I’ve been rebuilding my IRC bouncer setup and as part of this process I’ve decided to connect to IRC via onion services where possible. This setup isn’t intended to provide anonymity as once I’m connected I’m going to identify to NickServ anyway. I guess it provides a little protection in that my IP address shouldn’t be visible in that gap between connection and a cloak activating, but there’s so many other ways that my identity could leak.
In the summer 2017 edition of 2600 magazine there is a brilliant article on running onion services as part of a series on censorship resistant services. Onion services provide privacy and security for readers above that which is possible through the use of HTTPS. Since moving my website to Netlify, my onion service died as Netlify doesn’t provide automatic onion services (although they do offer automated Let’s Encrypt certificate provisioning). If anyone from Netlify is reading this, please consider adding a one-click onion service button next to the Let’s Encrypt button.