[tor-talk] Why does requesting for bridges by email require a Yahoo or Gmail address?

[Mirimir]

On 07/24/2014 03:59 PM, mal wrote:
> On 07/24/2014 05:54 PM, Mirimir wrote:
>> I suspect that Google and Yahoo require cellphone text confirmation for
>> multiple account attempts from a single IP address. There are
>> workarounds, but there's more required than cheap labor.
> 
> Correct, but if a million people in your developing country of choice
> phones and/or pre-existing gmail or yahoo accounts take you up on your
> five cent offer...
> 
> Gmail, at least, allows for 4 or 5 accounts per phone number. If yahoo
> does the same, that's 8 to 10 per person.

Yes, it's doable, but at least it's harder than scraping a website.

One could have the start-tor-browser script generate a unique key at
first run, based on the hashed time (nanosecond accuracy) that the
download had completed. Users would need to include the key with the
bridge request. The bridge database could ignore multiple requests from
a given key, or limit them appropriately. The keys could be passed on to
the bridges, and each bridge would accept connections only from its
assigned clients.

The process could be totally hidden for normal users. But each account
would require a separate download and installation.