# Why do vps providers not allow TOR?



## SwitchBlade (Mar 12, 2015)

Well? I want to setup a private TOR server for learning that only I will use but am finding that vps companies do not allow this. Does anyone know of a company that does allow this?


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## wlanboy (Mar 12, 2015)

High CPU load, high traffic load and a huge amount of legal issues for exit nodes.


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## MannDude (Mar 12, 2015)

wlanboy said:


> High CPU load, high traffic load and a huge amount of legal issues for exit nodes.


Pretty much this.

I'd also imagine that for every legal, legitimate, non-sketchy use of TOR that there is more than two people using it for less than ideal reasons... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


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## KuJoe (Mar 12, 2015)

Because we don't want our servers disappearing in the night.


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## swedendedicated (Mar 12, 2015)

We allow it on our dedicated servers but with deposit


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## mojeda (Mar 12, 2015)

SwitchBlade said:


> Well? I want to setup a private TOR server for learning that only I will use but am finding that vps companies do not allow this. Does anyone know of a company that does allow this?


If you just want to learn you could try creating a VM on your computer using something like Virtual box or VMWare Player, if you have the resources.


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## Profuse-Jim (Mar 12, 2015)

Too much abuse with TOR.


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## KwiceroLTD (Mar 12, 2015)

I have no problem with TOR nodes as long as you agree to have SWIP'd WHOIS-ip information, and deal with complaints.


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## key900 (Mar 12, 2015)

a lot of abuse effected all over customers.


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## SwitchBlade (Mar 13, 2015)

I didn't realize it was so bad. 

Maybe just use a regular vpn then?


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## William (Mar 13, 2015)

​



key900 said:


> a lot of abuse effected all over customers.


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KwiceroLTD said:


> I have no problem with TOR nodes as long as you agree to have SWIP'd WHOIS-ip information, and deal with complaints.


​

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Profuse-Jim said:


> Too much abuse with TOR.


​Middle and entry does not generate any abuse.

​

​


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## Serveo (Mar 13, 2015)

TOR is developed for shady usage, and hosters know what shady attracts. ;-)


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## Nyr (Mar 13, 2015)

Providers banning non-exit nodes do so only because they can't provide the advertised resources. Or because they are either misinformed about the dangers of a middle node or taking a moral stance, I don't know which is worse.


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## KuJoe (Mar 13, 2015)

Nyr said:


> Providers banning non-exit nodes do so only because they can't provide the advertised resources. Or because they are either misinformed about the dangers of a middle node or taking a moral stance, I don't know which is worse.


Or...

C. None of the above.

There are other reasons why providers don't allow non-exit node besides the two you listed.


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## drmike (Mar 13, 2015)

I've never looked at companies that specifically allow Tor.  

There is a prior created list for this, but it probably isn't 100% current or correct, as sentiments about Tor change about the time abuse hits and feds show up looking for information or to seize things.

https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/GoodBadISPs

(I am a fan of Tor and find it sad that mass collection of aholes use it to mask their actual criminal doings.  I support Tor from freedom of speech side and right to not be tracked.)


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## joepie91 (Mar 14, 2015)

Serveo said:


> TOR is developed for shady usage, and hosters know what shady attracts. ;-)


Your definition of 'shady' being what?



KuJoe said:


> Or...
> 
> C. None of the above.
> 
> There are other reasons why providers don't allow non-exit node besides the two you listed.


Such as?


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## Flapadar (Mar 14, 2015)

Tor exit nodes lead to seized equipment. Simple as that really. Nobody likes equipment seizures.


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## KuJoe (Mar 14, 2015)

joepie91 said:


> Such as?


Lack of man power to ensure clients are not running exit nodes. I don't feel like digging through every client's TOR config file and see whether it's configured properly and then having to check it every day to make sure they didn't change it. Just not enough hours in the day. I did find a nice script that checks for exit nodes, but it didn't work one time so I'm not going to trust my whole company to an automated script that's already failed once.


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## Aldryic C'boas (Mar 14, 2015)

The biggest loudmouthes positing the usage of TOR are the same idiots we constantly see mixed up with very illegal activities.  Maybe I'd be willing to see TOR as something more than just a paedophile kiddy porn ring if it had better representation.


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## KwiceroLTD (Mar 14, 2015)

SwitchBlade said:


> Well? I want to setup a private TOR server for learning that only I will use but am finding that vps companies do not allow this. Does anyone know of a company that does allow this?


