privacy Mode:

sudo pai-privacy on
curl https://api.example/data

The curl call is transparently proxied through Tor at the iptables layer. No flags, no config.

With Tor Browser:

Tor Browser cannot help here — it is a browser, not a general proxy. You would fall back to torsocks curl https://api.example/data, which requires Tor to be running but does not require Privacy Mode.

With Privacy Mode:

sudo pai-privacy on
wget https://example/bigfile.iso

Works, but will be slow. Tor is bandwidth-limited (typically 1 to 5 MB/s per circuit). Large downloads also stress the Tor network, which is rude to other users.

With Tor Browser:

Same bandwidth limits apply. For large files, the right answer is often: do the download without Tor on a different machine, then move the file to your PAI USB.

When to use each

Scenario Privacy Mode Tor Browser
Hiding your IP from a website Yes Yes
Preventing browser fingerprinting No Yes
JavaScript isolation / NoScript No Yes
Routing non-browser apps (curl, wget, Open WebUI) Yes No
Routing Firefox specifically Yes N/A (use Tor Browser)
Protects against a determined state actor Partial Partial (stronger)
Works for one-off quick checks Yes Yes

Tip

For serious anonymity work, use both. Run sudo pai-privacy on to force every process through Tor, and use Tor Browser for the actual browsing so fingerprinting is also defeated.

Tutorial: browse privately with Privacy Mode enabled

Goal: enable Privacy Mode, confirm you are routed through Tor, do some browsing, then cleanly disable it.

What you need:

  • A booted PAI session with a working internet connection
  • A terminal (Super+Enter on PAI's default Sway config)

  • Firefox already open or ready to launch

  • Open a terminal and enable Privacy Mode.

sudo pai-privacy on

Expected output:

[pai] Enabling Privacy Mode (Tor)...
[pai] Privacy Mode ENABLED — all traffic routes through Tor

The command may take up to 30 seconds on the first run while Tor builds its first circuit.

  1. Verify Privacy Mode is active.
sudo pai-privacy status

You should see:

Privacy Mode: ON
Tor IP: 185.220.101.47

The IP will differ each time — it is whatever Tor exit node your circuit happens to use.

  1. Look at the waybar. You should see the onion indicator near the clock. This confirms that the /tmp/.pai-privacy-mode flag file exists and waybar has picked it up.

Waybar status bar showing the onion Tor icon on the right side next to the clock, with a green color indicating Privacy Mode is active PAI's waybar with Privacy Mode ON. The onion icon is the single visual cue that your traffic is Tor-routed.

  1. Open Firefox and go to https://check.torproject.org. You should see the green "Congratulations. This browser is configured to use Tor." banner.

Firefox displaying check.torproject.org with the green congratulations banner confirming Tor is in use, along with the exit relay IP address The Tor Project's check page confirms your traffic exits through a Tor relay.

  1. Do your browsing. Every tab, every DNS lookup, every background request goes through Tor. Try a few sites to get a feel for the latency — typically 500 ms to 2 seconds per page load.

  2. When you are done, disable Privacy Mode.

sudo pai-privacy off

Expected output:

[pai] Disabling Privacy Mode...
[pai] Privacy Mode DISABLED — direct connection restored

The onion icon vanishes from waybar within a few seconds.

  1. Confirm you are back to direct routing.
curl -s https://api.ipify.org

You should now see your real IP.

What just happened? You installed a set of iptables NAT rules that rewrote every outbound TCP packet to land at Tor's transparent proxy, then removed those rules when you were done. Tor itself kept running the whole time, but without the iptables rules it simply listens and does nothing.

Next steps: Read about Tor Browser for hardened anonymous browsing, and offline mode if you want the opposite — no network at all.

What Privacy Mode protects, and what it does not

What is protected

  • Browser traffic from Firefox, Chromium, or any GUI browser you launch.
  • DNS queries, which are rewritten to Tor's DNSPort (5353). There is no DNS leak to your ISP.
  • Terminal tools — curl, wget, git clone over HTTPS, ssh to arbitrary hosts.
  • Open WebUI's own network calls — for example if you have enabled RAG web search, those calls go through Tor.
  • Background updates and telemetry — if any process tries to phone home, it is Tor-routed, not direct.

What is NOT protected

  • Model weights already on disk. If you pulled llama3.1:8b from the Ollama registry before enabling Privacy Mode, that download was logged by your ISP and by the Ollama registry. Privacy Mode cannot retroactively anonymize past network activity.
  • Local-only traffic. Localhost traffic (127.0.0.0/8) is exempted from Tor routing — this is correct behavior. Your Ollama to Open WebUI loop runs on localhost and was already private.
  • Browser fingerprinting. Firefox in Privacy Mode is still regular Firefox. Your canvas hash, WebGL vendor, font list, timezone, and window size all remain identifying. Use Tor Browser for anti-fingerprinting.
  • Clock and system info leaks. Tor Browser spoofs these; Firefox-through-Tor does not.
  • Side-channel correlation attacks. A global passive adversary who can see traffic entering and leaving the Tor network can sometimes correlate by timing and volume. This is beyond the threat model of most users, but real.
  • You clicking "sign in with Google". Tor hides your IP, not your voluntarily-given identity. Logging in to any account you have used before links that session to you.

