Sponsor R Terminology

Problems with current terminology

1. Hidden and Dark have a negative connotations.
2. Hidden-service website is too long; hidden site is too vague.
3. .onion (read "dot onion") is hard to say and not very descriptive.
4. There is no general term for the set of available hidden services.
5. The term encrypted service is too general. This term refers to a setup (still needing development) in which Tor is required to connect to a service, but the service location is not hidden. Even without server anonymity, this setup can provide enforced client anonymity, secure name resolution, censorship circumvention, and end-to-end-encryption. Making the server location known can allow for improved performance (by shorter circuits) and security (by enabling location-aware path selection by the client).
6. Hidden can be misleading for the purpose of the site. Existing uses for which hiding network location is not the primary purpose of using the onion service protocol include to permit access through a firewall that allows only outbound connections, to provide more secure authentication of the destination or other security features to clients, etc.

Some recommendations

1. onion service should be preferred to refer to what is now called a "hidden service". If other flavors of onion services develop in the future, this term could refer to all of them, with more specific terms being used when it is necessary to make the distinction.
2. onionsite should be preferred to refer to a website (i.e. an HTTP service serving up HTML) available as an onion service. This can be extended to other specific types of services, such as onion chatroom, onion storage, onion cloud service, etc.
3. onion address should be preferred to refer specifically to the xyz.onion address itself.
4. onionspace should be used to refer to the set of available onion services. For example, you can say “my site is in onionspace” instead of “my site is in the Dark Web”.
5. onion namespace should be used to refer to the set of onion addresses currently available or used "recently" (context-dependent).

Ideas for the future

As onion services evolve, we may need to adapt this terminology. Here are some possible development and ideas for terminology:

1. Some names for a setup in which the onion service location is known but still must be connected to via the Tor protocol:

• 1 Way Anonymous Hidden Services
• Bare onion service
• Brazen onion service
• Client side onion service
• Client only onion service
• Client oriented onion service
• Directly Peered Rendezvous Service (DPR service)
• Direct onion service, direct service for short
• Exposed onion service
• External onion service
• Fast Onion Service
• Flagrant onion service
• Identified onion service
• Known onion service
• Located onion service
• Must-Tor service
• Non-hidden onion service
• Obvious onion service
• One-ion service (or 1nion, pronounced wun-yun)
• One-sided (onion) service
• Open onion service
• Overt onion service
• Peeled onion service
• Pseudo onion service
• Public onion service
• Revealed onion service
• Server short-circuited onion service
• Short-circuited Onion Services
• Simplex onion service
• Single-hop onion services
• Single onion service
• Tor-required service, TRS for short
• Visible onion service

2. Some names to specify that the onion service is hidden, if that becomes necessary:

• Anonymous onion service
• duplex onion service
• double onion service
• Internal onion service
• Obfuscated onion service
• Protected onion service, protected service for short
• Tor-protected service, TPS for short
• two-nion service (or 2nion, pronounced twun-yun or tun-yun)
• two-sided (onion) service

3. Some names to specify that a client connects to an onion service non-anonymously:

• Client-direct access
• Client short-circuited onion service
• Client short-circuiting
• tor2web mode