Did some googling, it appears coinshost.com allows TOR Exit/Relay, and are located in Switzerland.


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## drmike (Mar 14, 2015)

Aldryic C said:


> The biggest loudmouthes positing the usage of TOR are the same idiots we constantly see mixed up with very illegal activities.  Maybe I'd be willing to see TOR as something more than just a paedophile kiddy porn ring if it had better representation.


Problem with Tor isn't even the well intentioned operators.  The problems are from the random users who are engaged in every activity.   Higher density of really problematic usage since it's free and as-advertised gives this idea of being anonymous.

I like Tor conceptually.  But the law breakers are out of control with it.  If you operate a public node look forward to law enforcement inquiries a month outward and piracy / DMCA stuff flows like water and regularly.  

Unsure how anyone operates an exit node and has any sanity, quiet, peace of mind these days.


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## MannDude (Mar 14, 2015)

Just out of curiosity and not in defense of TOR, but has there been any recent cases of raids and equipment seizures as a result of providers allowing it?

I feel like something happened a year or two ago where a provider was raided but I don't recall the details.

And if your cage at the DC is raided, good luck. They'll take the entire g'damned rack that the single server was in which will impact much more than just the one individual doing stupid things.


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## Cloudrck (Mar 14, 2015)

Serveo said:


> TOR is developed for shady usage, and hosters know what shady attracts. ;-)


Just as much as TLS & VPN are used for "shady" usage. I know several local journalists who use Tor. You should know better than to believe the nonsense most mainstream media spits out to scare people. I've allowed Tor relays with no more issues than "allowing" VPN's. In fact, I have more issues with people using servers as a VPN to download illegal media than I have had with Tor relays.


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## SkylarM (Mar 14, 2015)

MannDude said:


> And if your cage at the DC is raided, good luck. They'll take the entire g'damned rack that the single server was in which will impact much more than just the one individual doing stupid things.


Not true, actually. Had an incident with a major lettered agency a few months prior and they wrote up a Warrant to do so. I explained how VPS work and they said they just wanted to grab a copy of the data, but still wanted physical access to it, but that they wouldn't be taking the entire node or drives or anything. They didn't end up doing it as he wasn't an active client anymore, but yeah. Depends on the people you are dealing with I guess.

Most providers likely don't allow TOR because it's one of the few things that will actually use your BW cap that isn't torrenting. We ran into an issue where customers would tear through their allotment in a few days and then turn the TOR node off, which is entirely useless in the grand scheme of things. We had some other related issues with TOR, so we opted to just kill it entirely.


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## MannDude (Mar 14, 2015)

SkylarM said:


> Not true, actually. Had an incident with a major lettered agency a few months prior and they wrote up a Warrant to do so. I explained how VPS work and they said they just wanted to grab a copy of the data, but still wanted physical access to it, but that they wouldn't be taking the entire node or drives or anything. They didn't end up doing it as he wasn't an active client anymore, but yeah. Depends on the people you are dealing with I guess.
> 
> 
> Most providers likely don't allow TOR because it's one of the few things that will actually use your BW cap that isn't torrenting. We ran into an issue where customers would tear through their allotment in a few days and then turn the TOR node off, which is entirely useless in the grand scheme of things. We had some other related issues with TOR, so we opted to just kill it entirely.


Ah, that's good to know.

My statement was based on this though: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/f-b-i-seizes-web-servers-knocking-sites-offline/

In that raid they took more than just the culprit's server and data.


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## SkylarM (Mar 14, 2015)

MannDude said:


> Ah, that's good to know.
> 
> My statement was based on this though: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/f-b-i-seizes-web-servers-knocking-sites-offline/
> 
> In that raid they took more than just the culprit's server and data.


Ah yeah. Well hopefully they realize what VPS and Cloud hosting is now  That is a few years old.


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## KuJoe (Mar 14, 2015)

When William got busted, the VPS provider he was using had their whole VPS node taken according to the reports at the time. If what @SkylarM says is true, that's one thing but having read about whole VPS nodes being taken in raids I'm erring on the side of caution because if our nodes were seized it would be hard for us to recover from that and likely wouldn't have any clients left anyways. I do have first hand knowledge of an alphabet agency taking a whole VPS node at one US data center with over 200 IPs in use on it (unsure if all of the IPs were individual servers or VPSs had multiple IPs though but I do know it was a VPS node but they weren't allowed to share which provider it was).


