Re: Abuse ticket

[Scott Bennett <bennett@xxxxxxxxxx>]

     On Tue, 17 Mar 2009 01:18:10 +0100 slush <slush@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>Im running Tor on VPS and I have some problems with abusive Tor traffic.
>Firstly, I had problem with DMCA and BitTorrents, so I close non-HTTP(s)
>ports and everything was OK for few months. Now, some dumbass wrote abusive
>message to some web forum, which was reported to police. They located my
>server as source. Last message from VPS admin is:
>
>-----------------------
>Hello Marek
>
>While running a Tor node is not against our TOS, allowing traffic to pass
>through your servers that results in our IP space being banned certainly is.
>
>This is your first abuse ticket, so we will set it to auto-close in 48
>hours.  If we do receive additional complaints we will need to ask you to
>remove Tor from your Linode.
>
>Regards,
>*********
>--------------------------
>
>I dont want to close HTTP ports 8-), but next report of abusive traffic will
>lead to shutting down Tor or whole VPS :-(. So is there any "best practice",
>what I should do now? DMCA response is probably not fitting to this issue...
>
     Wow.  The differences in laws from one place to another makes it
difficult or impossible to recommend any single practice for tor users.  In
the U.S., censoring the content makes you liable for any content that is
alllowed to pass through, whereas a complete lack of content-based censorship
and refusal to implement any leaves you protected as a "common carrier".
     I would suggest in your case that you close port 80 (HTTP) while you
contact your provider to find out whether they would accept blockage on an
IP address basis.  One thing to keep in mind is that, as far as the tor
community is concerned, content-based censorship by an exit node qualifies
the exit node for a BadExit flag from the directory authorities.  If you are
forced to close the port in order to keep tor running, then your node can
still be useful.  But I wouldn't wait for another "abuse ticket" to take some
sort of evasive action.


                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
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