On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 08:54:42AM -0500, Michael Holstein wrote: > Most exit nodes disallow port 25 (smtp) because NOT doing so would make > TOR a spammer's paradise. If you know a relay-server that runs smtps or > uses an alternate smtp port, use that. >
Actually we would expect Tor to be a relatively inefficient vehicle for spam even with port 25 open, so hardly a paradise. The decision to block port 25 by default was based partly on the expectation that spam is the most known and widely despised source of abuse and we expected people to raise this as a concern. We wanted to be able to say that Tor was simply not a vehicle for spam since it is default configured so as not to be able to transmit email at all. (I know that's too quick, but we're reasoning at the level of soundbites.) Even with that, it has not prevented ignorant statements in various places from making the association that Tor is a spam engine. Imagine how much worse the image problem would be if there were even a grain of truth in these statements. We were also partly concerned about network load. aloha, Paul -- Paul Syverson () ascii ribbon campaign Contact info at http://www.syverson.org/ /\ against html e-mail