Continuing from 2025 into 2026: Personal Privacy Guidelines, Tor Relay Campus Deployment Competition, and Exploration of Anonymous Payments¶

Personal Privacy Guidelines, Tor Relay Campus Deployment Competition, and Exploration of Anonymous Payments

As 2025 comes to a close, we sincerely thank all our partners for their participation and support throughout the year. From project-based efforts to community building, we have accumulated many actions and valuable experiences over the past year. Below, we will look back on the key initiatives of 2025, and also share our next steps for promoting anonymous networks in 2026.

2025¶

RightsCon Taipei¶

In 2025, the international human rights–focused conference RightsCon was held in Taipei. Upon learning that the Tor/Tails and OONI teams would also be visiting Taiwan, we initiated and prepared related workshop events several months in advance. The event attracted over 300 participants and specifically invited partners from news media and civil society organizations to join the discussions.

After the event, we compiled and published a comprehensive retrospective article to document this rare and valuable exchange.

As a result of hosting this event, we also recruited many enthusiastic volunteers. Together with them, we continued subsequent preparations, laying the groundwork for related activities held in August 2025.

Community Formation¶

In July 2025, we decided to shift from a primarily project-based mode of operation to a community-centered model. As the number of participating volunteers steadily grew, partners from diverse backgrounds brought a wider range of perspectives and skills into the community, enabling us to explore and discuss new topics. It was under these circumstances that the Anonymous Network Community was formally established.

The first step after the community’s formation was to register a simple and memorable domain name: anoni.net, and to migrate all existing project documentation and educational materials to the new website. At the same time, we also deployed an onion service, allowing those interested in anonymous networks to connect anonymously via Tor and continue to follow and participate in our initiatives.

Documentation Website¶

The documentation website has been one of our core tools for promoting anonymous networks this year. As much of the general public still needs time to understand their importance and develop motivation to participate, we have continued to curate and publish foundational content on topics such as privacy and internet freedom through the site, helping community members build essential background knowledge. Through this content, we hope to encourage more people to rethink how they use the internet in practice, and to consciously adopt anonymous networks to strengthen personal privacy and safeguard their rights to online freedom.

In terms of language outreach, the website initially provided only Traditional Chinese and an English version. As backend data showed that traffic from Simplified Chinese users had reached approximately 30%, we further translated and adapted the content—based on the Traditional Chinese materials—to complete a Simplified Chinese version. The site now supports three languages: Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, and English, enabling more users in need to read and use the resources smoothly.

We are still exploring how to use and position social media effectively. Although we have established an account on Bluesky, it is not yet our primary external communication channel. If you have any ideas or suggestions regarding social media engagement, we warmly welcome you to share them with us so we can discuss communication approaches that better suit the community.

Workshops¶

Building on our experience co-hosting workshops with the Tor/Tails and OONI teams during RightsCon Taipei, we adapted the original content and materials into Chinese and applied for a community track at the COSCUP annual conference. This allowed participants interested in the workshops to join discussions in a large conference setting in a low-key and comfortable manner. While advance registration was required, there was no on-site check-in process, and participants were free to join or leave at any time according to their own circumstances.

In this workshop, in addition to continuing hands-on content related to Tor/Tails and OONI, we also incorporated imagination and discussion around promoting anonymous networks in Taiwan. The two-day exchange provided significant support for shaping our subsequent promotion strategies. At the same time, the preparation process brought together more volunteer partners, many of whom continued to participate in community initiatives after the event concluded.

Report Translation: China’s Great Firewall¶

In September 2025, InterSecLab released a research report on the technological export of China’s so-called “Great Firewall.” The report is highly in-depth, not only outlining the technical teams and related government agencies behind its operations, but also examining issues such as the misuse of open-source software and containerized deployment techniques. Its operational model is, in many ways, no different from that of a typical software startup team.

We spent about two weeks completing a translation of the report. We then shared key observations from the report at an “Internet Freedom Meetup,” where we also reflected on whether existing personal and organizational cybersecurity guidelines need to be updated and adjusted in response to these technological developments.

At the same time, other teams analyzed the same leaked materials from different perspectives. Interested readers may also refer to “Internet Censorship Tools Exported Along Belt and Road” (Athena Tong & Yun‑Ting Cai, 2025‑12‑06) as further reading.

