Re: Time Warner bad / VPS recommendations

[Paul Syverson <syverson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Feb 05, 2009 at 04:14:29PM -0500, Praedor Atrebates wrote:
> On Thursday 05 February 2009 16:03:52 Mitar wrote:
> > Hi!
> > 
> > On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 9:52 PM, slush <slush@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > Although Im big Tor fan, I think it is better idea to run Tor in unused
> > > bandwith (like me) on plenty of computers rather than pay together few big
> > > centralized servers (like you offer). Firstly, using unused bandwidth is for
> > > free. And it is also more secure.
> > 
> > I agree and this is also the way I am using "my" bandwidth.
> > 
> > But on the other hand I am seeing many e-mails like "I would like to
> > contribute to Tor but my ISP/university/mom does not allow me/has
> > blocked me/does not want to hassle". So maybe those could cooperate in
> > a way of putting together such nodes.
> 

> I've sometimes wondered about the whether it would be possible to
> alter tor a bit, or place another app between tor and the net (perl
> script or something) that would work with a tor exit.  In cases
> where someone would like to run a tor exit node but gets into
> trouble with their ISP, might it be possible to add a script that
> might take at least the web traffic from a tor exit node in question
> and package it up and send it to anonymizer or kaxy or some other
> web anonymity proxy on the net?  It would be equivalent to adding a
> 4th, external node to the 3 official tor nodes...
> 
> This is a variation of a way I have considered for doing some extra
> anonymizing: use tor to connect to a web anonymizing proxy and
> browse from there.
> 
> It would offload complaints about "inappropriate" acts by tor users
> away from the exit node and to the anonymizer service, which I am
> sure can take it because it is what they DO.
> 

The main problem with this suggestion is that it is more likely to
decrease than increase anonymity.  Tor gets its security from the
difficulty that an adversary has being able to observe or infer both
ends of a connection between source and destination.  If you
redirected traffic from many Tor exit nodes to one proxy or a handful
of proxies then you are not doing extra anonymizing---just the
opposite.

HTH,
Paul