[tor-bugs] #4041 [Vidalia]: Default Relay Exit Policy

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#4041: Default Relay Exit Policy
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    Reporter:  ancientmariner  |       Owner:  chiiph    
        Type:  defect          |      Status:  closed    
    Priority:  normal          |   Milestone:            
   Component:  Vidalia         |     Version:            
  Resolution:  duplicate       |    Keywords:  relay exit
      Parent:                  |      Points:            
Actualpoints:                  |  
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Changes (by atagar):

  * status:  new => closed
  * resolution:  => duplicate


Comment:

 > Less than half of all Relays are exit Relays considerably diminishing
 Tor's capabilities.

 Not necessarily. For rarer exit ports (like outbound email traffic) the
 bottleneck will probably be at the exit, but for other uses it's not
 really clear if exits are a bottleneck or not. One peculiar thing about
 relays is that the big gigabit relays (blutmagie, torservers, and amunet)
 are all exits. I'm not sure if making an effort to employ residential
 connections (which have tiny upload rates) as exits would really benefit
 the network compared to letting them take the middle hop position.

 Regardless, open exit policies are a lightning rod for abuse complaints
 and even restricted policies risk getting an individual in trouble with
 their ISP. We want exit operators to know what they're getting into and be
 prepared to deal with abuse issues that come their way, so making relays
 exits by default would be a very bad idea.

 > It appears then a compromise of setting the default Relay configuration
 to exits for unsecure and secure websites would let Relay operators
 provide a valuable and essential service while at the same time reducing
 the risk to themselves.

 Web traffic is not abuse-free. We (amunet) mostly get complaints about
 spam/nastygrams from web email services, forum spam, and content scraping
 (all from ports 80/443).

 > Or some subset of all ports that won't cause a skittish relay operator
 to get threatening messages from their ISP?

 An exit will be pretty useless if it doesn't contain some common ports
 (especially 80/443) but unfortunately those are the ones that are likely
 to get a person in hot water.

 The question of being an exit by default is discussed in...
 https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/2644

 and the default policy discussion is on...
 https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/3469

 Resolving as a duplicate. -Damian

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4041#comment:2>
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