2026¶

In the new year, we will continue to advance our initiatives with anonymous networks as the core theme. In addition to our ongoing local outreach for Tor/Tails and OONI, 2026 will focus on three major initiatives: Personal Privacy Guidelines, a Tor Relay Campus Deployment Competition, and the application and exploration of anonymous payments.

Personal Privacy Guidelines¶

This initiative extends and complements our existing outreach efforts. Through promoting Tor/Tails and OONI, we have found that once the general public understands the importance of anonymous networks, they often ask the next question: “What practical changes should I make to use the internet more securely?” At present, however, we still lack a comprehensive, actionable set of guidance materials to answer this need.

Over the coming year, we will gradually develop content around privacy-related topics, organizing practical steps and real-world scenarios to help individuals strengthen their personal privacy protection step by step.

Tor Relay Campus Deployment Competition¶

This initiative is inspired by the campus Tor Relay deployment efforts jointly promoted by the EFF and Tor, which aim to establish more stable relay nodes across universities and colleges. In 2025, we assisted in completing the Traditional Chinese translation of the project website, and in 2026 we plan to enter campuses directly to promote the deployment of Tor Relay nodes.

In fact, Taiwan already has a successful example. At the Information Center of the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering at National Taiwan Normal University, a Tor Relay node is currently operating smoothly (listed as National Taiwan Normal University on the English version of the university list). This node was deployed by community partner NZ after proposing the idea and coordinating with professors and administrative staff. For more details on the process of setting up a node at NTNU, we highly recommend reading this interview feature.

Anonymous Payments¶

As an indispensable piece of the broader anonymity puzzle, how to achieve anonymity in everyday payment scenarios is a direction we intend to explore in depth. Cash itself is the most mature form of anonymous payment, but it has clear limitations in certain situations—such as cross-border movement, online usage, or fund management.

In response to these scenarios, we will explore possible alternatives, including applications of blockchain technologies, cryptocurrencies, and stablecoins. At the same time, we will carefully examine compliance with local regulations, how to avoid triggering money-laundering concerns, and practical approaches at both organizational and individual levels—such as zero-knowledge identity verification and multi-signature mechanisms.

This is still a nascent field, and comprehensive, systematic resources are not yet widely available. However, it is a critical component of practicing anonymity. In the coming year, we will gradually build practical guides for anonymous payments, and we sincerely invite those with research or hands-on experience in this area to join us in discussion and co-creation.

Finally: Why Your Participation Matters More Than Ever¶

Looking back at 2025, we moved from project-based efforts to a community-driven approach, and from isolated actions to long-term accumulation. Looking ahead to 2026, we hope to take anonymous networks beyond technical discussions and gradually turn them into everyday tools that more people can actually use, understand, and choose. This matters not only because of distant authoritarian regimes or abstract risks, but because internet freedom is drawing closer to our daily lives in increasingly subtle and technical ways.

In recent years, as demands for cybersecurity, anti-fraud measures, and platform governance have increased, Taiwan’s internet environment has been continuously evolving. Certain technical or platform-level access control measures give us an opportunity to rethink whether, between security, convenience, and user autonomy, there is still room to preserve greater flexibility and choice.

Anonymous networks do not exist to enable wrongdoing. Rather, they are a form of infrastructure that preserves choice and room for action in uncertain environments. They allow users to avoid having to prove their “innocence” in advance, and to connect without surrendering excessive amounts of personal information each time. As the online environment continues to change, such tools and knowledge will only become more important.

If you care about:

Whether Taiwan’s internet can remain open and verifiable
Whether alternative paths still exist when blocking or censorship occurs
How to strengthen personal and community privacy and resilience within legal boundaries

Then we sincerely invite you to join the Anonymous Network Community.

Whether you come from a technical background, are a researcher, student, creator, or simply someone curious about alternative possibilities, you are warmly welcome to participate—through discussions, translation, documentation, event preparation, or simply by being an attentive user who is willing to think and stay engaged.

The shape of the internet will not change overnight, but it is always shaped, little by little, by people who are willing to invest their time and effort.

In 2026, we look forward to continuing this journey with you, and to keeping anonymity a part of Taiwan’s internet future.