[tor-dev] Using Tor w/o GeoIP

[Nathan Freitas]

On 01/22/2012 08:14 PM, Sebastian Hahn wrote:
> As a client, the geoipdb is only required for specification of nodes by
> country code, yes. On relays/bridges, we also use it for statistics. One

Thanks for the clarification.

> idea for you might be to not include the geoip thing by default at all,
> and only when the user requests a feature that requires it do you inform
> them that they need to fetch another file. I'm not clear if that's legal
> on Android, but if it is, it could be an effective mechanism.

It is legal on Android, but I have always been concerned about that sort
of secondary download from a Tor perspective, in that you would want to
make sure it was downloaded through the Tor network itself, right?

Maybe I can just create an Orbot-lite version that does not include
privoxy and geoip, etc.

> Also we've had plans to make the geoip db a thing the tor client
> downloads on demand only, but haven't gotten far with that. If you
> wanted to help with that on an 0.2.4 timeframe, that'd probably be
> fantastic.

It would be easier if that was just part of the native Tor
functionality, instead of something tacked on as part of Orbot. I will
do what I can, so keep me in the loop.

+n8fr8