Hello fellow relay runners,
This morning OVH decided to kill 7 of my relays due to spamming, and block all access to all services. I ran the Reduced Exit policy for all of my relays.
Due to heightened concerns about this affecting other unrelated services I have with OVH, I had to shut down the other 3 relays. They may eventually re-appear as middle-relays.
This has cost me hundreds of dollars, as I foolishly decided to prepay on an annual basis. None of the servers were older than 2 months. Some were only a few weeks old.
The Abuse department's rationale is as follows: "Your account was suspended because 100% of your IPs are blacklisted on multiples lists for Spam and other malicious activities. This case is closed and this decision is final."
---------------------------------------------------------------------- When I first contacted OVH regarding running Tor relays, this was the response that I received from them, which does not mesh with what just happened.
"Good morning Matt,
I'm very glad to here from you. It is very flattering to hear that you are very satisfied by our service at OVH!
We do take our network speed and hardware performance very seriously here. We are proud of our infrastructure that we have built over the years.
I do understand your concerns about setting up a Tor relay on one of our VPS. In a simple form, yes you can.
We do let our customers use our VPS as Tor relays. We have no problem in letting you this.
However, your are allowed to use Tor but it will be at your own risk.
Rest assure that, in case of an abuse, we will not terminate your account without notice. In fact we may not even terminate your VPS. You will receive a warning from our Abuse department giving you a choice to resolve the abuse case.
Like you said, we are in a world where free speech is constantly under attack and we are committed to help as much as possible to protect this fundamental right that we all have. We will absolutely not in any case share our customers information or data to authorities without a warrant.
For any other questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at any time. We are available 24/7.
Good luck with that privacy project of yours and keep on supporting the cause of free speech!
Thank you for contacting OVH and have a wonderful day!
Colin K. Customer Advocate"
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Not that it matters anymore, but each relay was dedicated to one of the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attack. https://atlas.torproject.org/#search/4charlie
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Eventually I will get back at this... But for now, my money is gone, and all my hard work is lost.
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So... I know I'm new. And it's possible this has happened (many times) before, but... You've been warned.
Speak Freely