Cook:
On 26.9.2013 23:25, Roger Dingledine wrote:
EFF recommends against it in their Legal FAQ: "Should I run an exit relay from my home?" https://www.torproject.org/eff/tor-legal-faq
Their recommendation comes from dealing with one too many distraught relay operators who had confused DEA agents show up at their house and take everything including their toaster "because it might be evidence".
In general we've been doing pretty well at teaching law enforcement in the US about how Tor works: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/trip-report-october-fbi-conference but a) there are many other countries out there, and b) all it takes is one guy who didn't read his "there's this thing called Tor" briefing, or didn't believe it, to ruin your day/week/month.
So, feel free to do it, but also be aware there's a tiny-but-hard-to-actually-estimate chance of getting to spend a lot of time teaching people about Tor.
Thanks! --Roger
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So exits are desperately needed, but not badly enough to recommend running them where it would be the most convenient to set up, easiest to troubleshoot and manage, and most cost-effective to run (my personal experience and opinion, may not reflect that of others)? Granted, many, if not most consumer connections are capped too low to be of much individual value in terms of output volume, but i recall reading somewhere on these mailing lists and/or the Tor Project FAQs about how important diversity is, as opposed to clustering most exits to a handful of physical locations with fat cables.
I don't mean to sound rude, i just hate the way the world works with these things. Don't we all? _______________________________________________ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
Well yes. The thing is, even if you wouldn't have legal issues (which is also not garanteed when you run an exit that shares it's IP with real laptops and PCs people use), you would be annoyed and create a hard time for those laptops and PCs in that network. Webservices will at some point block your IP and even if it's temporarily, if it's the one service you need _now_ you regret running that exit node.
You won't have any such problem running a middle relay. And it helps as well. And you'll get the traffic you set in your torrc over time.
Running an exit is not hard. Just make sure it's the only machine behind a (real) IP. Rent a vserver with root access for about 10 bucks a month, you wont even need a machine yourself. Or find some "housing" service where you can put your own little machine that get's its own IP. And keep the installation simple. Run tor only. And read the 2 or 3 pages on the website on running an exit.