Transparency Report Q1 2026

During the first quarter of 2026 we focused heavily on our planned router and networking infrastructure migration. Roughly at the end of the quarter the migration was completed and the performance bottlenecks we experienced with our legacy equipment were elimated. As a result of the migration and putting our next-generation servers in to production, we added more Tor relays and our existing Tor relays rapidly increased their traffic contribution to the Tor network.

With enhanced network and server capacity, we finally increased the capacity of our public privacy preserving DNS resolvers. These DNS resolvers are entirely uncensored, use encryption and strictly zero-logs. Additionally we implemented some protection against advanced DNS attacks such as timeless timing attacks. We currently support three protocols: DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH), DNS-over-TLS (DoT) and legacy DNS (unencrypted). In the future we’re planning to also support DNS-over-QUICk (DoQ). Feel free to give these resolvers a try.

We also added multiple high capacity stratum 2 time (NTP) and authenticated time (NTS) servers to our privacy services. Accurate timekeeping is critical for a secure and modern internet. For instance cryptographic handshakes heavily rely on precise clock synchronization between clients and servers. The standard Network Time Protocol (NTP) requests are unencrypted and vulnerable to manipulation by motivated adversaries. Fortunately there is a much more secure version of the NTP protocol that adds authentication/encryption. It’s called Network Time Security (NTS) and acts for time synchronization much like HTTPS does for HTTP web browsing. Our new time servers are ready to be used. We also added them to the NTP Pool project.org for general usage.

The metrics used in this report are rounded extrapolated snapshots of the final day of the quarter, to not give away too much specific information.

1 Requests & orders

As a provider of pass-through anonymity services, Nothing to hide receives messages about network traffic originating from or destined for our networks on a daily basis. While the vast majority of these messages are general notices send by automated systems, some of them contain legitimate complaints, requests and/or (court) orders/subpoenas directed at Nothing to hide.

Below we report on the quarterly amount of these messages we get from judicial authorities (courts, judges, juries), law enforcement agencies (LEA), business entities and natural persons.

2 Service report

2.1 Tor relays

Traffic on the Tor network can fluctuate quite a bit and the below metrics are merely snapshots of a day around the end of the quarter.

Note that for these statistics both incoming and outgoing advertised bandwidth are combined (just like Tor network’s metrics).

2.2 DNS requests

DNS requests on the Tor network are resolved by the Tor exit relays. This means that high capacity Tor exit relays can generate a lot of DNS queries. These queries are resolved by the same high capacity DNS recursors we offer to the public.

Do note that we don’t log the contents of DNS queries.

2.3 Time synchronization

Time synchronizations can fluctuate quite a bit and the below metrics are merely snapshots of a day around the end of the quarter.

Do note that we don’t log the contents of time synchronization requests.

2.4 Tor diversity

One of our major goals is to break the GNU/Linux monoculture currently present on the Tor network. Monocultures in nature are dangerous, as vulnerabilities are held in common across a broad spectrum. In a globally used anonymity network, monocultures can be disastrous.

We make the Tor network stronger and more resilient by running all our relays on FreeBSD. Here we report on our ongoing effort to increase operating system diversity on the Tor network. If any Tor operator reading this is interested in running Tor relays on BSD, please contact us and we will gladly help out.

Our Tor traffic and consensus weight increased significantly in Q1 but the tool we normally use for quarterly statistics was not updated properly. From Q2 onward we will be using a new tool created by the Tor Operator 1AEO that frequently updates its information.

2.5 DoS attacks

Aside from the occasional DoS attack, it’s relatively quiet in terms of attacks.