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Part of the reason I sadly stopped running any exit nodes was law enforcement harassment. I ran a few exits for about about ~5 years. In those 5 years, my host

by edm0nd 2y ago

Part of the reason I sadly stopped running any exit nodes was law enforcement harassment. I ran a few exits for about about ~5 years. In those 5 years, my hosting provider (DigitalOcean) received 3 subpoenas for my account information. The first two were random. The 1st one was someone sent a bomb threat email to a university. The 2nd one was someone sending a phishing email. The last and final subpoena was the most serious one. Some nation-state hackers from Qatar had ended up using my exit IP to break into some email accounts belonging to people they were interested in and spied upon them and stole some info. Thankfully both the Tor Project and the EFF were able to help me pro-bono. The EFF lawyer that was assigned to me helped me fight this subpoena but ultimately we had to turn over my account information to the DOJ + I had to give an affidavit stating that I was simply just an operator and nothing on the server in question would be useful to their investigation (by design). The stress of having to deal with law enforcement, lawyers, and having to entertain the possibility of having my home raided over something so silly ultimately led to me finally shutting down my exits. Even though I had all of my exits using a reduced exit policy and I would blacklist known malicious IPs and c2/malware infra from being able to use it, I was still a target. I feel law enforcement realizes this is a big weakness they can target since a lot of Tor exit operators are individuals with not a lot of resources to fight them. They can use the legal system to scare operators into shutting down. I one day hope to resume running exits as I find it rewarding to be able to help people from around the world in a small way.

