Internet Anonymity Project
When oppressive governments attempt to silence dissent, people need a way to communicate with others both locally and worldwide. Tor is anonymity software that can provide this, but it works best when there is a large network of computers supporting it.
In recent news, Tor helped people in Iran get news out despite their government's censoring of the country's internet connections.
Our Internet Anonymity Project proposes to create a large number of Tor nodes running on inexpensive virtual servers, geographically distributed around the world. To this end, we're looking for people who can contribute money for servers, the servers themselves, or time to help administer them.
Want to help? Find out how you can contribute or just get in touch.
How we'll do it
Inexpensive virtual dedicated servers are our platform of choice. We will set up VPSs with a variety of hosting companies with data centers as widely distributed as possible.
Our servers run Debian Linux and all share an identical bare-bones configuration, running just the Tor service itself and Apache (for the Tor exit notice). Custom packages handle the software installation and configuration.
Why dedicated servers?
Tor is designed to run on any time of computer or internet connection, making it easy to join the network with something as simple as your home desktop computer or a server you already have. However, we've come to the conclusion that for this project, inexpensive dedicated virtual servers are a better solution.
- The Tor network can be blocked
- The list of active Tor nodes is publicly available and some networks block access to these servers. This means that anything else on your server is blocked from these networks, including your web sites and email servers.
- Tor exit nodes can be blocked
- Blocking works in the other direction too: Some networks block connections from Tor exit nodes, which means that, for example, email from your server may not reach its destination (regardless of your actual exit policy).
- Tor nodes may be shut down
- It's an unfortunate fact that operators of Tor exit nodes will inevitably receive complains and DMCA take-down requests. Responsible hosting companies will pass these along to their customers but some overzealous hosts may preemptively shut down servers if they feel it's warranted.
- More available bandwidth
- Running Tor on dedicated servers allows us to contribute more bandwidth to the network. Rather than throttling it down so it doesn't affect the other services we're running, we can contribute as much as we want up to the monthly allotments provided by the hosting service.
- Lower maintenance, fewer complications
- A minimal server running Tor and Apache will require almost no maintenance outside of updates. Not running critical services on these servers means that updates can be automated and in the event of problems the server can be quickly wiped and reinstalled.
You can help
Want to help? Find out how you can contribute or just get in touch.