Bitcoin Forum

Whenever I try to log in while using tor, the forum will not allow me to post a reply or send a PM.

Does any one have a solution to this problem?

When someone is banned, in some cases all of their IPs will also be banned. If they were using Tor, some Tor exit nodes will be banned. If you use Tor, you'll occasionally run into these bans. You can tell Tor to switch to a new exit node ("new identity") when this happens. Tor switches exit nodes every 10 minutes by default; you'll run into bans less frequently if you increase this time using the MaxCircuitDirtiness configuration option.

By the way: is it really a policy, that registration at the forum can not come through Tor? (or public proxies for that matter...)

Does anyone know the reasoning behind this?

THX

Yes. It's to make it more difficult for banned users to come back. You should hire someone to create an account for you.

Thanks. That makes a lot of sense.

Can't we maintain a list of tor exit nodes and tell the forum to exclude them from bans?

But if you're blocking commonly used nodes, you're potentially blocking a good chunk of the userbase.

Yes, I just learned that I am "banned from posting . . ."

Using the TOR browser, I just switched identities and then I was no longer banned.

So, switching identities in the Vidalia Control Panel seems to solve the problem.

debbyjean

Gimme slack they don't care about keeping nodes alive they are just trying to avoid legal issues in Colorado(=

You should block either all exit nodes, or none of them.

Blocking only a few exit nodes doesn't make sense:

• It doesn't prevent spammers from writing a script to switch exit nodes until they can make their spammy posts.
• However, it prevents legit people from making legit posts because they have to repeatedly click "New Identity" until they can get through.

For example, to make this single post, I had to click "New Identity" more than five times. I have the feeling that non-blocked exit nodes are quite rare. >:( >:( >:(


Admins have to decide whether they want to allow anonymous access to their site, or not. If you want to block anonymous access, then you should block all exit nodes. The tor website gives help on how to do that.

However, it seems like a paradox to me that a forum about an anonymous currency denies anonymous access. ::)


Oh, and by the way: It would be nice to have a .onion address for bitcointalk - this would allow us to securely connect to bitcointalk without the HTTPS security weaknesses (HTTPS certificates can be faked...)

Just make the ban IP utility not ban tor exit nodes.

@administrators, moderators
+1 (for unban Tor and building a hidden service)

Maybe it is sufficient to ban users after their login (e.g. via cookie). It is possibly hard enough to start with a new account.

Some of the users came 2010 and 2011 to Bitcoins because of the rumors and rare 'advertising' in the I2P network. Is an I2P service possible, too?

Why not just let people pay the forum directly in order to evade the Tor registration block as part of the signup procedure?

Already exist I believe

Too much work to do manually, but I am in the process of setting up an automated system for this. Once the automated system exists, proxies and abused IPs will be more frequently banned from instant registration, and the newbie restrictions will be removed.

I use Tor (yes, right now) just so my ISP will not know that I make BTC transactions, because of my posts here.  They already know more than I want them to know.

worked also for me! I saw the red bann banner at the top, then i told my hw firewall box to change the node from sweden to norway
and the banner disappears!

thankx

I'm still running into these bans quite often.


And it's annoying to be banned! >:( >:( >:(

Blame the spammers.

I don't understand why the very same user is banned or not banned, depending on what IP address they use.

Does my personal "spam likeliness" depend on the IP address that I'm using? Certainly not. I'm still the very same person, no matter from where I log in.


Why don't you give user-based bans, instead of IP-based bans?

We do, sometimes it's both. Problem is that mods can't see ip's (thankfully) so I have no way of knowing if someone is using their real ip or a proxy when I ban them. If I knew they were using tor I wouldn't bother. So you can either suck it up, or we can violate everyone's privacy by letting ips be seen by many more people. The former is the more desirable option, though more Inconvenient for you.

If you have to make a decision between privacy and convenience, then, of course, privacy is more desirable. I agree with that.
However, I think you don't have to make this decision; we can have both.



Why don't you make it this way:
Every user account that is not banned will be "white-listed", and white-listing overrules banning. That is, if a non-banned user logs in from a banned IP address, then the user is allowed to make posts. (Of course, banned IP addresses aren't allowed to register new accounts, because this would allow to circumvent the banning.)

???

+1, please implement this or something similar.

If technically possible, please do this.  Using TOR should be encouraged.

Note to myself. And advice for everyone else.
Always copy what you wrote before hitting that post button.

Uh yes, that's very technically possible.

