[tor-talk] TorBirdy seems to connect to the same exit node again and again

[l.m]

Hi Yuri,

I, er, don't think what you're proposing is the answer to the OP's
problem.

If they're using a port which is only supported by 3 exits they'll
still have the problem. If one exit is blocked and they choose that
one the mail server will see further attempts as possibly malicious.
At least one factor is the need to avoid the blacklisted exits in the
first place. That's hard to do if they've been using the same handful
of exits. Someone may be attempting to break into their account and
the blacklist of the exit may be warranted.

Furthermore, it hasn't been identified that the problem is a
connection which is remaining open across new identities. That's just
a behavior observed for arbitrary traffic in the wild. It's should be
highly unlikely for email traffic alone to cause this behavior. It
would require their imap/smtp traffic to coincide with some webmail
traffic across exits where one is blocked. It was me who mentioned it.
That was before noticing the port number and it's rarity at exit
policies.

I've only ever seen the problem described as circuits held open (with
TorBirdy) under very specific circumstances. It cannot yet be the
cause of the OP's problem. Not enough troubleshooting done. It's
actually more likely to be the port.

Anyway, telnet isn't hard, you could just ask tor-talk. The hardest
part is getting the right format of cookie for (default)
authentication. It's harder to get Vidalia working.
--leeroy