Nothing wrong with using Tor to access the clearnet, that's what it was designed for after all. There are some things to take into consideration 1. Never use Tor to do things that can be tied to your real identity, for example checking your facebook with Tor or logging into your bank with Tor 2. Understand that the exit node can see everything you send through it in plaintext, and take proper precautions when needed, like only sending encrypted messages or making sure to use SSL when it is available and preferably check fingerprints 3. Exit node can modify the content that you download, so never launch programs downloaded through Tor unless you verify them by comparing their hash value against a public hash value, or downloading things through multiple exit nodes and comparing hash of all of them to make sure it matches up (still can fail but less likely to), or verifying the things you download are signed with the appropriate key of the publisher. 4. Circuits to clearnet sites are not necessarily isolated, you could and very likely will end up loading multiple sites simultaneously through the same circuit, and the exit node can link all of those streams to the same initiator 5. exit node operators can gather lists of sites that people access through Tor, even if SSL is used, and filter out things they already know to not be interesting, this is a good way to gather lists of interesting sites that people feel the need to access through Tor (ie: a good way to get the url of a bunch of clearnet CP / drug / etc websites that think they are private and underground because they are invite only....oops!) (ironically enough, Tor is used extensively as a tool to locate underground servers that are not hidden services) If you keep these things in mind, surfing the clearnet with Tor can be very safe. Tor was designed for surfing the clearnet in the first place, hidden services are just a tacked on addition. If you don't use Tor to check links you find on SR you are putting yourself at serious risk. What is to stop me from making a fake website and linking to it on SR only, and then harvesting all of the IP addresses that connect to it and filtering off the ones that are Tor? I could even keep track of who is viewing my thread with the link in it an try to do various intersection attacks to link a SR username to its probable real IP address. Same thing is true for posting links to news sites that you find on the clear to SR. Do this enough times and if I can get logs from all of those sites I could intersect them and if a unique IP address remains I can assume it is the IP address of the person who posted all those links on SR....they are at least in the crowd size, if they don't use Tor or another anonymizer with rotating exit nodes. If they are a vendor I can filter even more.