I’ve been running four Tor exit nodes for about a couple of months now. Abuse mails are not as common as I’d expected (my combined exit capacity is higher than the author’s) and the majority of them actually come from some kind of European Union cyber-security organisation(!)
I’d stress the point about network diversity – if OVH or online.net decide they don’t like Tor it could be very bad for the network as a whole. If you’re looking to run a relay, please research and find a lesser-used ISP.
As an alternative to running an exit yourself, if there’s anyone here who’s living in under-represented countries in relation to exit bandwidth and you know of people in educational or ISP communities that might be friendly to the idea of facilitating a Tor exit relay with external administration and funding help, I’d very much love to hear from you. I’m trying to see how hard it might be to extend Tor capacity into these regions, and local people to talk to would be a huge help.
As a british person, this scares me a lot. However someone did point out to me that this guy was running his node from home, and not on a rented server/VPS. Even the Tor community considers that to be a bit foolish.
I ran a relay for a few months. At first it also had a fairly lax policy. And then I had someone use it to hijack someone else’s Gmail and it was all over.
(Of course, I was stupid and used my Linode to run the relay. They were polite and professional and asked me to stop which I did.)
I’ve been running four Tor exit nodes for about a couple of months now. Abuse mails are not as common as I’d expected (my combined exit capacity is higher than the author’s) and the majority of them actually come from some kind of European Union cyber-security organisation(!)
I’d stress the point about network diversity – if OVH or online.net decide they don’t like Tor it could be very bad for the network as a whole. If you’re looking to run a relay, please research and find a lesser-used ISP.
[Comment removed by author]
As an alternative to running an exit yourself, if there’s anyone here who’s living in under-represented countries in relation to exit bandwidth and you know of people in educational or ISP communities that might be friendly to the idea of facilitating a Tor exit relay with external administration and funding help, I’d very much love to hear from you. I’m trying to see how hard it might be to extend Tor capacity into these regions, and local people to talk to would be a huge help.
Something to note which amuses me:
Bandwidth in AWS is expensive. But inter-AWS traffic is free, which gives a strong incentive to use as many AWS services as possible.
Unlimited traffic seems to be the bread and butter of many cheap VPS services.
Cool. I want this as a “service.”
I want to donate $x/month to someone that uses that money to run TOR exit points.
This is what TorServers does; https://torservers.net/donate.html
there are a number of groups that do this sort of work. Noisetor is one of them, and due to its being housed within Noisebridge, a 501©(3) educational non-profit, any and all donations to Noisetor are considered charitable donations.
disclaimer: I’m involved heavily in both Noisebridge and Noisetor.
As much as I like the idea of running an exit node myself, some of the horror stories online (see, eg, this one) are rather strong deterrents.
fwiw, that person was doing something (running an exit from their home connection) that the Tor Project and EFF specifically say not to do.
Ah yes, good point - I read that but didn’t register that that was a key factor.
I guess a well-chosen offshore VPS should be safe…
[Comment removed by author]
As a british person, this scares me a lot. However someone did point out to me that this guy was running his node from home, and not on a rented server/VPS. Even the Tor community considers that to be a bit foolish.
I ran a relay for a few months. At first it also had a fairly lax policy. And then I had someone use it to hijack someone else’s Gmail and it was all over.
(Of course, I was stupid and used my Linode to run the relay. They were polite and professional and asked me to stop which I did.)