some civically irresponsible exits?

[Scott Bennett]

     The documentation that comes with tor rather strongly suggests that exit
servers should have exit policies rejecting the SMTP port (25).  The tor
sample torrc includes this rejection as well.  This rejection of exits to
port 25 would seem to be a Very Good Thing (tm) in light of the rapidly
growing waste of Internet bandwidth in the form of massmail.
     Nevertheless, I decided a few minutes ago to take a peek at reality by
playing with the "exitlist" python script in tor-0.2.0.9-alpha/contrib.  Using
one of the IP addresses for the system on which I get most of my email, I get:

Script started on Wed Oct 31 03:27:42 2007
hellas # cat cached-descriptors*|exitlist 131.156.58.41:25|sort -n -t \. 
58.110.205.100
64.53.198.249
67.18.176.110
69.180.229.28
70.254.240.206
70.68.52.41
72.15.233.132
74.193.218.181
76.177.54.127
76.224.88.156
76.237.99.108
77.2.140.188
78.29.132.53
78.56.68.25
80.233.200.118
81.168.161.71
81.235.202.179
83.246.120.22
85.16.220.225
85.178.35.255
85.182.9.13
85.243.118.88
85.25.20.143
89.110.156.22
89.179.2.20
116.0.103.103
194.1.151.81
204.111.222.56
206.116.78.21
209.126.229.83
209.41.143.102
212.149.225.3
hellas # exit
exit

Script done on Wed Oct 31 03:31:20 2007

     If any of the operators of tor exit servers at IP addresses in the
above list are subscribed to the or-talk list, I would be very interested
to know your reason(s) for providing exit service to massmailers.  It should
be noted that such practices tend to make system administrators who might
otherwise be sympathetic to tor users into avowed enemies of the tor network.


                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
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* Internet:       bennett at cs.niu.edu                              *
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