‘Dogequest,’ the recently launched website which is doxing some Tesla owners and members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and putting their personal information on a searchable map along with the location of Tesla charging stations, has published a version of its site on the dark web, potentially making it harder to shut down or investigate people who visit the site.
The news shows the escalating dynamic between authorities and those who are engaged in, or facilitating, targeting of Tesla facilities or vehicles. Last week 404 Media reported on how authorities investigated three alleged Tesla vandals. In a press release announcing charges against those suspects, Attorney General Pamela Bondi said “if you join this wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, the Department of Justice will put you behind bars.”
The dark web site also comes with the backdrop of continued, mostly non-violent protests against Tesla, with this last weekend seeing more people gathering as part of the “Tesla Takedown” movement.
The clear web version of Dogequest, which went down shortly after 404 Media reported on it, is back online. The site’s cursor is still of a Molotov cocktail. After 404 Media spoke to one Tesla owner included in the data, multiple other outlets spoke to more.
The site now refers to the dark web version as “DOGEQUEST Unleashed.”
“Disrupt the paradigm and accelerate to our decentralized, dark web hub—where the synergies between Tesla evangelists and DOGE visionaries converge, fostering a revolutionary ecosystem that’s off the chain,” the website says, before providing the .onion URL for the dark web version.
.onion sites use the Tor anonymity network, which routes a users’ traffic through multiple volunteer-run servers before they visit a website. Originally a creation of the U.S. Naval Research Lab, Tor is used by journalists, activists, and government officials globally. It is also a go-to tool for various stripes of criminal, including ransomware operators and drug traffickers.
Tor onion services broadly benefit two groups of people. The first is the site’s administrators, because Tor can hide the ultimate location of the server running the website, making it harder for authorities or internet companies to take down. In Dogequest’s case, however, the clear web version is also still available, undercutting that protection. The second group is visitors to the site. By forcing users to connect through Tor, the website itself is less likely to be able to collect identifying information about its visitors, such as a geolocatable IP address, and visitors get the usual protections of using the Tor network and Tor browser as well, such as their browsing activity not being logged by third-parties.
The dark web site says “DOGEQUEST values your privacy and does not collect any personal information about our users.”
The administrators of Dogequest did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
