[tor-talk] tor-blocking sites

[Jim]

Sorry for my delayed response.  I got a little behind in my email.

Mr Dash Four wrote:

>> Scroogle is currently having trouble scraping Google. Maybe Dash Fours
>> problems with it are unrelated to Tor?
>>   
> Nope. I am well aware of this and it isn't an issue which just popped 
> yesterday or a week ago - it has been going on for months (scraping 
> Google, that is). I am also aware that Scroogle has a limited (I think 
> about 6-7) number of servers.

Yes.  There is a clear difference between the two issues.  When Scroogle
is having trouble with Google you get a "Sorry ... please wait ten
minutes ..." page rather than getting no response at all.

> What I meant with my initial post though is that Scroogle started 
> blocking tor exit nodes recently - about a week or so ago. I know that, 
> because I tried to access it at the same time (via different machines) 
> and all requests which used Tor exit nodes were timing out (or giving me 
> 502) - without exception, while the "normal" requests (using my own IP 
> address) made at the same time passed through to Scroogle 
> instantaneously! This cannot be a coincidence.

My issues with Scroogle have been going on for over two months.
(Irritatingly enough, I started having problems with Scroogle
immediately after I finally got around to giving them a small donation.)
My experience is that at any given time they are blocking most but
(usually) not all Tor exits.  If I am patient enough, Tor sometimes
finds an exit that works.  I have sometimes made a stab at what exit
worked and used MapAddress to force that exit, which usually works for a
while.  I have also sometimes used Tor -> Web Proxy -> Scroogle, but
usually before I get to that point I just use IxQuick (which is
painfully slow on dial-up).

Jim