Tor Project removes relays because of for-profit, risky activity

Lee Duna@lemmy.nz to Technology@lemmy.world – 203 points –
bleepingcomputer.com
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Great reminder for people to run a node at home. I run 2 nodes at my house along with dozens of relays (including exit nodes) on different VPS providers. It's not that complicated, you basically just need a spare computer that can run 24/7 and an internet connection. It greatly helps the Tor network and the people in countries like Russia, China, Iran, etc. who rely on Tor in order to bypass censorship and safely browse the open internet. You can watch this video on the topic of running Tor relays at home: https://youtu.be/npg3cBJusnA

I'd gladly run a relay, but an exit on my home ISP? I don't want to go to jail, no thank you: https://husovec.eu/2014/07/austrian-court-sentenced-tor-exit-node-html/

According to your link, hosting an exit node was not a crime by itself, this person pretty much encouraged the illegal activity

The Austrian Court found that this activity may lead to criminal liability for aiding and abetting of a crime of distribution of child pornography when coupled with other circumstances. Of course, mere provision of Tor Nodes would not be enough to establish at least indirect intent (bedingte Vorsatz), which such aiding and abetting under criminal laws usually requires (§ 5 StGB).
In order to find such circumstances, according to PCWorld, the court cited transcripts of chat sessions uncovered during the investigation in which the Weber told an unidentified correspondent “You can host 20TB child porn with us on some encrypted hdds”, “You can host child porn on our servers” and “If you want to host child porn … I would use Tor.” Weber defended himself against this on his blog saying: “Yes, this logs existed – Yes, i recommended Tor to host anything anonymously, including child pornography – Yes, this is of course taken out of context.”

True, I did not read the article carefully. I now read the linked German article. There seems to be some uncertainty in the legal opinion of the lawyers cited there regarding the legality of Tor exit nodes in Austria.

You can also run a obfs4 bridge, it's an unlisted relay that only serves as entry node. If greatly helps out users in censored countries.

I was talking about middle/guard relays. The guide also refers to middle/guard nodes. I wouldn't run an exit on my home internet connection either. I use VPS providers for exit nodes.

last time i used tor i could barely browse shit. most of the internet blocks tor.

I think that has changed. I tried Tor browser several years ago and it was awful. I started again two weeks ago for shits and gigs and haven't had a single problem.