beaglesss 2y ago
Wouldn't the true exit node be the ISP as you are one clear node behind them? How many ISP execs get raided by SWAT teams?
- edm0nd 2y ago
  Yes the IP was just a DO vps I setup to be a Tor exit. That's why they requested my personal account information, billing info, IPs that I logged into DO with, all of that. If not interrupted by me getting the help of the amazing EFF lawyers, the next step after getting my personal information, could have been to raid my home and seize all my electronics. I work from home and would have been greatly disrupted and not been able to work without my computers and etc. Then I'd have to wait months/years to be found innocent and then get all of my electronics back + spend thousands on lawyers. During all of this, the EFF lawyers straight up told me to prepare my home as if it were to be raided and encrypt all my devices. Thankfully it did not come to that.
- q3k 2y ago
  In jurisdictions whose ISP laws I'm familiar with, ISPs have a special protection granted: they don't get raided because they're seen as an infrastructure provider, but only as long as they can point to a customer responsible for some given traffic when served a court order.
Hizonner 2y ago
I actually think that Tor should deemphasize exit nodes and trying to provide access to the clearnet, in favor of better hidden services. Nearly every major site ends up either totally blocking anything that comes from a Tor relay, or applying massive numbers of weird CAPTCHAs and restrictions, so it's getting to be basically unusable anyway.
- genpfault 2y ago
  > I actually think that Tor should deemphasize exit nodes and trying to provide access to the clearnet, in favor of better hidden services. Isn't that I2P[1]? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2P https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2P
- beefnugs 2y ago
  There really is a fundamental difference between : secure end to end messages of willing participants. VS arbitrary anything-illegal from someone else's public ip.
- amy-petrik-214 2y ago
  This gets back to AnthonyMouse's argument (above) that (1) TOR exit node operators are buffers to protect people from being hacked. A hacker would more easily use TOR than need the effort to runa scan for vulnerable routers, root one, and hop between various routers. Which implies (2) if TOR had no exit nodes and/or clearnet service blocked TOR ranges, hackers will just resort to hacking routers / other systems / botnets to make their own proxy. Now the block doesn't work, someone(s) got hacked, TOR is gone. Basically TOR as a "containment" system. Seems to me that would be preferable for law enforcement, particularly because some state actors (https://www.infosecinstitute.com/resources/general-security/german-intelligence-first-developed-attacks-tor-network-advises-not-use/ https://www.infosecinstitute.com/resources/general-security/...) are putting great effort into unmasking TOR, making it a great honeypot. Ironic that Germany prosecuted a German exit node when they were the same ones investing heavily in unmasking it!
- costco 2y ago
  The new Cloudflare captcha has changed this and it's a lot better now. There's no more Recaptcha hell. I read the Ben Collier book about Tor recently and in his interviews he found that some Tor contributors actually feel the opposite, because they feel the negative attention that the "dark web" mythology brought on has been bad for Tor. According to the book the archetypal Tor user is someone in a censorship heavy country like Iran visiting facebook.com or nytimes.com, so they don't get much out of hidden services.
shadowgovt 2y ago
But flipping the script: bomb threats and Qatar conducting international espionage aren't silly things as far as the government is concerned, and if we intentionally interpose ourselves in the comms channel in a way that the attack trace stops at us, we should be expecting follow-up from a human being tasked with enforcing the law, right?
- edm0nd 2y ago
  I suppose my issue stems from my perception of the seemingly lack of serious investigation on their law enforcement side. If you had visited any of my exit nodes via port 80 or 443, I had a lander on them stating that it was a Tor exit node and to please contact me if you wanted your IP to be blacklisted from it. I also stated that there was no useful information contained on this server (by design) that would be helpful for any evidence gathering or investigations. Seriously, all they had to do was plug my IP into a browser or do a simple scan of it but I suppose that's asking too much from LE lol. Additionally, Tor exit nodes are public and all they had to do was look into my IP more than 5 seconds after finding it in logs somewhere and firing off a warrant or subpoena for it. The first two were straight up vague templated fishing expeditions. The 3rd subpoena actually came straight from the DOJ and was a lot more detailed and serious. They should know what Tor is and know that any Tor server contains ZERO info that would be able to assist them in whatever they are attempting to investigate. Sure, I do think such situations require follow-up but as soon as they are informed it's a Tor ip, they should know to drop any pursuit of getting evidence from it. They do not, they continue to go after you via legal means. Even though I had the EFFs help, this entire process still took months. It's pretty stressful to be in a situation where its lil ole me VS the entire United States government who has unlimited resources, time, and money to go after you. I am extremely blessed to have had the EFF lawyers at my defense and will forever be a life long supporter and donor to them. They really do fight for our digital rights and can help defend you in a digital equivalent of a David versus Goliath situation.
