The Kindness of Strangers | Hacker News Reader

The Kindness of Strangers

online.wsj.com

16 pointsrobg6 comments

That article was interesting, but didn't really seem to go anywhere - I was expecting him to bring up something about 'The dangers of operating a Tor exit node' (posted earlier today), or perhaps even a reflection on the legal status of Tor exit node operators (given that their IP addresses show up in logs, but they don't know what requests they're forwarding), but he didn't seem to make that (or any other) point...

I never knew about Tor. I wonder if the packets are encrypted. But its an over all good article that strangers are good people.

I have a few extra computers at home. Thinking they would be good for Tor.

Tor is great, there are lots of in depth technical discussions about onion routing online if you're curious.

Tor gives you anonymity not encryption, but you can always combine encryption with Tor.

I wish everyone would run a tor node, however very few people do and they can come under very serious bullying by the powers that be.

Also online you can read accounts of how the government intimidates people who run Tor nodes. They ask you questions, they show up at your place of work and ask questions, etc.

Nothing you're doing is illegal, this is just them using their power of intimidation.

If a lot of people ran Tor, the game would be over, but because so few do, intimidation still works, sort of.

I would expect the limiting factor to be bandwidth rather than computing resources.

It is worth noting that there are also potential risks: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=526140

Packets are decrypted at the exit node I believe.

This is kinda stupid. It is much safer to be cynical about strangers.

Also, asking a stranger to "watch over your stuff" is unfair. You are burdening him with the responsibility of your stuff while their is nothing in return for him.

Everyone always acts out of self interest.

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