On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 1:58 AM, z0rc damian.goeldi@gmail.com wrote:
On 20/08/13 12:01, Kostas Jakeliunas wrote:
Do you remember where you did hear this? Was it in writing, are you by chance maybe able to link to it? It would be interesting to know more.
Hi,
It was actually on this list a few weeks ago. Paul Staroch was contacted by the German authorities for running a non-exit relay [1]. It seems like they knew too little about Tor and thought he was providing child pornography through his relay as they used it as entry node. So I was wondering whether it was possible that some criminal used my bridge to do some nasty stuff and when the authorities find him, they will see my IP on his PC and come after me? But maybe this is just a little too paranoid. Are there any other known incidences like this one?
Damian
[1] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2013-August/002365.html
Oh, this is interesting (I wasn't yet subscribed to @tor-relays at the time probably). It seems that these kinds of things might be unavoidable, but there shouldn't be any trouble after the operator explains / links to explanations of how Tor works. I think there's much less chance of this happening if one is running a bridge, since in that case it won't be part of the public relay list, and it won't be possible to connect to any .onions through it automatically, without first getting the bridge IP through one of the bridge pools and deliberately adding it to Vidalia/wherever (and configuring your Tor to actually use bridges.)
I wouldn't be afraid. (Ideally, operators wouldn't be afraid of some confrontation in any case - they would kindly explain how Tor works, and would defend Tor as a tool for empowerment of users, etc.)
Kostas.