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I was using Facebook on Tor without problem - I made no modifications to Tor, I just installed it and used it (except I had to do verification of identifying friends on login).

I just switched to Tails and it told me I cannot use Facebook without enabling cookies. When I was using Facebook (and Twitter as well) on Tor did I jeopardize security?

Say theoretically a government agency in Russia or wherever wanted to know the location of that Facebook account, would they be able to know as of now?

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    Using facebook with TOR completely defeats the purpose of using TOR. Any exit node watching traffic can immediately identify you personally through your traffic, and correlate other TOR traffic to you as well.
    – cremefraiche
    Mar 1, 2016 at 0:00

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If you've always used that Facebook account through Tor, and never through your normal connection, and the Facebook account is for an anonymous identity rather than your real identity and you never make any references using your real identity to your alter ego and vice versa, and you never login, then using Facebook over Tor does not necessarily compromise your privacy or security. The point of Tails and Tor is that they allow you to partition your life into multiple identities in ways that someone knowing one identity won't be able to trace your other identities.

If someone wanted to trace you through your Facebook identity, they theoretically would be able to link your Facebook activities with any other things that you accessed through the Tor sessions that you used that Facebook account on. If you never use the same Tor session for anything that could've been linked to your real identity, then it's very unlikely that anyone would be able to link it to your real identity.

If you're using Facebook through Tor though, you should use Facebook's Hidden Service: https://facebookwkhpilnemxj7asaniu7vnjjbiltxjqhye3mhbshg7kx5tfyd.onion/

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Cookie or no cookie will not make a difference if someone is trying to trace you. While it's hard to say with any degree if certainty that logging in will allow you to be traced, the cookie does not make it any more likely than just logging in would.

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As far as I know cookies are only storing some information from page, and tor actually delete all cookies after closing browser no matter what is it session or timed cookies. Cookies can be used in various ways but the easiest example to explain is that cookies store your session ID so if you refresh website, it doesn't ask you to log in again. So no I don't think anyone could find your geo location by using cookies.
Edit: More risky is have enabled JavaScript which I think you had to have turned on to use Facebook, as it allow to find your real IP and based on this Geo location.

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  • Thank you, what if I know I didn't manually activate javascript? Is TOR known to automatically do this without asking?
    – Secure me
    Feb 29, 2016 at 22:50
  • I think by default tor have JavaScript enabled, but it also got extension to disable them. it is just on left side of URL bar
    – vakus
    Feb 29, 2016 at 22:52
  • The TOR browser enables the extension "NoScript" by default, which disables JavaScript. You can turn it off, but the browser warns you that your privacy could be compromised.
    – Stone True
    Apr 30, 2016 at 0:08

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