Hi,

it is great to see that just 2-3 months after publishing version 2 of the ContactInfo Information Sharing Spec [1] there are already over 100 tor relays (>10% exit probability) making use of it, to allow for automated verification of the url field in the ContactInfo.

If you are still using version 1 of the spec I'd encourage you to update to version 2, which usually isn't a big effort.

Due to the adoption I also started to add stats for it to OrNetStats, but since the proofs and ContactInfo strings are public, everyone can verify it:

https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetStats/#verified-operator-domains

Currently it does only consider the well-known URI proofs (the DNS proof will also be added).

It is also important to note that a verified domain does not say anything about the intentions of an operator, it just prevents things like [2] where a malicious entity claimed to be some other operator by using their ContactInfo without a good automated method to tell them appart, especially if MyFamily is not properly set.

And it will also make things easier when tagging relays as "known" or "unknown" [3], since it allows tagging on an operator level instead of trying to figure out who the real operator behind each and every relay is, by using unverified ContactInfo claims manually.

In the near future I'd like to make use of the data to generate operator level time series graphs and overall stacked graphs.

If you would like to play with the ContactInfo strings yourself, here is an early parser: https://github.com/erans/torcontactinfoparser

In the past we had a small error in the generator (field name "gpg:..." was used instead of "pgp:...") this has been fixed: https://torcontactinfogenerator.netlify.app/

kind regards, nusenu

[1] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2020-October/019024.html [2] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2020-October/019045.html [3] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/metrics/relay-search/-/issues/40001