Questions and Answers

I live in an uncensored region and don't know anyone in a censored region. Can I still help?

Definitely! People in censored regions can still learn about you through your friends. So while you don't know anyone directly living in censored regions, your friends might, and they'll relay your information to their trusted friends in censored regions. That's why it's really important to invite your friends to Lantern. It maximizes the likelihood that your social network will reach into censored regions so you can actually help!

OK, I've installed Lantern. Now what?

For users in uncensored regions, there are two basic things you can do once you've installed Lantern:

1. Run Lantern as much as possible
2. Invite more users

Whenever you run Lantern, you create a new access point users in censored regions can use to access the open Internet. Remember, though, not everyone can access the Internet through you -- only people in your extended trust network (direct trusted contacts also running Lantern, or their extended trusted contacts). That's why the second part is equally as important -- the more people you invite, the more likely you are to become an available access point for censored world users. So please invite as many trusted contacts as you can!

Will Lantern make my computer vulnerable to hackers?

Lantern takes a number of precautions to make sure users are safe. First, Lantern does not allow any external computers to access your hard drive. Instead, Lantern simply acts as a conduit for your trusted contacts, relaying their requests to web pages on the open Internet as well as the replies from those web pages. External users have no access to your computer itself. Lantern also requires what's called mutual authentication for all connections, requiring that anyone connecting through you to the open Internet is someone you have a cryptographic key for, so someone who has learned about your computer through either being a trusted contact directly or through one of your trusted contacts. This ensures that not just anyone can connect to you through Lantern, but only people in your extended Lantern social network.

Is Lantern free?

Lantern is free as in money and as in freedom: free to use, modify, and redistribute in accordance with its license. This documentation is likewise distributed under a free license.

How can I contribute?

Please see the Contributing page.

I have more questions, where do I go?

If you have more technical questions see the Developers Q&A page. If you still have more questions then ask on the Lantern Forum.