On Monday 08 January 2007 11:42, Alexander Janssen wrote: > And it also should be pointed out omce again that it would be a rather > stupid idea to run a TOR exit-node at home, for a dynamic IP-address > is blinking wildly on their radar. The possible consequences are left > up to your imagination. >
I think this is a valid point. I ran an exit-node for a short while at home without thinking too much about it. The huge amount of traffic I was attracting (even within minutes of booting up) made me shut it off for the sake of personal convenience, but I don't think I will ever go back - explaining to the authorities why child porn/terrorist manuals/online fraud appear to have originated from my home IP is not an edifying prospect, to say the least. These days I generally run a middle-man node but even that has started to feel inappropriate for home use. I would be amazed if regular appearances on directory servers does not blink wildly on some form of institutional radar, low-hanging fruit and all that. So my questions are: * From a common-sense, peace-of-mind point of view, is running an exit-node strictly for co-located servers? Does anyone here run one at home? If so, have you had second thoughts? * Are tor-at-home users who run middleman servers out of the goodness of their heart possibly exposing themselves to unwanted attention? Do we have any evidence of such attention, anecdotal or otherwise? * Is there some good way of helping a user to weigh this all up? Sorry for labouring the point a bit but I agree with the OP: I wouldn't recommend anyone to run an exit-server from home. Is this received wisdom among experienced users, or are we just being alarmist? If not, does this need to be spelt out to new users a little better, or do we just assume that they are competent enough to grasp all the possible consequences of their actions? -- KlamAV - An Anti-Virus Manager for KDE - http://www.klamav.net TorK - A Tor Controller For KDE - http://tork.sf.net