more letters from the feds

[phobos at rootme.org]

On Wed, Jan 10, 2007 at 08:28:48PM +0000, robert at roberthogan.net wrote 2.0K bytes in 43 lines about:
: 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.

	You overestimate the capabilities of institutions.  Of the major
	problems an ISP faces-zombie computers, spam, worms, legal
	threats from content owners over p2p traffic- Tor is pretty low
	on the overall list.  If you are saturating your home connection
	7x24, that may raise flags.  Tor provides control over exit
	policies and bandwidth consumed to mitigate the profile an ISP
	views.

: * 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?

	Receiving letters from authorities is the exception, rather than
	the rule.  Running an exit-node at home enhances your anonymity.
	Your traffic blends in with the rest of the Tor traffic.  I
	don't believe there have been any legal tests of Tor exit nodes.
	The Legal FAQ was written to alleviate concerns.
	http://tor.eff.org/eff/tor-legal-faq.html.en  Can your exit node
	be abused?  Sure.  The Abuse FAQ was written to address these
	issues.  http://tor.eff.org/faq-abuse.html.en  The probability
	of being abused to the point someone upstream (ISP, End-user,
	Government) is incented into legal action is small.  

	One caveat is your ISP's Terms of Service or Acceptable Use
	Policy.  If running a server, of any kind, is a violation,
	be fully advised that running a Tor server may violate your
	agreement with your ISP.  Most ISP's will not enforce this until
	the last resort.  They'd rather have your money.

: * 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?

	To my knowledge, running middleman nodes does not attract
	unwanted attention.  An ISP will see lots of SSL traffic to
	varied places.  This could be considered illicit peer to peer
	traffic, but without proof, it may be tough to prove.

	Again, this enhances your anonymity by hiding your Tor traffic
	amongst the other traffic. 

: * Is there some good way of helping a user to weigh this all up? 

	The two URLs provided in the first paragraph should provide some
	guidance.

-- 
Andrew