Re: [tor-relays] Running exit-node in Germany

[Paul Staroch <paulchen@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Am 2013-08-01 15:22, schrieb Eugen Leitl:
>> experience with running a Tor-Relay in Germany( Bavaria)?
> A Tor relay is a non-exit, and completely unproblematic
> but for potential traffic issues.

Unfortunately, this is not completely true.

I'm running a non-exit Tor relay on a dedicated server at EUserv [1], an Internet provider from Hermsdorf, Thuringia, Germany. Last fall that hoster received an abuse complaint regarding my Tor relay. "eco -- Verband der deutschen Internetwirtschaft e.V." [2] reported child pornography being accessible via that relay. The example URLs they provided contained .onion domain names.

Obviously they knew how to run Tor, but they did not know or understand how hidden services work. They accessed hidden services providing child pornography and used my relay as entry node.

"eco" informed me that they already had informed the division SO 12 of the German Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) which is responsible for cases of child pornography. "eco" asked me to make the content containing child pornography inaccessible and to cooperate with the BKA.

As I am unable to make the content inaccessible through my server without shutting my relay down, I decided to provide a detailled explanation. I wrote a lengthy email explaining what Tor is, how hidden services work and why I run a Tor relay. I also explained that shutting down my server would not remove the child pornographic content from the Tor network and that there is no currently known way to deanonymize the person behind a hidden service.

Since then, I have never heard of "eco" or BKA again.


Paul


[1] http://www.euserv.de/
[2] http://www.eco.de/
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