On 2018-01-08 03:21, Florentin Rochet wrote:
Perhaps in the case that the HS operator is not trying to mask the HS location, the act of mixing public relay traffic can be nothing but a *help* to defeat anyone trying to correlate traffic coming to the HS with traffic emanating from any one client.
Yes, if the HS operator does not want to mask the HS location, then it is all good. For that purpose, I agree that the warning message should be changed.
Indeed. I run some public resources (e.g. torproject.org mirror) on a public URL with a .onion site as well. Nothing is intended to be hidden, I simply want the content of anything I mirror to be available to Tor users without relying on an exit.
After an "abuse" report warning me that my hidden site is "leaking" its location, my root robots.txt and a separate README file now both display the public and .onion addresses with a note that nothing is intended to be hidden. (I also appreciate the individual who sent the warning!)
On the flip side, to a new/naive hidden service operator the warning could be useful as it may not be immediately obvious to someone just dipping their toes in Tor as to why and how this configuration might reveal their hidden service's real physical location.
I avidly dislike warnings appearing in my logs that I intend to ignore, I would prefer to see this be controlled by a preference in torrc, either by an option to disable the warning, or better, require an explicit switch to be set before tor will act as both a relay and a hidden service. By making a "allow both HS and relay function" switch that is disabled by default, we could place appropriate comments in the default torrc file which explain the risks.
Whether any of this really matters in the real world, I don't know, but getting the attention of an inexperienced operator before they make a privacy-reducing mistake seems like A Good Thing.