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Comment by robinh | Hacker News Reader

If security is a priority, then set up a Tor node! :)

Then brace yourself for a flood of DMCA requests and law enforcement attention in 3.. 2.. 1..

Sorry for the perhaps extreme naivety, but does this actually happen to people who set up Tor nodes?

In germany some servers were collected by the police but relatively promptly returned once they figured out that they were tor exit nodes. Still, you're the first person that the police can get a handle on, so at least expect some questions once in a while.

I don't know about any other country, but you might just consider hosting the tor exit node in a country with more friendly laws and then use a VPN to connect there.

Indeed, you're probably protected by safe harbor/mere conduit laws in most jurisdictions, but you're still liable to become the subject of law enforcement investigations and have your equipment seized.

More hassle than it's worth.

It can happen if you run an exit node, because your IP is visiting bad sites. If you run a relay node without exit, this should never happen because all you're doing is moving around encrypted packets to other Tor nodes.

Here's one today, in Austria.

http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/6283/raided-for-running...

have you experienced this? i've run tor at various times over the years and the worst i've experienced is being blacklisted in a relay list.

(and i find it frustrating that there's always someone - apparently with no experience - who suggests the very worst when people mention this)

An instance of a Tor exit node operator being raided for child pornography is on the front page of HN as we speak.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4847468

come on. you know as well as i do that this is rare.

really, this is the height of technical cowardice. searching out exceptions for what is not only a good cause, but one that is statistically safe.

it happens regularly when tor is mentioned. there seems to be a certain kind of person that takes delight in looking for extreme examples to justify their own lack of moral fibre.

Wait, did you just suggest that I have a lack of morals because I referred to a link on the front page of HN? Kindly go fuck yourself.

Also, it doesn't matter if there's a one in a million chance that running a Tor exit will get you raided for child porn -- the vast majority of people will not take that risk to help others remain anonymous on the internet.

Do you mean as a relay or exit node? Exit nodes are the ones that take the heat.

I would be very surprised if you've run a Tor exit node for a considerable period of time without incident, even if it's just abuse notices from your upstream provider.

Not if you only set up a Tor node to be used as an internal relay within Tor network (you're doing a good job nonetheless), not as a tor exit (exit point to internet/clearnet). The latter ones are those that might get some heat. As long as it's an internal relay node only, traffic in/out is encrypted end-to-end, and I haven't heard of any problems in terms of law harassment etc.

Of course, I should have specified I was referring to exit nodes.

Without the exit nodes, the relay nodes are nothing; just a bunch of people playing hot potato with encrypted data and no one prepared to take the heat by attaching their details to it.

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