Danger

Privacy Mode is not a replacement for Tails. Tails enforces Tor routing at the firewall level from boot, ships with a carefully audited Tor configuration, and has a decade of scrutiny behind it. PAI's Privacy Mode is lighter-weight and opt-in. It is great for day-to-day privacy. It is not the right tool if you are a journalist protecting a source from a state adversary.

Troubleshooting

Tor will not start

Run journalctl -u tor -n 50 and look at the last 50 log lines. The most common causes are:

  • A corrupted /etc/tor/torrc (perhaps from a previous pai-privacy on that was killed mid-run). Reinstall the default file or remove the TransPort and DNSPort lines and let pai-privacy re-add them.
  • A port collision on 9040, 9050, or 5353. Check sudo ss -tulpn | grep -E '9040|9050|5353'.
  • No internet connectivity at all. Tor cannot bootstrap without a working connection to the outside world.

Browsing is slow

Tor adds three hops of latency and is bandwidth-limited by the slowest relay in your circuit. Typical page loads are 500 ms to 3 seconds. To try a new circuit:

# Ask Tor to build a fresh circuit
sudo killall -HUP tor

Tor will pick different relays on the next connection. In Tor Browser, use New Identity from the menu for the same effect.

Some sites block Tor outright

Many sites (Cloudflare-protected sites in particular) detect Tor exit nodes and either CAPTCHA you, show reduced functionality, or refuse entirely. This is a Tor-wide problem, not a PAI bug. Workarounds:

  • Use Tor Browser's circuit menu to pick a different exit node.
  • Accept that some sites are unreachable via Tor and disable Privacy Mode for those specific tasks.

Waybar indicator stuck after toggle off

If the onion icon is still showing after pai-privacy off, check whether /tmp/.pai-privacy-mode still exists:

ls -la /tmp/.pai-privacy-mode
# If the file exists:
sudo rm /tmp/.pai-privacy-mode

The waybar module polls this file and updates within a few seconds of its disappearance.

Practical usage patterns

Pattern A — quick private research. Toggle Privacy Mode on, open Tor Browser, do the research, close Tor Browser, toggle Privacy Mode off.

Pattern B — all-session privacy. Turn Privacy Mode on immediately after boot and use PAI normally for the whole session. Every app is Tor-routed. Shut down when done.

Pattern C — model management first, then privacy. Leave Privacy Mode OFF while pulling large models (ollama pull llama3.1:8b). Once models are in place, toggle Privacy Mode ON and do all subsequent work privately. Tor throughput is typically too slow for multi-gigabyte downloads.

Frequently asked questions

Does Privacy Mode hide my IP address?

Yes, from the websites you visit. A site you load while Privacy Mode is ON sees the IP of a Tor exit node, not your real IP. Your ISP, on the other hand, sees that you are connecting to the Tor network — it does not see where that traffic ends up. If an observer needs to know neither that you are using Tor, they would need to layer a bridge or a VPN on top, which is outside the scope of Privacy Mode.

Can my employer see I am using PAI with Privacy Mode on?

On a corporate network, your employer can see that a device on their network is connecting to known Tor entry guards. They cannot see which sites you load or what data you send. Whether this is acceptable depends on your workplace's acceptable use policy. PAI itself runs entirely from USB and does not touch the host disk, so booting PAI is separate from using Privacy Mode — the latter is the part that is detectable as "Tor traffic".

Is Privacy Mode always on?

No. PAI boots with Privacy Mode OFF by default. You must explicitly run sudo pai-privacy on each session. This is a deliberate design choice: the default posture is the one you chose, not one chosen for you. The flag file lives in /tmp, so a reboot always resets you to OFF.

Does the AI model go through Tor?

No, because the AI model runs locally. When you chat with Ollama through Open WebUI, the traffic is 127.0.0.1 to 127.0.0.1 — it never leaves your machine. Privacy Mode's iptables rules explicitly exempt 127.0.0.0/8 from redirection, so local AI stays fast and private. The only way AI traffic would touch Tor is if you pointed Open WebUI at a remote model provider, which is a non-default configuration.

Why is Privacy Mode slower?

Tor adds three network hops (entry, middle, exit) between you and every destination. Each hop adds latency, and the slowest relay in your circuit caps your bandwidth. Typical Tor throughput is 1 to 5 MB/s and page-load latency is 500 ms to 3 seconds. This is the cost of anonymity — the same packets pass through three volunteer-run servers, each encrypting and decrypting, before reaching the target.

What is the difference between Privacy Mode and incognito or private browsing?

They solve completely different problems. Incognito / private browsing is a browser feature that prevents the browser from saving your history, cookies, and cache locally. It does nothing to hide your traffic from your ISP or the websites you visit — those see exactly the same IP and request patterns as a normal session. Privacy Mode is a network-level feature that routes your traffic through Tor so your ISP and destination sites cannot see who you are. The two are complementary, not substitutes.

Does Privacy Mode protect against fingerprinting?

No. Privacy Mode operates at the network layer. It does not change what your browser sends to websites. Your Firefox still reports the same user-agent, the same list of installed fonts, the same canvas and WebGL fingerprints, and the same window size and timezone. A site that fingerprints you while Privacy Mode is on will still recognize you on a later visit. For anti-fingerprinting, use Tor Browser, which ships with mitigations specifically designed to make all Tor Browser users look identical.