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Tor use is now forbidden on Kimsufi's OVH

forum.ovh.com

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Re: Tor use is now forbidden on Kimsufi's OVH

#61

Post by bigiain »

mst wrote: post #50
jeremysmyth wrote: post #38

Tor can be used for good and for bad. It's the very same problem that Cory Doctorow talks about in his lectures about the War on General Purpose Computing, and it's not an easy problem to solve. I'm an admin on a social/gaming site (a MUD with appendant forum, blogs, and other community elements), and we have had to make a few decisions about Tor in the last couple of years. Some background: the site is quite old, an…

Assuming you have the technical capability, requiring an email address and confirmation for only tor users could work. Freenode does something similar - tor and other problematic traffic sources can connect but must use connect time SASL to authenticate to a previously created account, which is sufficient to exclude the vast majority of the griefers.

At least right now – I suspect the intersection of "TOR users" and "people happy to provide email address confirmation" is so small as to be insignificant. Any development effort aimed at that cohort could almost certainly be better used elsewhere.

Having said that, I'm currently trying to make a point of using TOR for regular and mundane uses - particularly if using government sites - just to increase the amount of "legitimate" tor traffic. I'm also (carefully) intentionally de-anonymising myself while using tor like this - identifying myself to local government websites while doing "ordinary" things while connected over TOR - I booked an extra trash collection recently for example. I don't suppose my local council website managers even notice, but I like to think my local PRISM equivalent operators see traffic like this and think "WTF?" ;-)

(But like the parent-poster, I've suffered forum-trolls, and given the time and skill poor nature of most forum owners, the obvious "just ban free email accounts/tor/cellular-ip signups" is often the right, if overly broad hammer.)

Re: Tor use is now forbidden on Kimsufi's OVH

#62

Post by nly »

UVB-76 wrote: post #58
kristofferR wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their support is totally abhorrent though, be prepared waiting days/weeks instead of minutes/hours for any support at all, they abruptly change your TOS and server specs without telling you, cancel you order for no reason without telling you or even refunding you etc. They're totally horrible to deal with, unless you make minimum wage you're probably going to spend more on packets of Tylenol due to all the headaches…

Indeed. I ordered a Kimsufi server five days ago with a guideline setup time of 24 hours. Placed the order, made payment, no doubt I'm already paying for the service, but five days later, I'm still awaiting setup. Their ordering process is painful. Their online management interface is atrocious. Communication is poor. It's true what they say about paying peanuts...

I'm in the same boat, but the Kimsufi server setup time has said "1 - 10 days" for a while.

Re: Tor use is now forbidden on Kimsufi's OVH

#63

Post by nly »

Nux wrote: post #56
pestaa wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not downvote but instead invite you to elaborate. Why will Tor cause its own demise?

Tor's cause is a noble one, but I fear it will end up (if it hasn't already) being used mostly by bad people for bad things. Once you get your home or server IPs connected to black market forums, drugs, human trafficking or kiddie porn sites and your life (and your family's) has suddenly become more complicated, I wonder how many will still be eager to run Tor exit nodes? Maybe a few dreamers and anarchists. Tor exit…

None of the nefarious services and use cases you list require the presence of exit nodes. Silk Road, for instance, is a hidden service. Obviously I don't know about the rest, but you'd have to pretty stupid to put such things on the public internet.

The only people who suffer from the loss of Tor exit nodes are the 'more genuine' or 'more worthy' users who need to use it to escape oppression, or state monitoring.

Re: Tor use is now forbidden on Kimsufi's OVH

#64

Post by bigiain »

lechevalierd3on wrote: post #12

OVH used to be one of the top host provider. Last year they removed the unmetered bandwidth and now TOR, VPN too ? (it's unclear to me). What's next ? no HTTPS, European traffic only ? seriously this sadden me, lucky for us Online.net is a good challenger.

I wonder if this really does include VPN?

I tried but failed to sign up for one of their 3 euro/month servers a few days back in response to other HN discussion (their .uk site wont accept Australian addresses, and their .com site doesn't have those inexpensive 1G servers).

The main reason I would have got the would have been to use as a non-US based VPN endpoint. (I'm somewhat less satisfied with my DigitalOcean droplet as a VPN endpoint since Snowden's revelations.)

Re: Tor use is now forbidden on Kimsufi's OVH

#65

Post by nly »

Karunamon wrote: post #26
pestaa wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not downvote but instead invite you to elaborate. Why will Tor cause its own demise?

