Hi Shawn,
I also run an exit on DO's infrastructure and have been for the past six months. I have received some complaints as well. Besides the usual blacklisting, DO support has contacted me twice about my exit which I've had to explain as well:
My email is not relevant to this IP address. There is no information in the whois that identifies me. However, I am the owner and operator of xxx.xxx.xxx. If you access that IP directly you can see that it is a Tor Exit Router.
ln which I received the response:
We strongly recommend against running tor exit nodes on our droplets for this reason. Please be aware that you are responsible for any abuse generated from your droplet including that that comes across the Tor exit node you are running. Failure to resolve these issues could result in account suspension.
l responded assuring them I would take care of all issues. But for them to shut down your exit is shocking. Were there any issues that needed resolving that you ignored probably?
Regards,
Jason
On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 1:44 PM, Shawn Nock nock@aphr.asia wrote:
Hello friends,
As I recall, there are several exits running on DigitalOcean's infrastructure. This is presented FYI:
Background: I've run an exit on DigitalOcean for about a year without issues (lost track of uptime duing heartbleed key regen). It wasn't hidden (the droplet name was 'tor-exit') and it had valid reverse DNS and the standard informational page was hosted there. At the time of droplet creation, tor exits were not prohibited by their ToS. I've mentioned to DigitalOcean staff during support tickets that it was a Tor exit.
Today the exit was shutdown, the message received was this:
Hello
We do see that you are running an exit node for the TOR network.
Unfortunately we are unable to resume services to this droplet and ask you that you please not run any other TOR exit nodes.
Please get back to us as soon as possible so we can resolve this.
Thanks Support
I sent the following response:
Hello,
My droplet has been running for months (perhaps a year) with no significant incidents. It is well managed, allows only a strict subset of traffic to exit and the very few complaints that have been lodged have been dealt with quickly and professionally (as said by your support team). The droplet has been configured to limit the rate of traffic below the droplet's monthly network transfer quota.
It's well established that under US law ISPs are excluded from liability under the safe-harbour provisions of the DCMA for any copyright infringing traffic. More generally, the probability under US law that an ISP would be held liable carrying user-generated traffic is extremely low. Tor exits have been operated by Universities, Churches, and corporations (large and small) for slightly more that 10 years. During this time not a single criminal or civil complaint has been brought against an operator's ISP (to my knowledge).
While it is surely your right to operate your business in the manner of your choosing; I politely request an explanation for your apparent policy against Tor exit nodes. If there is some way I might change the parameters of the exit to suit a policy against specific traffic (to certain IP blocks, port ranges); I'd surely comply.
Finally, in this time where repressive regimes are cracking down on Internet traffic and persecuting their countrymen and where free access to the internet is nearing the stature of 'human right': if your policy is indeed a general one against all Tor exits, I urge you to reconsider your policy. It would be a great service to tens-of-thousands of Tor users (refugees, political activists, religious minority, abused spouses, law enforcement, &c) to revise your policy to allow well-maintained exits to remain on your network.
I appreciate any attention you could give to this serious matter.
-- nock@aphr.asia (OpenPGP: 0x6FDA11EE 3BC412E3)
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