[tor-relays] Amazon abuse report

[Andy Isaacson]

On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 09:52:41PM -0400, Roger Dingledine wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 06:12:47PM -0700, Andy Isaacson wrote:
> > That's correct, it takes a deliberate action on the part of the
> > administrator to become a relay; and another deliberate action to become
> > an exit relay.
> 
> Actually, that second part isn't true. Once you decide to become a relay,
> the default is to exit to most popular ports.

Whoops, thanks for the correction Roger.  I guess I've been configuring
exit relays for so long that I forget what it's like to configure a
non-exit. :)

> (If you're using Vidalia to configure your relay, it makes you choose
> whether you want to be a non-exit relay or an exit relay. But just Tor
> by itself, the default exit policy is in the man page.)

The Vidalia behavior you describe seems like a principle of least
surprise to me.

> The main reason for this choice is the number of people who've told us
> that they are only able to run exit relays because "it's what Tor does
> when you run a relay", and their institution wouldn't let them do it if
> it required a manual config change to become an exit.
> 
> Then again, that was a long time ago, and maybe it's gotten harder to
> sustain exits these days?

I can easily imagine that folks who get their first warning from their
ISP simply say "well, guess I can't run Tor at all then" and turn it
off.

-andy