Re: Tor and Thunderbird: Outgoing Email Unsafe?

[Paul Syverson <syverson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 08:54:42AM -0500, Michael Holstein wrote:
> Most exit nodes disallow port 25 (smtp) because NOT doing so would make 
> TOR a spammer's paradise. If you know a relay-server that runs smtps or 
> uses an alternate smtp port, use that.
> 

Actually we would expect Tor to be a relatively inefficient vehicle
for spam even with port 25 open, so hardly a paradise. The decision to
block port 25 by default was based partly on the expectation that spam
is the most known and widely despised source of abuse and we expected
people to raise this as a concern.  We wanted to be able to say that
Tor was simply not a vehicle for spam since it is default configured
so as not to be able to transmit email at all. (I know that's too
quick, but we're reasoning at the level of soundbites.) Even with
that, it has not prevented ignorant statements in various places from
making the association that Tor is a spam engine. Imagine how much
worse the image problem would be if there were even a grain of truth
in these statements.  We were also partly concerned about network
load.

aloha,
Paul
-- 
Paul Syverson                              ()  ascii ribbon campaign  
Contact info at http://www.syverson.org/   /\  against html e-mail