

Reimbursement of Exit Operators - blottsie
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2013-September/002824.html

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a2tech
I really want to run an exit node because I'm a firm believer in what the Tor
network does-but I'm really worried about being arrested for running one. Does
anyone have practical experience running a Tor exit node?

~~~
swalberg
Yes, run the exit policy at
[https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/ReducedExi...](https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/ReducedExitPolicy)
and put up the info page that comes in the tarball on your default vhost.

The only problem I ever had in a year of running an exit relay was when I had
a default allow-all policy and someone torrented something, triggering a DMCA
notice. My provider, Linode, had no problems with it.

~~~
rwmj
Ummm .. but port 80 & 443 are still open, so if someone downloads child porn
then you'll get an early morning visit (and a lot more) from the police.

What would be great would be if you could restrict the _websites_ people could
go to. I would gladly offer people in internet-oppressed countries access to
bbc.co.uk (only).

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dpeck
toss a proxy past your exit and you can restrict it any way you want.

~~~
rwmj
That breaks the Tor protocol. It means that non-bbc websites would appear to
be blocked and unblocked at random as users used Tor.

I had a discussion with one of the developers and basically Tor isn't designed
to do this -- the blocks on each exit node have to be propagated through the
network, and if every exit node did this then it would adversely affect the
network in some way that I don't recall the details of.

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IgorPartola
So I rent a VPS in Egypt and provide an exit node there. I am as small time as
it gets. Looks like this will not do anything at all for me since they are
looking for very large players to provide exit nodes.

I do like the idea of Tor becoming fast. It's painful to use currently. If
someone like Netflix was to donate 1% of their bandwidth to Tor, things would
look so much better.

~~~
616c
Where do you get VPS hosting in Egypt? I am in the region and very interested
to hear someone with experience in this, meaning VPS and providers not in
Europe. My experience with friends and colleagues is a lot of the latter.

~~~
IgorPartola
[http://citynethost.com/vps.asp](http://citynethost.com/vps.asp)

They used to be a lot cheaper. I got mine for $2.50 off a lowendbox.com sale.
It has not been super reliable through the turmoil in the region, so there
were a few days of downtime for the VPS and the control panel/website. In
other words don't rely on it to be your single point of failure, but for me it
has worked well as a secondary machine.

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zacharydanger
I'm not sure there's _any_ amount of money they could give me that'd offset
the risk of getting hit with a false-positive dawn raid.

~~~
fiatmoney
Having documentation on an official-looking letterhead that you're running an
exit node may reduce the risk of such a thing happening.

~~~
larrik
It might help AFTER the raid, but probably wouldn't help prevent it.

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sbierwagen
Summary: The total amount being handed out is $3500, to only six organizations
right now. In order to qualify, you have to know this guy, and be providing
Serious Bandwidth.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
_Note that since the total amount of $3500 will be handed out every month, as
long as we have less than 6 entities signing the contract, each entity will
receive their maximum share of 500 Euro._

One of us interpreted that wrong then. I read it as "If we have less than 6
entities, each will get the max cap. More than that and each will get less
than the cap." I didn't read anywhere that said how many entities have been
contacted and how many are expected to sign the contract.

~~~
sbierwagen
Look at [https://www.torservers.net/misc/reimburse-
output-2013-07.txt](https://www.torservers.net/misc/reimburse-
output-2013-07.txt)

That list only has six orgs on it. (Though it doesn't total up to 3500?)

~~~
jack-r-abbit
You might be right. That doc is described as: _example report at [link] (not
the correct numbers, but you 'll get the idea)._

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joshavant
Does anybody know of a good VPS provider - overseas is fine, perhaps even
preferable - that accepts Bitcoin, which I could run an exit node on?

This lists Good/Bad ISPs, but a CMD+F for 'bitcoin' has 0 results:
[https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/GoodBadISP...](https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/GoodBadISPs)

~~~
__alexs
Bytemark in the UK might accept it for this if you have a chat with them. They
are ORG sponsors and generally seem to be on side over privacy and free speech
issues.

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cdvonstinkpot
So if I have a 15/5 dynamic IP home internet connection, could I make enough
money to cover my connnection by running an exit node in a VM? Somehow I
imagine a static IP would be needed.

It sounds like since there's only $3k allotted for this, there wouldn't be
enough to go around, even if my connection were technically feasible.

~~~
sbierwagen
Bandwidth in less heavily served countries is worth more. 10 Mbit in the US
only gets you two euros a month: [https://www.torservers.net/misc/reimburse-
output-2013-07.txt](https://www.torservers.net/misc/reimburse-
output-2013-07.txt)

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omribaumer
does this mean that TOR will have a close relationship with its exit
operators? I dont like the sound of that...

~~~
lambada
See my top-level comment. TLDR: No, as The Tor Project has nothing to do with
this announcement.

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lambada
Outright incorrect headline. An independent organisation, with no official
ties to The Tor Project is now going to start reimbursing other organisations
who run exit nodes. Essentially helping to ensure a more diverse set of relay
operators. This organisation previously directly took donations to run exit
nodes themselves. That's problematic from a decentralisation point of view, so
instead their going to use the donations to fund exit nodes run by others.

~~~
lambada
Within minutes of posting this comment the title has been silently edited to
be more neutral. (Although still potentially misleading given the associated
domain name).

It originally read: Tor to start reimbursing exit node operators