Operating as an exit node exposes you to a great deal of legal issues, if not liability. Not to mention annoyance for the user... there will be sites you can't access since many sites block exit node IPs outright because of abuse. If some random does something illegal and they happen to be using your node, guess who gets the knock on the door? With that in mind, what user would want to operate an exit node?

In theory you could run an exit node with a locked down exit policy, e.g. limited to web traffic which is routed through an IWF compliant proxy, disallow HTTPS and/or payment processing sites, add an HTTP header for reporting abuse/requesting blocks, etc.

Re: Tor use is now forbidden on Kimsufi's OVH

#66

Post by tuxed »

Nux wrote: post #56
pestaa wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not downvote but instead invite you to elaborate. Why will Tor cause its own demise?

Tor's cause is a noble one, but I fear it will end up (if it hasn't already) being used mostly by bad people for bad things. Once you get your home or server IPs connected to black market forums, drugs, human trafficking or kiddie porn sites and your life (and your family's) has suddenly become more complicated, I wonder how many will still be eager to run Tor exit nodes? Maybe a few dreamers and anarchists. Tor exit…

I2P

Re: Tor use is now forbidden on Kimsufi's OVH

#67

Post by kbuck »

mst wrote: post #50
jeremysmyth wrote: post #38

Tor can be used for good and for bad. It's the very same problem that Cory Doctorow talks about in his lectures about the War on General Purpose Computing, and it's not an easy problem to solve. I'm an admin on a social/gaming site (a MUD with appendant forum, blogs, and other community elements), and we have had to make a few decisions about Tor in the last couple of years. Some background: the site is quite old, an…

Assuming you have the technical capability, requiring an email address and confirmation for only tor users could work. Freenode does something similar - tor and other problematic traffic sources can connect but must use connect time SASL to authenticate to a previously created account, which is sufficient to exclude the vast majority of the griefers.

FreeNode's use is a bit more extensive than just requiring an email address - you have to create the account from a non-Tor IP, so if you do something bad and get banned, they ban the account (thus preventing further access from you via Tor) and then also have the option of banning the IP that registered the account (preventing it from registering further accounts that will be abused via Tor). If they really want to, they can also ban the email address, but in practice this really isn't worthwhile as it's so easy to get a different one.

Re: Tor use is now forbidden on Kimsufi's OVH

#68

Post by visarga »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #40
pyre wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you provide access to the website as a Tor hidden service, do you get some sort of unique ID for the computer connecting that can be banned? I don't know much about the Tor protocol, but if you're on the receiving end of packets that need a response, you need a way to address them back.

No, you do not get any such thing. Basically, the client and the machine hosting the hidden service both connect to a rendevouz point and communicate via that. The connections to the rendevouz point are not direct. They are bounced through three nodes, with three layers of encryption, each node being able to peal off one layer before passing it on to the next. This is why hidden services are pretty slow. Every packet…

It's bearable. I avoided Tor for years thinking it would be too slow. My mistake. You can even watch YouTube on it.

Re: Tor use is now forbidden on Kimsufi's OVH

#69

Post by Amfy »

lechevalierd3on wrote: post #12

OVH used to be one of the top host provider. Last year they removed the unmetered bandwidth and now TOR, VPN too ? (it's unclear to me). What's next ? no HTTPS, European traffic only ? seriously this sadden me, lucky for us Online.net is a good challenger.

Online.net a challenger:

Ran a middle (non entry/exit) Tor node on one of their servers, received an automated "Abuse message"...

Wrote a support ticket regarding some network architecture question, got a one-liner "not possible".

Re: Tor use is now forbidden on Kimsufi's OVH

#70

Post by Nux »

nly wrote: post #63
Nux wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tor's cause is a noble one, but I fear it will end up (if it hasn't already) being used mostly by bad people for bad things. Once you get your home or server IPs connected to black market forums, drugs, human trafficking or kiddie porn sites and your life (and your family's) has suddenly become more complicated, I wonder how many will still be eager to run Tor exit nodes? Maybe a few dreamers and anarchists. Tor exit…

None of the nefarious services and use cases you list require the presence of exit nodes. Silk Road, for instance, is a hidden service. Obviously I don't know about the rest, but you'd have to pretty stupid to put such things on the public internet. The only people who suffer from the loss of Tor exit nodes are the 'more genuine' or 'more worthy' users who need to use it to escape oppression, or state monitoring.

Exactly, the people who need it "the most" will prolly be left without it at some point. From the comments I see for a proper "dark net" we now can choose between Tor (without exit nodes) and I2P, this is actually great news.
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