[tor-relays] Is running an irc only exit relay safe from abuse

Alexander Færøy ahf at torproject.org
Fri May 15 03:04:49 UTC 2020


Hello,

On 2020/05/14 18:18, Keifer Bly wrote:
> So my relay at https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/
> 99929040054EC1EF0927467E4588A37879891C9C is configured for IRC only exit, I
> wanted to ask, is this generally safer from abuse complaints?
> 
> It is running on OVH, so want to be safe. Thanks.

No, it's generally not safe from abuse complaints. Most IRC admins, who
dislike Tor, have long blocked Tor relays from their servers. Your exit
node is also usable for probing open ports on the limited number of
ports that you allow exit traffic to, which could trigger some automated
abuse detection systems.

I doubt your provider will receive a complaint anytime soon, but there
is no guarantee if that was what you hoped to receive.

If you want to continue running an IRC-only exit node, it would be
helpful if you considered adding port 6697 and 9999, which are both
common IRC-over-TLS ports. Hopefully, nobody will connect via an exit
node to clear text IRC ports :-)

All the best,
Alex.

-- 
Alexander Færøy


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