As long as you don't operate an exit node, there are no risks that I am aware of (as a citizen of the USA or EU, YMMV otherwise). I've been running several ent

As long as you don't operate an exit node, there are no risks that I am aware of (as a citizen of the USA or EU, YMMV otherwise). I've been running several entry nodes with directory caching enabled on Amazon for a year or so with no problems - nor do I expect any. If you run an exit node on Amazon, you can expect to receive a C&D at some point. I'm not sure if Amazon will intervene. There are some services elsewhere that allow you to pay for the operation of exit nodes in bitcoin. Tor is essentially just 2 proxies chained together such that the first proxy (the entry node) doesn't know the final destination, the second one (the exit node) doesn't know the source, and the final destination only knows the exit node. If a malicious entity is operating either entry or exit nodes, it still protects your identity as long as you did not expect the exit node to send information that leaks information about yourself. If the same malicious entity or cooperating ones get lucky and operate all of your nodes, then you are unmasked. If you are afraid of this possibility, then you can configure your client to make a circuit of more than 2 nodes. In order to find out about all of the available public nodes that you can connect to, the client queries a list of hardwired directory servers. Here, you can get this yourself: http://86.59.21.38/tor/status-vote/current/consensus http://86.59.21.38/tor/status-vote/current/consensus If you run a public server, your information will be distributed in this list. You can also run a private bridge, which is not shared publicly. You will not be used as an exit node unless you configure your server to allow exit traffic. You can specify this by port ranges, so as to only allow certain traffic. You can see this in the above consensus document in lines that start with "p". "p reject 1-65535" means it is not an exit node. If you want to help in other ways, you can also run a directory cache that serves consensus information (as in the above link).