[tor-relays] Re: Results: Looking to interview Tor relay operators (online or at FOSDEM)

Hi Jules and team,

Congrats on WPES '26 (`arXiv:2609.15192`)!

Your Section 3 and 6 findings are playing out live right now: LLM-driven C-Tor security audits have compressed releases into a 2–3 week cycle (0.4.9.12 on Sept 8 -> 0.4.9.13 on Sept 23 -> 0.4.9.14 on Oct 7), outpacing the monthly image-rebuild and downstream OS packaging windows described in Section 3.2.

We are still catching up at 1AEO.

Applying your Section 6 metrics to currently non-compliant relays (source: metrics.1aeo.com / Onionoo) shows the exact Pareto split your paper models:

Relay Adversary / Utility: Just two outdated Exit operators—abuse@xxxxxxxxxx (10/10 obsolete, 1.87% Exit CW) and osservatorionessuno.org (8/13 obsolete, 0.74% Exit CW)—account for ~2.61% of total Exit weight (~7.1 Gbit/s), while KeFF NOC (39 relays, 1.15% total CW) recently lagged a full batch cycle.

In contrast, dozens of outdated single-relay Guard/Middle operators in the long tail hold 0.00% Exit CW and <0.05% total CW combined.

Network (AS/IXP) Adversary: osservatorionessuno.org also tops topological diversity across 4 underrepresented Southern European countries/ASNs (IT, GR, TR, PT), alongside asianaonion.org (2/3 obsolete across 2 rare South Korean ASNs).

With rapid security releases triggering version rejections every few weeks, targeted outreach to just the top 3–5 high-utility/high-AS-diversity operators (copied here) retains the vast majority of at-risk anonymity protection.

On Monday, October 12th, 2026 at 4:41 AM, Jules Dejaeghere via tor-relays <tor-relays@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hello,

Back in January and February, we interviewed relay operators about their experience installing and keeping Tor relays up to date. Multiple people were interested in learning about and reading the results once they were published.

The paper presenting the results was recently accepted for publication in the proceedings of the 25th Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society. The workshop will be held in The Hague, Netherlands, on November 15 (https://wpes2026.github.io).

The full reference for the paper is: Jules Dejaeghere, Lionel Goffaux, Pierre Luycx, Hosam Elkoulak, and Florentin Rochet. 2026. Sociotechnical Aspects of Tor Relay Rejection. In 25th Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society (WPES ’26), November 15–19, 2026, The Hague, Netherlands. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 15 pages.

It will be published as open access in the ACM Digital Library with this DOI (not yet active at the time of writing): https://doi.org/10.1145/3847192.3847370

You can also find the authors’ version (the same as the accepted version, with additional appendices that exceeded the page limit) on arXiv: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.15192

Thanks to those who provided insights here and/or participated in the interviews.

Regards,
Jules Dejaeghere

On 28-01-2026 21:35, Jules Dejaeghere wrote:

Hello,

We are still looking for relay operators willing to share their experience on how they install and keep their relays up to date. We already received a few positive responses (thanks to those who responded), but we still have available time slots. Available time slots are generally in the morning (at UTC+1) during the week of 2-6 February 2026, but we can adapt to your schedule if needed.

The original call for participants is quoted below. Here are a few answers to questions we received that might help you decide whether you want to participate.

- You don't need to operate many relays to participate: a single relay is fine (and we'd like your input); 20+ relays is also interesting to hear about.
- We can have the interview over a text only channel if you prefer: Matrix or another service you are comfortable using.
- The "Full Name" field in the consent form can be filled with any identifier you are comfortable sharing (an email address, for example). We also had people sign a PGP message stating that they agree with the form, so that might be an option.
- We do not intend to publish the full transcript of the interview: we will instead quote relevant excerpts when presenting our results.

To participate:
- Contact me via email (jules.dejaeghere@xxxxxxxxx, PGP 0xEB4CC38446E3F82F), Signal (@julesd.01), or Matrix (@juliusone:matrix.org)
- Specify how you want to participate (voice call via Framatalk, text only, or in person at FOSDEM) and what time slots work for you

Attached are the consent forms: consent-form.pdf for voice interviews (online or at FOSDEM) and consent-form-text.pdf for text only interviews.

If you have any additional questions, you can contact me.

Regards,
Jules Dejaeghere

On 20-01-2026 16:05, Jules Dejaeghere wrote:

Hello,

I am a researcher at the University of Namur (Belgium), and some of our research focuses on Tor. Recently, we started to investigate how Tor relay operators install and keep their relays up to date. This research was motivated by the (somewhat recent) policy of the Tor Project to exclude outdated relays from the network.

As part of this research, we would like to interview relay operators to understand how they install and keep Tor up to date and what they think of the Tor Project policy. If you run, or used to run, Tor relay(s) and are willing to dedicate ~30 minutes of your time, let us know!

Your participation will inform our current research about how Tor relay operators manage their relay(s). It will also provide community feedback to the Tor Project about their policy once our results are published.

Interviews can be done either online (during the week of 2-6 February 2026, via Framatalk https://framatalk.org/abc/en/) or in person during FOSDEM in Brussels (31 January & 1 February 2026, https://fosdem.org/2026).

To participate:
- Contact me via email (jules.dejaeghere@xxxxxxxxx, PGP 0xEB4CC38446E3F82F) or Signal (@julesd.01)
- Specify how you want to participate (online via Framatalk, or in person at FOSDEM) and what time slots work for you

In practice:
- The interview will be audio recorded for analysis by the research team
- You can stop the interview at any time, and your answers will be deleted
- The interview can be held either in English or in French

You'll find attached the full consent form we will ask participants to sign, which describes how the data collected will be processed. If you have any additional questions, you can contact me.

Regards,
Jules Dejaeghere

--

Jules DEJAEGHERE
PhD Student · Researcher
Computer Science Faculty

jules.dejaeghere@xxxxxxxxx
https://directory.unamur.be/staff/jdejaegh

Université de Namur ASBL
Rue de Bruxelles 61 - 5000 Namur
Belgium

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