Tor was originally designed for surfing the clearnet anonymously. That has always been its focus. Hidden services were added later as a proof of concept, they are not and they have never been the primary focus of Tor. Some anonymity networks were designed with hidden services in mind, for example I2P is like the inverse of Tor in that it was originally designed for hidden services and the ability to exit was layered on to it later (I think it has like two user added exits). Freenet is another network with more of a focus on hidden services, it doesn't even have the ability to exit to clearnet. So it is kind of ridiculous to see people posting clearnet warnings, considering the fact that Tor has always been the anonymity network designed with clearnet in mind at every single step of its development. You can open multiple tabs in your browser at the same time, clearnet and hidden services can both be accessed at the same time. You don't even need to avoid sites that require login, you only need to avoid sites that can link you to your real identity via your login. For example, if I go and register on a clearnet site with Tor it is fine for me to access it with Tor. Of course I am no longer anonymous because I have logged in, but I am still untraceable. The thing is that there are all kinds of different aspects to an anonymity network. Anonymity: Means that you are without a name. In a technical sense it means that you blend into a crowd of other people who all have exactly the same identifying characteristics. This crowd of people is called your anonymity set size. When you are on the internet you are never truly nameless, your browser has a lot of identifying information associated with it, the fact that you use Tor in itself means that you are somebody using Tor, etc. The best you can hope for is to use a browser that is the same as a lot of other people are using, using a network that a lot of other people are using, etc. This gives you a large anonymity set size, even though you are pseudonymous by the data points you reveal about yourself via browser etc, you are using the same pseudonym as so many other people that you are anonymous in the traffic analysis sense of the term. Pseudonymous: Means with a fake name. Technically you are always pseudonymous on the internet, but if you use the same pseudonym as a lot of other people then you have an anonymity set size. If you have a large anonymity set size you are referred to as being anonymous, even though you are still pseudonymous in the purest sense of the word. The way that I prefer to use pseudonymous is when your anonymity set size consists of 1. For example, when I browse SR without logging in, I blend in with everybody else using the same browser configuration as I am (of course there are other ways that anonymity can be broken, but in general). This means that my anonymity set size is roughly equal to the number of people who can not be technically distinguished from me. When I login to SR I am given the name kmfkewm, and now my anonymity set size falls to 1 so I am essentially pseudonymous. Now Tor is a network that focuses on allowing people to maintain their anonymity. Using a pseudonym is the surest way to not actually get the anonymity that Tor offers you. But thankfully Tor also offers a variety of other things. unlinkability: Is the property of an adversary not being able to associate two items of interest with each other. For example, if I publish a book with one pseudonym and another book with another pseudonym, ignoring writeprint analysis, I can assume that the two books are unlinkable. Tor offers some level of unlinkability because circuits rotate approximately once every ten minutes. Ideally, traffic sent down one circuit cannot be linked to traffic sent down another circuit. Of course when you are pseudonymous (set size = 1) all of your traffic can be linked together, because your pseudonym is a datapoint that links the traffic. My posts here as kmfkewm can all be linked to the same person, if the forum allowed for anonymous posting with the username 'anonymous', then posts I make anonymously would not be linkable to the same poster (between circuit rotation anyway, although in all cases for someone who doesn't own the server). untraceability: Is the property of an adversary not being able to identify the location of someone who they see traffic from. In a sense untraceability is unlinkability between a publisher and the item they publish (however, generally unlinkability is used to describe the relationship between two published items, and untraceability is used to describe the relationship between the publisher and the published item). For example, if I publish a book under my real name, but I mail it to my publisher with a fake return address and I never let on to where I live, I am not traceable. In the context of anonymity networks, somebody who is always traceable can always have their sessions linked together, but somebody who can always have their sessions linked together is not always traceable. We are primarily worried about maintaining our untraceability. Tor is more focused on maintaining unlinkability, although in recent years they have started to be more balanced. In the past they rotated circuits every thirty seconds, which is great for unlinkability but significantly speeds up the rate at which a trace can be carried out. Anonymity and unlinkability go hand in hand, if you are anonymous then your sessions are inherently unlinkable, if you are not anonymous then inherently all of your sessions are linkable. Tor is an anonymity network and so of course their primary focus is unlinkability. For people who are not worried about anonymity as much as they are untraceability, it might not matter too much if your browser fingerprint is part of a smaller anonymity set size. This is especially the case if by making your browser fingerprint part of a smaller set size, you are also hardening yourself from hackers. The risk of logging into clearnet sites with Tor is that if you login to a site like facebook, then obviously it can identify you because it knows who you are. During the time that you are connected to facebook, all of the connections going through the circuit that you use to connect to facebook will therefor be linkable to your real identity. If you use the same circuit to visit facebook that you use to visit an illegal website, then your real identity is linkable to the illegal website by the exit node. Another risk of clearnet websites is that the exit node can spy on any non-encrypted traffic that you send. Tor to the clearnet is strictly for anonymity, it is not for privacy. Technically speaking privacy generally means that what you say cannot be read by unwelcome third parties, and anonymity again means that you blend into a set size.