[tor-relays] "Potentially dangerous relay groups"

[Ralph Seichter]

On 28.09.2016 11:52, Roman Mamedov wrote:

> We're talking MyFamily, so it's you who is in control of all the
> nicknames, and it's only by your whim they may or may not change.

And your point is what? When I last opted for a different naming scheme,
I only had to verify that the names were not already taken. Had I
followed your advice of using nicknames in MyFamily, I would have been
required to update all my nodes, but since I am using fingerprints only,
it was not an issue. Also, Atlas URLs are based on fingerprints, showing
that fingerprints relate to "identity" in the Tor network.

> Still did not see any concrete practical arguments to why fingerprints
> are worth the additional hassle, especially when what we see in reality
> is nicknames working there perfectly well and causing zero issues
> whatsoever for years.

No idea what "additional hassle" you are talking about, and even if you
personally might have difficulties with fingerprints, it does not mean
that other people cannot, or should not, use them. Keeping the correct
fingerprints in MyFamily is easily done. Personally, I like to generate
my nodes' torrc files based on shared settings.

Obviously you can choose to use nicknames if you like to. It is just not
reasonable to state, without any data to back it up, that using finger-
prints over nicknames causes "the number of people to even bother with
MyFamily to dwindle further", as you put it.

-Ralph