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## SkylarM (Mar 14, 2015)

KuJoe said:


> When William got busted, the VPS provider he was using had their whole VPS node taken according to the reports at the time. If what @SkylarM says is true, that's one thing but having read about whole VPS nodes being taken in raids I'm erring on the side of caution because if our nodes were seized it would be hard for us to recover from that and likely wouldn't have any clients left anyways. I do have first hand knowledge of an alphabet agency taking a whole VPS node at one US data center with over 200 IPs in use on it (unsure if all of the IPs were individual servers or VPSs had multiple IPs though but I do know it was a VPS node but they weren't allowed to share which provider it was).


It likely could have just been the person I was working with not wanting to be a total dickhead about it. Could also depend on the specific case, depends on severity etc. Who knows. I'd rather not find out though


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## Aldryic C'boas (Mar 15, 2015)

Cloudrck said:


> In fact, I have more issues with people using servers as a VPN to download illegal media than I have had with Tor relays.


... I've never _once_ in a decade now gotten any kind of abuse report along the lines of 'This IP is downloading licensed material'.  Only people seeding torrents/etc or being stupid enough to host the files directly on websites.  And a VPN wouldn't be involved in that case anyways.

Which begs the question of.. if you're not snooping on your clients' usage, how exactly did you know about this?


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## KuJoe (Mar 15, 2015)

Aldryic C said:


> ... I've never _once_ in a decade now gotten any kind of abuse report along the lines of 'This IP is downloading licensed material'.  Only people seeding torrents/etc or being stupid enough to host the files directly on websites.  And a VPN wouldn't be involved in that case anyways.
> 
> Which begs the question of.. if you're not snooping on your clients' usage, how exactly did you know about this?


We get a few reports a month (although last week we got about 6 of them for different IPs) against VPNs our clients are running that are used to download pirated content. It's usually from somebody running a VPN service versus a private VPN.


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## Flapadar (Mar 15, 2015)

KuJoe said:


> We get a few reports a month (although last week we got about 6 of them for different IPs) against VPNs our clients are running that are used to download pirated content. It's usually from somebody running a VPN service versus a private VPN.


Aren't those from people being connected to public trackers / uploading the material, rather than simply downloading? I think that's the point Aldryic was making. Example:



> IP-Echelon has become aware that the below IP addresses have been using your service for *distributing* video files, which contain infringing video content that is exclusively owned by Paramount.


I've never seen one that specified downloading.


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## drmike (Mar 15, 2015)

Aldryic C said:


> ... I've never _once_ in a decade now gotten any kind of abuse report along the lines of 'This IP is downloading licensed material'.  Only people seeding torrents/etc or being stupid enough to host the files directly on websites.  And a VPN wouldn't be involved in that case anyways.
> 
> Which begs the question of.. if you're not snooping on your clients' usage, how exactly did you know about this?


I've ran an exit node prior.   I definitely received a bunch of this IP is downloading pirated / unlicensed stuff.  This was a few years back.  Upstream DC was a bear to deal with as hadn't SWiP'd things fully -- abuse was still hitting their inbox.  They were not entertained.


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## KuJoe (Mar 15, 2015)

@Flapadar I just checked the last 6 reports we got in the past 60 days and they all are for downloading (1 client confirmed he was downloading and all 6 VPSs show inbound traffic with little to no outbound).


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## Cloudrck (Mar 15, 2015)

Aldryic C said:


> ... I've never _once_ in a decade now gotten any kind of abuse report along the lines of 'This IP is downloading licensed material'.  Only people seeding torrents/etc or being stupid enough to host the files directly on websites.  And a VPN wouldn't be involved in that case anyways.
> 
> Which begs the question of.. if you're not snooping on your clients' usage, how exactly did you know about this?


How did I know about illegal downloads? From DMCA notices sent either to me and/or to the datacenter. The IP will correspond to someone who admits to running a VPN/proxy. I don't know what relevance there is to downloading vs seeding on a VPN. Once you connect to the tracker anyone can view your IP address regardless of what you're doing.



> And a VPN wouldn't be involved in that case anyways.


Maybe we're not thinking about the same thing. In the sitatuations I'm talking about, some is using a VPN to _mask_ their IP address by tunneling traffic from a VPS running something like OpenVPN to download data.


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