  - shadowgovt 2y ago
    > Seriously, all they had to do was plug my IP into a browser or do a simple scan of it but I suppose that's asking too much from LE lol. I mean, yes, I'm pretty sure "just take my word for it" is asking too much of LE. We can always say "Come back with a warrant" but then sometimes they'll come back with a warrant. > They should know what Tor is and know that any Tor server contains ZERO info Unless, of course, one has misconfigured it... Which could be the case. Definitely the kind of thing LEO can figure out on the other side of a seize-and-strip of the hardware. Unfortunately, I think the only way to not be a part of the story here is to not be a part of the story here... Don't proxy anonymous traffic if you don't want law enforcement asking after the anonymous traffic you proxied. Otherwise, expect the responsibility imposed upon a service provider (since you're providing a service). Other ISPs avoid this scrutiny by going out of their way to be helpful to law enforcement.
ajross 2y ago
> The 1st [subpoena] was someone sent a bomb threat email to a university. The 2nd one was someone sending a phishing email. ... > I one day hope to resume running exits as I find it rewarding to be able to help people from around the world in a small way. This really doesn't strike you as cognitive dissonance? I mean, yes, I get it, it's easy to construct a scenario where you're "helping people". But you're also "helping" people engage in terrorism and identity theft in exactly the same way. Surely that deserves at least a little thought and moral calculus, no? You're not making a first principles argument about fundamental rights or anything, you're saying you run exits because it's "helping". Well, shouldn't it help more than it hurts?
- loa_in_ 2y ago
  Doesn't running a post office help people communicate coded messages about nefarious things? Doesn't running a telephone network help people do the same? What about cellular hardware providers and maintainers?
  - ajross 2y ago
    Tor isn't a post office or telephone network. We have post offices and telephone networks. Tor also isn't a replacement for a web browser or internet, we have those too. Tor's feature isn't "communication" in the abstract, it's anonymity. And yes, that can be used for good or for evil. But the upthread comment was saying how nice it was to run an exit node because it was "helping people". And to the extent that's true, I think correct thinking demands you also account for the harm. And let's be clear: Tor is definitely harmful. Almost all Tor traffic is some degree of nefarious. The tiny handful of dissidents are drowned in a sea of phishing and contraband.
    - abc88889 2y ago
      [dead]
  - krisoft 2y ago
    They do. But all of the above bend over backwards to help law enforcement. > post office help people communicate coded messages about nefarious thing The US postal service scans and stores the outside of every envelope and package they handle. Law enforcement agencies can query this metadata. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_Tracking https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_T... > Doesn't running a telephone network help people do the same? They do, but they are not only share the metadata with law enforcement, but also let them wiretap. (Often they require a warrant for this, but that is not a hard burden for a LEO.) And this capability is not some aftertought, but deeply integrated into their tech stack.
zepearl 2y ago
Is something like this unexpected? I personally never ever thought so (which is the reason why I never ever even considered running a TOR exit node). As much as I can respect the idealism about privacy and liberty etc..., I could not ignore the fact that any "really!!!" bad actor could use the same infrastructure to avoid investigation/prosecution, therefore I did not want to provide indirectly any help. > I feel law enforcement realizes this is a big weakness they can target since a lot of Tor exit operators are individuals with not a lot of resources to fight them. They can use the legal system to scare operators into shutting down. On one hand I admit that that might be the case, on the other hand even government organizations/departments/agencies can be "local" and scattered (e.g. similar IT departments for each "canton" in Switzerland) and not have huge amounts of resources/knowledge to track/identify perpetrators of all ongoing (sophisticated?) IT crimes => somebody somewhere might see the same IP involved in a lot of "bad" stuff not realizing it's just a TOR node. I hate the current general trend pushing a position of an either absolute "yes/no" for any theme, including this one (of encryption for privacy/etc vs. crime). In my opinion it's obvious that the current situation of solutions is in general bad: too much pressure on services that provide privacy because it's too easy for crime to misuse them :o(
- Sebb767 2y ago
