[tor-relays] tor relay - impact on e-mail system reputation

[ronqtorrelays at risley.net]

> On Nov 25, 2018, at 10:10, starlight.2018q2 at binnacle.cx wrote:
> 
> If an IP is not on Spamhaus and not on Barracuda it
> should have no problem obtaining a decent reputation.

Not too many years back, I had a non-exit relay on the same IP address I use for my general home WiFi network. Mail reputation didn't seem to be affected, but I found that I was blacklisted by a number of media companies. I don't remember which ones, exactly, but services like Hulu and Netflix started giving me error messages to the effect that I was in a geographic region they didn't support (California, US). When I'd call customer support, they'd just deny that there was any problem and blame my ISP. It took quite a bit of sleuthing to figure out that the companies simply block any Tor-associated IP addresses.

The impression I get is that it's deliberate and purely punitive. They see Tor as a service that might affect their bottom line (by facilitating piracy and/or getting around geographic restrictions), so they do anything they can to punish people who support it. They know perfectly well that a non-exit relay can't be used to bypass geographic restrictions, but they block them anyway out of arrogance.

I moved my relay to a different IP and over the span of a month or two the blocking stopped.

All of which is to say that there are certainly companies out there that *will* attack you for running a middle node.

--Ron