What exactly do "linkability" (linkability) and "traceability" (Traceability) mean in the context of private traffic networks?

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The design article of Tor says:

"Customers worried about linkability should rotate circuits more frequently than those concerned with traceability."

These appear to be precise terms. What they formally mean?

security-guard networks tor

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Hello, I’m going to make some comments that I believe may help you better understand the terms based on my CCNA studies, but I can’t guarantee 100% that I’m not mistaken.

In my view, within the context of the sentence presented, linkability means "having several connections". Already traceability means "having control over existing connections".

Thus:

"Customers worried about having multiple connection points should rotate (use routing protocols to create a web of connections) circuits more frequently than those concerned with having control over existing connections".

Logic of the phrase:

The fewer jumps a packet executes on a network (jumps mean the number of routers the packet passes before it reaches its destination), the easier it becomes to accurately detect/predict the route this packet has taken. Therefore, the fewer connection points a network has, the easier it will be to manage it (having the same traffic control).

Note: I assume that this phrase was taken from a context that uses dynamic routing protocols such as EIGRP or OSPF, where the next jump address is calculated based on specific protocol criteria and, so the route the packets take to reach their destination varies.

  • I hope I’ve helped, any doubt warns me!

  • So actually, in Tor’s case, those terms have to do with some kind of safety guarantee. I mean, I’m passing my traffic through the Tor network in order to give privacy to some aspect of my traffic. I think linkability and traceability, in that context, are different guarantees, but I don’t know how they differ. By name, I imagine that "traceability" has to do with finding which machine (mine) a certain package is coming from, but I think the term has a specific meaning in the literature, whose definition I can’t find.

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