Re:Running a Tor Exit Node for Fun and E-mails
by matt_wulfeck on Monday September 05, 2016 @03:10AM
(#12428629)
I would say many people are put off by the morality of it. Sure you're helping people in oppressive regimes avoid censorship, but you're also helping scum in a way many people aren't comfortable with or want to be connected with.
Re:Running a Tor Exit Node for Fun and E-mails
by lucb1e on Monday September 05, 2016 @04:39AM
(#12428943)
Maybe, but this is actually the first time I've heard that point of view. I'm not saying nobody thinks that, I just haven't heard it before.
Re:Running a Tor Exit Node for Fun and E-mails
by orly_bookz on Tuesday September 06, 2016 @10:27AM
(#12436219)
Really?
TOR interests me but I'd never run an exit node because I'm assuming one of three things is gonna come out of it: dissidents, criminal activity, or spook traffic (it was literally made by and for naval intelligence /the CIA).
You can make an ethical argument for the first one but I still don't want any of those three running out of my machines...
People are scared by some horror stories. Terrorism in the traditional sense of the word, as done by a government, is what is happening here: raid a few people and the whole community backs off. I have to admit that it makes me more hesitant too.
> I'd like to use Tor more if it was a bit speedier.
It's more than just having enough bandwidth. Tor picks random servers to relay through. Say you are in silicon valley and want to connect to Gmail via Tor. Tor might, in a really bad case, choose a server in Germany, Japan and South Africa. Now your traffic has to travel from the US to Germany to Japan to South Africa and to the US again. Limited by the speed of light (light is slow), that takes a while -- probably almost a second for a single round-trip. Connecting via HTTPS will suck and online shooter games are out of the question, no matter whether you have 56kbps or 180gbps available.
In most cases it's a lot better than this, but it remains random chance. I used Tor daily for a few months and often didn't notice any difference between normal WiFi and Tor, but sometimes it was also a bit annoying.