]

yes, please do that

i get regularly banned by just using Opera Mini (Turbo)

+1 even if this doesn't affect me

There must be another way to reduce spammers...

this is misleading and technically wrong

catching a tor ban also prevents an user from viewing the content of his message box (i have one message in outbox and i can't see it when the forum sets my status to banned). viewing messages is a read-only action, it shouldn't be affected at all, yet it is

I really think this issues is blown out of proportions.
I've seen this message at least 4-5 times a day and a quick reconnect solves everything.

I have to admit I was scared the first time I saw it but , If it prevents spammers even by 1% keep it in place.

 

are you saying that having to reconnect to be able to post something to a forum is normal practice? i really don't think so

the management of bitcointalk is welcome to remove all tor exit nodes from the ban list like it was suggested

the management of bitcointalk is welcome as well to ban all tor exit nodes so those who don't want to trade their privacy for the chance to post in this forum could say kthxbye, move on and start spreading the word about bitcointalk not being tor friendly

the intermediate and uncertain stance that they have adopted is only going to get more disappointed users as the user base keeps growing IMHO (and it will probably keep growing)

Why does it have to be one or the other? Just hit the button and stop whining like your finger is going to fall off from overexertion.  If this seriously ranks a place on your list of things to worry about then you've got it pretty good. First world problems up in here.

This isn't whining, this is called usability. And a key component of usability is fluency. Something that occasionally breaks / doesn't work is inconsistent and frustrating. From the point of user experience, this is worse than something that always works, or than something that never works.


I wonder if anyone brought this argument on the table in context of mods having to manually moderate each spam post instead of having the enabled in-place automation that filters a big chunk of that big pile of spam. I am sure in that context such an argument would be qualified as very inappropriate.

please do not banned me,i do not sent a spam.

If you're using tor just hit new identity. I don't know whether mods consider just posting wallet addresses as spam, but that's all you seem to post, so maybe contribute in some other threads at least.

Wow
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=166488;sa=showPosts

Some people like free shit(coins) I guess haha.

this is an ugly workaround for a fail forum policy

Protecting people's privacy is a fail policy?

Just in case if you missed the context - abusing the get new identity feature of tor to play lottery and find out an exit node that's not blocked by bitcointalk is the exact opposite of protecting people's privacy.

Care to elaborate? What's the harm to hitting that button every so often?

The problem's more and more nodes are getting blacklisted, so there are times when I need to hit the button ~4 times in a row, which is pretty frustrating.  Sometimes this happens when i'm trying to post, losing everything I have written in the process.*

Spammers can circumvent this by scripting logon/posting, but these scripts are not an option when Tor is used for its intended purpose, security.

*Happened as I was trying to post this.

Someone who is abusing the request new identity feature too often is creating an anomaly pattern by trying to use new circuits much more often than the tor protocol itself does internally (10 minutes I think). Match that against the access log to bitcointalk - there will be multiple requests for same URL coming from different tor exit nodes (because the identity has changed), add some browser fingerprint metadata and you get a correlation attack against the person who keeps requesting new identities to change the exit node.

When you have a list of proxies and half of them are banned, it's fine to iterate over them to find the unbanned ones by trial and error. But tor is not a proxy, tor is an anonymizer. And misusing it just as plain proxy harms the anonymity. That's why I keep calling the bitcointalk tor policy wrong, because it encourages misuse of tor to browse the forum. Having either all tor exit nodes whitelisted or all of them blacklisted would be much better.

Please explain how banning Tor exit nodes protects people's privacy.  Not complaining, simply curious.

I use TOR and was hardly able to post yesterday because after I'd logged in and waited the 6 minutes by the time I tried to post again it had changed over to a banned connection and I had to start the process over and this kept repeating. Saying that, it's only happened a few times today, but it was almost constant yesterday. Very frustrating when it happens.

It doesn't, but not letting mods see ips does, and since mods do the majority of the banning these days, it's bound to happen. There are flaws with most of the solutions I've seen posed but I'd rather not elaborate for various reasons.

The problem is with spammers abusing tor and getting banned (and IP banned) making the node useless with the forum. One of the solutions is automatically un-banning tor nodes but that might increase spamming bots.

I understand the reasoning for it, but obviously it doesn't really work against spammers or scammers as they'll just keep hitting new identity, but it is annoying to to other users.

Weirdly I had about 2-3 hours or browsing today without being booted off.

Wouldn't a recaptcha help against spam bots? I'd certainly choose to guess a captcha occasionally than to rely on something that gets randomly baned.

I think it's probably more just banning users/connections that are spamming and scamming as opposed to bots, but I could be wrong.