Sending mail through TOR/Socks

4non ym0us nospam.anonymous at gmail.com
Mon Jul 17 09:36:04 UTC 2006


I don't know if anybody is doing the same thing but I've set up one of
my personal domains smtp/pop3 emails to use Thunderbird/SOCKS/Tor so
that the receipients can't pinpoint my IP.

However, I notice a persistent phenomenon with this setup is that
receiving emails usually works, but sending mail often fails for no
apparent reason except the generic message from Tbird that it either
cannot connect or the smtp server is refusing connections.

It's highly random, I could send one email and it goes through but the
next doesn't, within the space of a minute.

If I did a direct smtp without going through socks/TOR, it will work
fine. Surfing my personal domain using Firefox through privocy/TOR
also works.

 I'm guessing that most of the folks running TOR exit servers are
refusing smtp ports so I'm basically on a random hit/miss whenever tor
attempts to create a circuit to send the email. But surely TOR should
realize when trying to create a circuit, it should at least look for
nodes that are willing to carry the pending packet?


Anybody has a better clearer idea what could be causing this problem? Thanks!



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