  > As much as I can respect the idealism about privacy and liberty etc..., I could not ignore the fact that any "really!!!" bad actor could use the same infrastructure to avoid investigation/prosecution, therefore I did not want to provide indirectly any help. Well, what would be considered a "really!!!" bad actor for some might be a hero for others. Just as an example, depending on which side of the Israel/Palestine conflict you are on, either side using your node for military intelligence might be an use worth fighting for or terrible abuse. In the end, this really comes down to whether you value freedom or state protection more; either of which can be abused by rogue actors or a malicious state, respectively. There is no win-win-solution, unfortunately.
  - nkrisc 2y ago
    You have to ask yourself if the good is worth the harm.
batch12 2y ago
Situations like this are the main reason I shuttered the torwhois.com service. The barely zero gain wasn't worth the risk, sadly.
snakeyjake 2y ago
I ran an exit node back 2007-2008 ish after learning about Tor at a conference. I stopped running an exit node when I looked at the traffic flowing through it. I even sslstripped it back when that was much easier. No freedom fighters. No oppressed journalists. No free speech. Only porn and scams. Running a Tor exit node for freedom is like burning a village to save it or enriching your own uranium to solve the energy crisis. There's gotta be an answer, but this ain't it.
- abc88889 2y ago
  [dead]
- jfengel 2y ago
  They were sending this in cleartext?
- rcbdev 2y ago
  Just because most stuff is botspam, that doesn't mean it's not worth it for the occasional Snowden or Panama Papers - those would have been next to impossible to safely execute without Tor.
- ErikBjare 2y ago
  Makes sense that's where the bulk of the volume is, not much different from the internet at large. Freedom fighters and oppressed journalists are exceedingly rare, but they do use Tor. I wonder what you expected?
- atemerev 2y ago
  Enriching own uranium is an interesting project. I prefer nuclear simulations, but same vibes.
qup 2y ago
Why don't lawyers just do this stuff? Then minor legal threats are not a concern. Alternatively, why don't we become lawyers, too?
- tonygiorgio 2y ago
  At the end of the day, lawyers are human too, with lives and families. They would know the full extent of the inconveniences regarding home raids and device seizures for long periods of time. This would disrupt their lives, work, and probably affect their ability to serve their clients’ legal troubles. At the very least, I’m thankful for the efforts of the EFF and others that do know the law and help. But I’d imagine there’s a good case for separations of concerns here. Stay out of the legal troubles yourself so you can help others that do get caught up in it. One degree away.
- seb1204 2y ago
  My sarcastic self would say because lawyers became lawyers to earn good money and have social standing. Not to be benevolent to society.
oefrha 2y ago
I’m surprised DO allows Tor exit nodes. No wonder their IP reputation is trash the time I tried to set up my mail server there. https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/droplets/details/policies/ https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/droplets/details/poli...: > We do not specifically disallow Tor exit nodes, but as the account holder, you are responsible for all the traffic going through your Droplet (including traffic that an exit node may generate), and we do prohibit some of the traffic types that may go through a typical Tor exit node. > If you are unable to stop prohibited traffic like torrents, spam, SSH probes, botnets, and DDoS attacks, running a Tor exit node may lead to us suspending or terminating your account. We send you an email in the event of a violation of our Terms of Service, and you must address these issues as soon as possible. Running Tor exit node without abuse? How is that possible? Since they didn’t shut you down after three abuses serious enough to get law enforcement involved, I guess they don’t really give a shit about abuse after all.
- ErikBjare 2y ago
  Restrictive exit policies
tzs 2y ago
I was going to run an exit node when I first learned about Tor, but realized that the cool positive use cases I was imagining it would help with could be effectively done in other ways. In some cases those other ways might not be as easy, but there would be enough resources available to the people involved to get the job done. It seemed likely that it would be the horrible use cases it would benefit the most. Balancing an increase in the efficiency of doing good things that could already by done other ways against greatly benefiting horrible use cases made it so that I could not morally justify it.
MinMau221 2y ago
[dead]
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> though I had all of my exits using a reduced exit policy and I would blacklist known malicious IPs and c2/malware infra from being able to use it, I was still a target There is room for a middle ground that will make nobody happy: a safe harbor for exit-node operators who (a) blacklist (or actively report) connections to a set of IPs and (b) maintain some semblance of logs and provide them when served with a warrant. The case for the operator is it lets them help show that the offending traffic came from TOR. Presumably, it should also assist law enforcement to some degree. And I don't think someone having e.g. 60 days' exit logs materially damages TOR's privacy.
- account42 2y ago
  What kind of useful logs could an exit operator collect? The whole point of TOR is that the destination doesn't get any meaningful information about the source.

