Joachim Breitner

tor vs. spamcop.net

Published 2005-09-08 in sections English, Digital World.

Yesterday, I installed a tor server on my router, thinking of tor as something positive, that should be supported. I don't use it myself at the moment, but I thought I'd donate a few GB each month. I trusted the default settings to be strict enough to not be a help to e-mail spammers, but obviously, I was wrong: Today, a user of my mail system complained about a mail of his bouncing:

571 - MAIL REFUSED - IP (83.133.81.20) is in RBL black list bl.spamcop.net

A quick check on the spamcop status page confirms: "System has sent mail to SpamCop spam traps in the past week (spam traps are secret, no reports or evidence are provided by SpamCop)". And because of "System has been listed for less than 24 hours.", I figured that it is indeed tor's fault. A second check of tor settings reveals that, while port 25 is blocked by default, ports 465 (ssmts) and 587 (mail submission) are not, and at lest the 465 can be used to reach other mail servers.

I blocked these ports now, and hopefully I will be de-listed in 24 hours. But I really think tor should be as tor-server-admin-friendly as possible, otherwise not many people will donate resources to this basically good thing.

Comments

I thought the documentation was pretty admin friendly. If it wasn't this would happen to all tor admins who ran nodes, but it doesn't... And still hasn't happined to mine.
#1 NeoMike am 2005-09-08
Ok, seems like either they read my blog or - more likely - it was some strange one-time-incident. I am unlisted already. I hope it was that tor setting I changed by now, so that it won't happen anymore.
#2 nomeata (Homepage) am 2005-09-08
<strong>Trackback:</strong> <a href="http://blog.roothell.org/archives/70-Tor-ganz-ohne-Ecken,-Teil-2.html">Tor (ganz ohne Ecken, Teil 2)</a><br />Seit einiger Zeit befasse ich mich jetzt schon mit Tor, und bin (wie im gestrigen Beitrag (s.u.) schon angedeutet) recht begeistert von den Möglichkeiten, die das Tool bietet. Um auch meinen Teil zum Projekt beitragen zu können, habe ich mittlerweile zwei
#3 Captain's blog (Homepage) am 2005-09-08

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