[tor-talk] Why make bad-relays a closed mailing list?

[Roger Dingledine]

On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 07:58:34PM +0200, Öyvind Saether wrote:
> Too bad "ContactInfo email_address" in torrc isn't "ContactInfo
> email_address gpgkey" or alternatively 
> 
> ContactEmail x at y
> ContactKey numbers

Hm? ContactInfo is just a string. You can set it however you like.

Here's the stanza in the torrc file:

## Administrative contact information for this relay or bridge. This line
## can be used to contact you if your relay or bridge is misconfigured or
## something else goes wrong. Note that we archive and publish all
## descriptors containing these lines and that Google indexes them, so
## spammers might also collect them. You may want to obscure the fact that
## it's an email address and/or generate a new address for this purpose.
#ContactInfo Random Person <nobody AT example dot com>
## You might also include your PGP or GPG fingerprint if you have one:
#ContactInfo 0xFFFFFFFF Random Person <nobody AT example dot com>

> There is currenctly no safe way to be contacted by the Tor gang and
> this is a problem with your idea.

Another piece of the problem is that we don't enforce any particular
info in the ContactInfo line (or even that you set one at all). I guess
we could send a challenge to the email address, and demand a reply,
and otherwise set a cap on the capacity that the network will assign you.
Seems like that would be another barrier to our volunteer relay operators,
but maybe for exit relays it's worth it.

--Roger