by edm0nd 2y ago

beaglesss 2y ago

Wouldn't the true exit node be the ISP as you are one clear node behind them? How many ISP execs get raided by SWAT teams?

edm0nd 2y ago
Yes the IP was just a DO vps I setup to be a Tor exit. That's why they requested my personal account information, billing info, IPs that I logged into DO with, all of that. If not interrupted by me getting the help of the amazing EFF lawyers, the next step after getting my personal information, could have been to raid my home and seize all my electronics. I work from home and would have been greatly disrupted and not been able to work without my computers and etc. Then I'd have to wait months/years to be found innocent and then get all of my electronics back + spend thousands on lawyers. During all of this, the EFF lawyers straight up told me to prepare my home as if it were to be raided and encrypt all my devices. Thankfully it did not come to that.
q3k 2y ago
In jurisdictions whose ISP laws I'm familiar with, ISPs have a special protection granted: they don't get raided because they're seen as an infrastructure provider, but only as long as they can point to a customer responsible for some given traffic when served a court order.

Hizonner 2y ago

I actually think that Tor should deemphasize exit nodes and trying to provide access to the clearnet, in favor of better hidden services. Nearly every major site ends up either totally blocking anything that comes from a Tor relay, or applying massive numbers of weird CAPTCHAs and restrictions, so it's getting to be basically unusable anyway.

genpfault 2y ago
> I actually think that Tor should deemphasize exit nodes and trying to provide access to the clearnet, in favor of better hidden services. Isn't that I2P[1]? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2P https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2P
beefnugs 2y ago
There really is a fundamental difference between : secure end to end messages of willing participants. VS arbitrary anything-illegal from someone else's public ip.
amy-petrik-214 2y ago
This gets back to AnthonyMouse's argument (above) that (1) TOR exit node operators are buffers to protect people from being hacked. A hacker would more easily use TOR than need the effort to runa scan for vulnerable routers, root one, and hop between various routers. Which implies (2) if TOR had no exit nodes and/or clearnet service blocked TOR ranges, hackers will just resort to hacking routers / other systems / botnets to make their own proxy. Now the block doesn't work, someone(s) got hacked, TOR is gone. Basically TOR as a "containment" system. Seems to me that would be preferable for law enforcement, particularly because some state actors (https://www.infosecinstitute.com/resources/general-security/german-intelligence-first-developed-attacks-tor-network-advises-not-use/ https://www.infosecinstitute.com/resources/general-security/...) are putting great effort into unmasking TOR, making it a great honeypot. Ironic that Germany prosecuted a German exit node when they were the same ones investing heavily in unmasking it!
costco 2y ago
The new Cloudflare captcha has changed this and it's a lot better now. There's no more Recaptcha hell. I read the Ben Collier book about Tor recently and in his interviews he found that some Tor contributors actually feel the opposite, because they feel the negative attention that the "dark web" mythology brought on has been bad for Tor. According to the book the archetypal Tor user is someone in a censorship heavy country like Iran visiting facebook.com or nytimes.com, so they don't get much out of hidden services.

shadowgovt 2y ago

But flipping the script: bomb threats and Qatar conducting international espionage aren't silly things as far as the government is concerned, and if we intentionally interpose ourselves in the comms channel in a way that the attack trace stops at us, we should be expecting follow-up from a human being tasked with enforcing the law, right?

edm0nd 2y ago
I suppose my issue stems from my perception of the seemingly lack of serious investigation on their law enforcement side. If you had visited any of my exit nodes via port 80 or 443, I had a lander on them stating that it was a Tor exit node and to please contact me if you wanted your IP to be blacklisted from it. I also stated that there was no useful information contained on this server (by design) that would be helpful for any evidence gathering or investigations. Seriously, all they had to do was plug my IP into a browser or do a simple scan of it but I suppose that's asking too much from LE lol. Additionally, Tor exit nodes are public and all they had to do was look into my IP more than 5 seconds after finding it in logs somewhere and firing off a warrant or subpoena for it. The first two were straight up vague templated fishing expeditions. The 3rd subpoena actually came straight from the DOJ and was a lot more detailed and serious. They should know what Tor is and know that any Tor server contains ZERO info that would be able to assist them in whatever they are attempting to investigate. Sure, I do think such situations require follow-up but as soon as they are informed it's a Tor ip, they should know to drop any pursuit of getting evidence from it. They do not, they continue to go after you via legal means. Even though I had the EFFs help, this entire process still took months. It's pretty stressful to be in a situation where its lil ole me VS the entire United States government who has unlimited resources, time, and money to go after you. I am extremely blessed to have had the EFF lawyers at my defense and will forever be a life long supporter and donor to them. They really do fight for our digital rights and can help defend you in a digital equivalent of a David versus Goliath situation.
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  > Seriously, all they had to do was plug my IP into a browser or do a simple scan of it but I suppose that's asking too much from LE lol. I mean, yes, I'm pretty sure "just take my word for it" is asking too much of LE. We can always say "Come back with a warrant" but then sometimes they'll come back with a warrant. > They should know what Tor is and know that any Tor server contains ZERO info Unless, of course, one has misconfigured it... Which could be the case. Definitely the kind of thing LEO can figure out on the other side of a seize-and-strip of the hardware. Unfortunately, I think the only way to not be a part of the story here is to not be a part of the story here... Don't proxy anonymous traffic if you don't want law enforcement asking after the anonymous traffic you proxied. Otherwise, expect the responsibility imposed upon a service provider (since you're providing a service). Other ISPs avoid this scrutiny by going out of their way to be helpful to law enforcement.

