contrib/tor-exit-notice.html

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   7 <title>This is a Tor Exit Router</title>
   8
   9 <!--
  10
  11 This notice is intended to be placed on a virtual host for a domain that
  12 your Tor exit node IP reverse resolves to so that people who may be about
  13 to file an abuse complaint would check it first before bothering you or
  14 your ISP. Ex:
  15 http://tor-exit.yourdomain.org or http://tor-readme.yourdomain.org.
  16
  17 This type of setup has proven very effective at reducing abuse complaints
  18 for exit node operators.
  19
  20 There are a few places in this document that you may want to customize.
  21 They are marked with FIXME.
  22
  23 -->
  24
  25 </head>
  26 <body>
  27
  28 <p style="text-align:center; font-size:xx-large; font-weight:bold">This is a
  29 Tor Exit Router</p>
  30
  31 <p>
  32 Most likely you are accessing this website because you had some issue with
  33 the traffic coming from this IP. This router is part of the <a
  34 href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor Anonymity Network</a>, which is
  35 dedicated to <a href="https://www.torproject.org/about/overview">providing
  36 privacy</a> to people who need it most: average computer users. This
  37 router IP should be generating no other traffic, unless it has been
  38 compromised.</p>
  39
  40
  41 <!-- FIXME: you should probably grab your own copy of how_tor_works_thumb.png
  42      and serve it locally -->
  43
  44 <p style="text-align:center">
  45 <a href="https://www.torproject.org/about/overview">
  46 <img src="https://www.torproject.org/images/how_tor_works_thumb.png" alt="How Tor works" style="border-style:none"/>
  47 </a></p>
  48
  49 <p>
  50 Tor sees use by <a href="https://www.torproject.org/about/torusers">many
  51 important segments of the population</a>, including whistle blowers,
  52 journalists, Chinese dissidents skirting the Great Firewall and oppressive
  53 censorship, abuse victims, stalker targets, the US military, and law
  54 enforcement, just to name a few.  While Tor is not designed for malicious
  55 computer users, it is true that they can use the network for malicious ends.
  56 In reality however, the actual amount of <a
  57 href="https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq-abuse">abuse</a> is quite low. This
  58 is largely because criminals and hackers have significantly better access to
  59 privacy and anonymity than do the regular users whom they prey upon. Criminals
  60 can and do <a
  61 href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/08/web_fraud_20_tools.html">build,
  62 sell, and trade</a> far larger and <a
  63 href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/08/web_fraud_20_distributing_your.html">more
  64 powerful networks</a> than Tor on a daily basis. Thus, in the mind of this
  65 operator, the social need for easily accessible censorship-resistant private,
  66 anonymous communication trumps the risk of unskilled bad actors, who are
  67 almost always more easily uncovered by traditional police work than by
  68 extensive monitoring and surveillance anyway.</p>
  69
  70 <p>
  71 In terms of applicable law, the best way to understand Tor is to consider it a
  72 network of routers operating as common carriers, much like the Internet
  73 backbone. However, unlike the Internet backbone routers, Tor routers
  74 explicitly do not contain identifiable routing information about the source of
  75 a packet, and no single Tor node can determine both the origin and destination
  76 of a given transmission.</p>
  77
  78 <p>
  79 As such, there is little the operator of this router can do to help you track
  80 the connection further. This router maintains no logs of any of the Tor
  81 traffic, so there is little that can be done to trace either legitimate or
  82 illegitimate traffic (or to filter one from the other).  Attempts to
  83 seize this router will accomplish nothing.</p>
  84
  85 <!-- FIXME: US-Only section. Remove if you are a non-US operator -->
  86
  87 <p>
  88 Furthermore, this machine also serves as a carrier of email, which means that
  89 its contents are further protected under the ECPA. <a
  90 href="http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00002707----000-.html">18
  91 USC 2707</a> explicitly allows for civil remedies ($1000/account
  92 <i><b>plus</b></i>  legal fees)
  93 in the event of a seizure executed without good faith or probable cause (it
  94 should be clear at this point that traffic with an originating IP address of
  95 FIXME_DNS_NAME should not constitute probable cause to seize the
  96 machine). Similar considerations exist for 1st amendment content on this
  97 machine.</p>
  98
  99 <!-- FIXME: May or may not be US-only. Some non-US tor nodes have in
 100      fact reported DMCA harassment... -->
 101
 102 <p>
 103 If you are a representative of a company who feels that this router is being
 104 used to violate the DMCA, please be aware that this machine does not host or
 105 contain any illegal content. Also be aware that network infrastructure
 106 maintainers are not liable for the type of content that passes over their
 107 equipment, in accordance with <a
 108 href="http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000512----000-.html">DMCA
 109 "safe harbor" provisions</a>. In other words, you will have just as much luck
 110 sending a takedown notice to the Internet backbone providers. Please consult
 111 <a href="https://www.torproject.org/eff/tor-dmca-response">EFF's prepared
 112 response</a> for more information on this matter.</p>
 113
 114 <p>For more information, please consult the following documentation:</p>
 115
 116 <ol>
 117 <li><a href="https://www.torproject.org/about/overview">Tor Overview</a></li>
 118 <li><a href="https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq-abuse">Tor Abuse FAQ</a></li>
 119 <li><a href="https://www.torproject.org/eff/tor-legal-faq">Tor Legal FAQ</a></li>
 120 </ol>
 121
 122 <p>
 123 That being said, if you still have a complaint about the router,  you may
 124 email the <a href="mailto:FIXME_YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS">maintainer</a>. If
 125 complaints are related to a particular service that is being abused, I will
 126 consider removing that service from my exit policy, which would prevent my
 127 router from allowing that traffic to exit through it. I can only do this on an
 128 IP+destination port basis, however. Common P2P ports are
 129 already blocked.</p>
 130
 131 <p>
 132 You also have the option of blocking this IP address and others on
 133 the Tor network if you so desire. The Tor project provides a <a
 134 href="https://check.torproject.org/cgi-bin/TorBulkExitList.py">web service</a>
 135 to fetch a list of all IP addresses of Tor exit nodes that allow exiting to a
 136 specified IP:port combination, and an official <a
 137 href="https://www.torproject.org/tordnsel/dist/">DNSRBL</a> is also available to
 138 determine if a given IP address is actually a Tor exit server. Please
 139 be considerate
 140 when using these options. It would be unfortunate to deny all Tor users access
 141 to your site indefinitely simply because of a few bad apples.</p>
 142
 143 </body>
 144 </html>