[tor-talk] Craigslist now blocking all Tor IPs? bad people use Tor

Öyvind Saether oyvinds at everdot.org
Fri Aug 8 08:39:17 UTC 2014


> Most users have seen sites refuse to allow connections from a
> specific Tor IPa.  Sometimes they state the reason as being the
> specific IPa on a blacklist.
> Often, if you force a new exit relay in TBB, then you can connect to
> the site.
> 
> So what happens to all the Tor network addresses that get blacklisted
> as a result of abuse (which is quite common).
> Someone / something must be dealing with those issues, or else much
> of the network would eventually be blacklisted.

I know from reading this list that Tor project people sometimes contact
sites who block Tor and ask them to solve their issues some other way
but I have the distinct impression that they will not do so unless the
site in question is a government propaganda operation like Wikipedia or
YouTube and similar.

The real issue here is that bad people do use Tor. One or a few people
using it can cause real harm and more importantly cost. One of my own
sites receive about 10k abusive http POST requests per day from the Tor
network. I fully understand why many people do not want this cost when
there is no obvious benefit. The few legitimate Tor users that may want
to visit your site tend to block advertisements anyway. Thus, blocking
Tor can easily be seen as something that can reduce costs increase
shareholder value.

If you want those who block Tor to stop doing so then your best course
of action is probably to contact them yourself and help them implement
better solutions that prevent abuse from both Tor and non-Tor users. Do
not expect anyone to do this for you. There are ways to deal with abuse
from the Tor network without blocking it but implementing these
solutions does cost time and money. If you can present a solution with
little or no cost or convince them why they should accept a reduced
bottom line just to please the two Tor users who are not abusive then
just do it. If you can't then you should just accept that it is, in
many cases, just not worth the cost and trouble.
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