ajross 2y ago

> The 1st [subpoena] was someone sent a bomb threat email to a university. The 2nd one was someone sending a phishing email. ... > I one day hope to resume running exits as I find it rewarding to be able to help people from around the world in a small way. This really doesn't strike you as cognitive dissonance? I mean, yes, I get it, it's easy to construct a scenario where you're "helping people". But you're also "helping" people engage in terrorism and identity theft in exactly the same way. Surely that deserves at least a little thought and moral calculus, no? You're not making a first principles argument about fundamental rights or anything, you're saying you run exits because it's "helping". Well, shouldn't it help more than it hurts?

loa_in_ 2y ago
Doesn't running a post office help people communicate coded messages about nefarious things? Doesn't running a telephone network help people do the same? What about cellular hardware providers and maintainers?
- ajross 2y ago
  Tor isn't a post office or telephone network. We have post offices and telephone networks. Tor also isn't a replacement for a web browser or internet, we have those too. Tor's feature isn't "communication" in the abstract, it's anonymity. And yes, that can be used for good or for evil. But the upthread comment was saying how nice it was to run an exit node because it was "helping people". And to the extent that's true, I think correct thinking demands you also account for the harm. And let's be clear: Tor is definitely harmful. Almost all Tor traffic is some degree of nefarious. The tiny handful of dissidents are drowned in a sea of phishing and contraband.
  - abc88889 2y ago
    [dead]
- krisoft 2y ago
  They do. But all of the above bend over backwards to help law enforcement. > post office help people communicate coded messages about nefarious thing The US postal service scans and stores the outside of every envelope and package they handle. Law enforcement agencies can query this metadata. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_Tracking https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_T... > Doesn't running a telephone network help people do the same? They do, but they are not only share the metadata with law enforcement, but also let them wiretap. (Often they require a warrant for this, but that is not a hard burden for a LEO.) And this capability is not some aftertought, but deeply integrated into their tech stack.

zepearl 2y ago

Is something like this unexpected? I personally never ever thought so (which is the reason why I never ever even considered running a TOR exit node). As much as I can respect the idealism about privacy and liberty etc..., I could not ignore the fact that any "really!!!" bad actor could use the same infrastructure to avoid investigation/prosecution, therefore I did not want to provide indirectly any help. > I feel law enforcement realizes this is a big weakness they can target since a lot of Tor exit operators are individuals with not a lot of resources to fight them. They can use the legal system to scare operators into shutting down. On one hand I admit that that might be the case, on the other hand even government organizations/departments/agencies can be "local" and scattered (e.g. similar IT departments for each "canton" in Switzerland) and not have huge amounts of resources/knowledge to track/identify perpetrators of all ongoing (sophisticated?) IT crimes => somebody somewhere might see the same IP involved in a lot of "bad" stuff not realizing it's just a TOR node. I hate the current general trend pushing a position of an either absolute "yes/no" for any theme, including this one (of encryption for privacy/etc vs. crime). In my opinion it's obvious that the current situation of solutions is in general bad: too much pressure on services that provide privacy because it's too easy for crime to misuse them :o(

Sebb767 2y ago
> As much as I can respect the idealism about privacy and liberty etc..., I could not ignore the fact that any "really!!!" bad actor could use the same infrastructure to avoid investigation/prosecution, therefore I did not want to provide indirectly any help. Well, what would be considered a "really!!!" bad actor for some might be a hero for others. Just as an example, depending on which side of the Israel/Palestine conflict you are on, either side using your node for military intelligence might be an use worth fighting for or terrible abuse. In the end, this really comes down to whether you value freedom or state protection more; either of which can be abused by rogue actors or a malicious state, respectively. There is no win-win-solution, unfortunately.
- nkrisc 2y ago
  You have to ask yourself if the good is worth the harm.

