Developers of the Tor-router Anonabox suspected of dishonesty

Four days ago, Kickstarter began collecting pre-orders for Tor-routers Anonabox. A small box worth $ 45 is connected to the home router with one port, and the second to the personal computer (WiFi is also supported). At the same time, all traffic, including the traffic of all applications, such as Skype, Safari and Filezilla, is routed through the Tor anonymizer network, ensuring that all users work anonymously on the Internet.

Fundraising is extremely successful. In the first days, $ 600,000 of the planned $ 7,500 was raised.

Anonabox does not require special configuration before starting work, it should work out of the box right away. No need to download software, register somewhere, etc. A tiny gadget is convenient to take with you on the road and carry in your pocket.
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The router is positioned as a fully open and free device. Both the device layout and the firmware code should be open here. In this case, the developers say that they have been working on this device for a long time, and the current version is already the fourth prototype.

However, the first problems have already arisen. Some users have expressed doubt that the router will indeed be completely open and free.

First, the developers at the moment did not publish the scheme of the device, although they promise. And the published firmware code snippets are very similar to OpenWRT.

Secondly, on the photo of the “four prototypes” they published, the very first one is similar to the PC Engines ALIX board, and the latter (that is, put up for sale) looks like an exact copy of the Chinese clone TL-WR703N called Gl-iNet (running the OpenWRT firmware) , which can now be bought in Chinese stores. And it is much cheaper than $ 45.

For comparison, here are four prototypes of Anonabox.



But the PC Engines ALIX.



Here, in fact, the Chinese Gl-iNet is priced at $ 20 on Aliexpress.



It seems they really have something in common. The developers of Anonabox allegedly admitted with surprise. They say, perhaps, our boards are produced in one Chinese factory, and they said that this is possible, they said.

If so, then the creators of Anonabox are very adventurous guys. By purchasing a batch of gadgets for $ 20, they can almost instantly satisfy all the orders for $ 600,000 that have already been received. Marketing is a great power. By the way, if you take Gl-iNet in bulk, you can probably bring down the price and less than $ 20.