Re: [tor-talk] blocked exit node IP because of spam

[antispam06@xxxxxxx]

On Sun, Jul 1, 2012, at 15:32, Sam Whited wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 30, 2012 at 3:17 PM, || ÎÎÎ || <manostienen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > So spammers abuse tor...
> 
> Yes, they always have, and probably always will.

I feel there is a need to dispell some wonderful magic of the modern
society: the World has always been large. Even if it takes a lot less to
cover large distances, the World is still large. And that might mean,
among others, diverse too.

A second spell of the modern society is safety. The World has always
been both comfortable and unsafe in various proportions. There are cries
about protecting someone or something. But that was never ever in
history a given. Oh, food should be free of additives like in the good
old days. Actually in the good old days it was a lor more probable to
eat rotten meat and not have the faintest idea that going vegan was an
option. Sure, for the demigods breed in the last decades the spectre of
cancer might mean dying of fear, but less than a century ago rotten food
would mean potential death tomorrow as an alternative to starvation
today.

Phobos had a wonderful article about this recently on the Tor blog
[https://blog.torproject.org/blog/real-name-internet-versus-reality] but
people still expect that terrorism should come from a virtual entity far
far away and not from the local corrupt cop
[http://socialistworker.org/2012/06/21/nypd-kills-again]

Myself I'm not shure all spammers turn a profit, but they all are ready
to employ every mean available to push their merchandise. This doesn't
mean checking the identity would do any good as they can impersonate
anybody if willing. 

But that goes to the third issue of the modern society: mistaken an
identity with a number. That would pretty much go with Michel Foucault
and his prison society, because most people see themselves as obedient
inmates. They are the national ID number or the SSN. And not much more.
That's why there was so much fuss about the birth certificate of a
presidential candidate and less about what the man was about to do. Back
in the days when there was no registration people would build up some
fame and invoke some ancestry. Or they were practically nobody. Up to a
certain point in history everybody was an anonym and only few could
break through to become somebody. Superficially things seem to have
reversed, but it's a fake assumption. I still can't differentiate most
of the people I pass each day. They are still nobodies. But they are
proud to show a number: proof of uniqueness.

> Tor is designed to keep people anonymous; this works for both the good
> guys, and the bad. This isn't something the Tor Project needs to fix
> except through continued marketing and education. I'd suggest emailing
> the administrator of the forums you're having trouble with (and
> possibly the IP blacklist site) and explain what Tor is, a bit about
> how it works, and exactly why it's beneficial for them to whitelist
> Tor exit nodes. Maybe you can convince them to change their minds.

Actually blocking Tor won't help. A few sane filtering measures do. Have
people create an account. Have someone take a look at that list from
time to time. Generated or random users usually can be flagged easily.
Ask people to do some customization to the account before posting.
Quarantine the first few messages or a certain amount of time. Have a
button or link called âreportâ and let the other users report messages.
Quarantine the account and ask for an explanation from the offender.
Blocking IPs makes sense only when you are Wikipedia and have a mission
to let the government agencies have their fair chance of tweaking the
facts. As I've never seen anything resembling closer the official
newspaper of Airstrip One than Wikipedia.

I don't feel Tor is designed to keep people anonymous. Tor is more of a
hack to give back some privacy. To bring things more in line with the
romantic image of the Internet. Because people want to see the Internet
as a nice place where people go to share ideas and not what it is: a
military project hack done by some unimaginative blokes who were happy
to have things working so they could go to video games arcade or just
sleep. Most of the protocols used to connect computers are horribly
designed by people who can barely understand the concept of consequence.
Probably it's not their fault as the educational system everywhere
splits the curricula into sciences and humanities. And all the
philosophy and ethics are given to the people with no tech background.
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