batch12 2y ago

Situations like this are the main reason I shuttered the torwhois.com service. The barely zero gain wasn't worth the risk, sadly.

snakeyjake 2y ago

I ran an exit node back 2007-2008 ish after learning about Tor at a conference. I stopped running an exit node when I looked at the traffic flowing through it. I even sslstripped it back when that was much easier. No freedom fighters. No oppressed journalists. No free speech. Only porn and scams. Running a Tor exit node for freedom is like burning a village to save it or enriching your own uranium to solve the energy crisis. There's gotta be an answer, but this ain't it.

abc88889 2y ago
[dead]
jfengel 2y ago
They were sending this in cleartext?
rcbdev 2y ago
Just because most stuff is botspam, that doesn't mean it's not worth it for the occasional Snowden or Panama Papers - those would have been next to impossible to safely execute without Tor.
ErikBjare 2y ago
Makes sense that's where the bulk of the volume is, not much different from the internet at large. Freedom fighters and oppressed journalists are exceedingly rare, but they do use Tor. I wonder what you expected?
atemerev 2y ago
Enriching own uranium is an interesting project. I prefer nuclear simulations, but same vibes.

qup 2y ago

Why don't lawyers just do this stuff? Then minor legal threats are not a concern. Alternatively, why don't we become lawyers, too?

tonygiorgio 2y ago
At the end of the day, lawyers are human too, with lives and families. They would know the full extent of the inconveniences regarding home raids and device seizures for long periods of time. This would disrupt their lives, work, and probably affect their ability to serve their clients’ legal troubles. At the very least, I’m thankful for the efforts of the EFF and others that do know the law and help. But I’d imagine there’s a good case for separations of concerns here. Stay out of the legal troubles yourself so you can help others that do get caught up in it. One degree away.
seb1204 2y ago
My sarcastic self would say because lawyers became lawyers to earn good money and have social standing. Not to be benevolent to society.

oefrha 2y ago

I’m surprised DO allows Tor exit nodes. No wonder their IP reputation is trash the time I tried to set up my mail server there. https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/droplets/details/policies/ https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/droplets/details/poli...: > We do not specifically disallow Tor exit nodes, but as the account holder, you are responsible for all the traffic going through your Droplet (including traffic that an exit node may generate), and we do prohibit some of the traffic types that may go through a typical Tor exit node. > If you are unable to stop prohibited traffic like torrents, spam, SSH probes, botnets, and DDoS attacks, running a Tor exit node may lead to us suspending or terminating your account. We send you an email in the event of a violation of our Terms of Service, and you must address these issues as soon as possible. Running Tor exit node without abuse? How is that possible? Since they didn’t shut you down after three abuses serious enough to get law enforcement involved, I guess they don’t really give a shit about abuse after all.

ErikBjare 2y ago
Restrictive exit policies

tzs 2y ago

I was going to run an exit node when I first learned about Tor, but realized that the cool positive use cases I was imagining it would help with could be effectively done in other ways. In some cases those other ways might not be as easy, but there would be enough resources available to the people involved to get the job done. It seemed likely that it would be the horrible use cases it would benefit the most. Balancing an increase in the efficiency of doing good things that could already by done other ways against greatly benefiting horrible use cases made it so that I could not morally justify it.

MinMau221 2y ago

[dead]

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> though I had all of my exits using a reduced exit policy and I would blacklist known malicious IPs and c2/malware infra from being able to use it, I was still a target There is room for a middle ground that will make nobody happy: a safe harbor for exit-node operators who (a) blacklist (or actively report) connections to a set of IPs and (b) maintain some semblance of logs and provide them when served with a warrant. The case for the operator is it lets them help show that the offending traffic came from TOR. Presumably, it should also assist law enforcement to some degree. And I don't think someone having e.g. 60 days' exit logs materially damages TOR's privacy.

account42 2y ago
What kind of useful logs could an exit operator collect? The whole point of TOR is that the destination doesn't get any meaningful information about the source.