[tor-relays] Instabilities in Hydra family expected

[Spydar007]

Hello,

Regarding Yourserver.se: I too recently began running an exit there.[1] I receive multiple abuse complaints a week, they simply forward them and close the ticket without needing a response.

I have been a customer of Yourserver.se for many years, back when Sweden was the only option for a location, back when they were only providing OpenVZ and not KVM, back when they would limit servers running Tor relays to 5Mbps (which they no longer seem to bother with).

I ran a middle relay back then, and I remember having discussions with them about Tor - they didn't really understand the principle of an exit relay, so I chose to just stick with a middle relay to be safer. Now having come back to relay operation I decided I would give an exit a go there - there are several others across their two ASNs[2][3] (majority Hydra) and having been a customer and having extensive contact with their team over the years I figured I am likely to have more of an understanding with them.

The exit did get suspended a few weeks back for "malware", and I opened a ticket explaining Tor and how I am not responsible for whatever they mean "malware" to be. They unsuspended it with the response:
> The VPS was blocked for malware.
> We don't accept this malware.
> We unspended Your VPS.

I took that to mean that the "malware" being distributed over Tor is irrelevant to them.

Everything has been fine since, until today (ironically) when it got suspended for "spam". They responded with:
> We allow TOR, but don't allow spam.
> We unsuspend Your VPS.
> We receive very much spam abuse about Your VPS.
> Please, check Your VPS.

I think they continue to misunderstand the purpose of Tor or would prefer people to somehow run exits without any issues whatsoever.

I do run my exit with an almost completely open exit policy (except for mail ports and ports they block[4]), so I plan to now set it to reduced and see if that helps them be ok with it. I notice the Hydra relays are already on a substantially reduced policy (beyond even the reduced-reduced policy), so perhaps this will make no difference in my case either and I will end up also needing to move them elsewhere. I am happy to endure with Yourserver.se though, I do not want my years of being a happy customer to be ended because they don't understand Tor well enough.

With regards alternative hosts, I recently discovered rdp.sh[5], who operate under a new ASN.[6] They are happy with Tor exits if you comply with their policy[7] (let them know first and block mail ports), and they provide unmetered 5 Gbps connection in the Netherlands.[8] They also run some reduced exits and middle relays themselves, and the operators of the bauruine family also began running exits a few days before me.
It's worth noting however that they don't provide IPv6 right now, and won't set reverse DNS PTR records on request (I tried).
They could prove to be a good replacement for Yourserver.se if you need one.

Cheers,
Spydar007

[1] https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/CC8732E6E34D8C1AA61A3B7FE95DDD71BCE9C880
[2] https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/as:AS43513%20flag:exit
[3] https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/as:AS52173%20flag:exit
[4] https://www.yourserver.se/knowledgebase/35/Blocked-ports.html
[5] https://rdp.sh
[6] https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/as:AS210558
[7] https://rdp.sh/docs/faq/tor
[8] https://rdp.sh/docs/faq/traffic-limit
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