Update to default exit policy

Dawney Smith dawneysmith at googlemail.com
Wed Aug 20 10:34:41 UTC 2008


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

7v5w7go9ub0o wrote:

>> There is a clear misunderstanding of the issue at hand by many people
>> here. The exit policy was put in place to prevent connections between
>> Tor users and the last hop (the end MX server), *not* to prevent
>> connections between Tor users and SMTP relays, which is what everybody
>> keeps repeating.
>>
>> There is no problem with a Tor user connecting to an SMTP relay and
>> sending email. If they can do it using Tor, they can do it without using
>> Tor, faster. In those cases, it is the administrator of the SMTP relay
>> that is responsible to stop spam.
>>
>> Just to repeat the problem. It is Tor users connecting to the
>> destination MX server that is the problem. Mail relay, not mail
>> submission.
>>
>> Ports 465 and 587 are mail submission ports. Port 25 is for both
>> submission *and* relay.
>>
>> I have a *lot* of experience with email administration on a very large
>> scale, I know what I'm talking about.
> 
> Thanks for pursuing this!

No problem. Hopefully the relevant people are taking note. Who exactly
is responsible for setting the default exit policy, and what is their
opinion on this matter?

> 1. Your arguments make good technical sense.
> 
> 2. In fact, many endpoints have already enabled those ports without
> experiencing problems.

Only a couple of dozen though unfortunately. If you ignore German and US
exit nodes, I can only see 4 at the moment that will let me exit on port
465.

> 3. Many of us routinely handle our ssl email accounts via TOR, and your
> proposal (open them by default) would help spread the load, as well as
> reasonably expanding the default functionality of TOR.
> 
> Thanks Again!
> 
> (p.s. this post is being sent via ssl GMAIL, which will include the
> "posting host" when using smtps. My posting host will be a TOR exit node
> :-) )

Ditto.

- --
Dawn
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFIq/NBcoR2aV1igfIRAkMeAJ9MpfCI7k48cQlU+pkVSAHibPR0nwCgo41e
dwyYXKAwBuNw431g7qTolBI=
=3b/V
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



More information about the tor-talk mailing list