proxy ban/tor use question

[unfollow]

hello and sorry if i am posting this in the wrong subforum.

I have a question regarding the use of TOR on the forum.

I just signed up, and due to the fact that i am using the torbrowser, i  was required to pay a fee
so that i could start posting in the forum.

From a search in relevant topics i understood that the fee is applied as an antispam measure,
which sounds quite reasonable to me.

But, the message i saw as soon as i opened the account, the one that requested to pay the fee, mentioned that the ip i used to connect is a known tor/vpn/proxy that has been used in the past to spam this forum.

So my question is this:
Will i be asked to pay a fee the next time i log in again? Because the ip will be again different than the one i am using now.

Or is this a one-time feature and my account will be allowed to log-in without a fee on my next login?

thanks for taking the time to reply and sorry again if this is posted on a wrong sub/

[Quickseller]

No. You were asked to pay a fee because you signed up via an IP address (or more likely a subnet) that was previously associated with spam. The fee is only calculated when you register and not when you post/login. Paying the fee will not stop you from getting banned in the event that you break the rules.

[tspacepilot]

No. You were asked to pay a fee because you signed up via an IP address (or more likely a subnet) that was previously associated with spam. The fee is only calculated when you register and not when you post/login. Paying the fee will not stop you from getting banned in the event that you break the rules.

It's actually not even necessarily that that address was previously associated with any spam.  All tor exit nodes are subject to evil points.

See the discussion in this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=711968.0

[unfollow]

No. You were asked to pay a fee because you signed up via an IP address (or more likely a subnet) that was previously associated with spam. The fee is only calculated when you register and not when you post/login. Paying the fee will not stop you from getting banned in the event that you break the rules.

well, obviously a ban is to be expected in the event of rules being broken.
What i wanted to know is f i would be asked to pay again in the next time i will log in.
thank you  for the reply.

This is the quote by Theymos (forum owner/admin) where it is explained:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=711968.msg8044683#msg8044683
See also the discussion in that thread.

This is helpful, thank you.
when i registered, it said my account contained 137 units of evil, haha!

[shorena]

-snip-
It's actually not even necessarily that that address was previously associated with any spam.  All tor exit nodes are subject to evil points.

See the discussion in this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=711968.0

Nope, quoting from the thread you linked:

When you register, the IP that you used when you submitted the registration form is used to calculate your evilness. The more frequently this IP or its neighbors were banned, the more evil is associated with your account. The amount of evil associated with an IP decays slowly over time, but the amount of evil associated with an account does not. You must pay or be manually whitelisted to enable posting on one of these "banned" accounts.

Here are some stats:

Evil	% new users
0	53
0-1	35
1-10	4.4
10-20	0.80
20-50	2.2
50-100	1.3
100+	2.9

Currently each unit of evil requires a payment of 4023 satoshi. You only need to pay something if you have 1 or more, though.

Tor is not banned per se, Tor is misused which results in a high amount of evil points per exit node. Which in turn results in the proxy ban. This would be true for any other IP/subnet that is used for spam on a regular basis. There is no anti-Tor bias here. I dont know why people keep spreading that.

[tspacepilot]

-snip-
It's actually not even necessarily that that address was previously associated with any spam.  All tor exit nodes are subject to evil points.

See the discussion in this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=711968.0

Nope, quoting from the thread you linked:

When you register, the IP that you used when you submitted the registration form is used to calculate your evilness. The more frequently this IP or its neighbors were banned, the more evil is associated with your account. The amount of evil associated with an IP decays slowly over time, but the amount of evil associated with an account does not. You must pay or be manually whitelisted to enable posting on one of these "banned" accounts.

Here are some stats:

Evil	% new users
0	53
0-1	35
1-10	4.4
10-20	0.80
20-50	2.2
50-100	1.3
100+	2.9

Currently each unit of evil requires a payment of 4023 satoshi. You only need to pay something if you have 1 or more, though.

Tor is not banned per se, Tor is misused which results in a high amount of evil points per exit node. Which in turn results in the proxy ban. This would be true for any other IP/subnet that is used for spam on a regular basis. There is no anti-Tor bias here. I dont know why people keep spreading that.

Indeed, I saw that from Theymos, however others have suggested that all Tor exit nodes are assigned some evil (I think it was hillarious who told me this).  If it is the case that there's not a blanket evil for tor nodes, then presumably it's also not the case that you have to pay evil for signing up via tor.  If, for some reason, you got evil points on your first try, you can just make a new tor circuit and try again until you eventually find an exit node that hasn't been assigned any evil.

[shorena]

-snip-
Indeed, I saw that from Theymos, however others have suggested that all Tor exit nodes are assigned some evil (I think it was hillarious who told me this).  If it is the case that there's not a blanket evil for tor nodes, then presumably it's also not the case that you have to pay evil for signing up via tor.  If, for some reason, you got evil points on your first try, you can just make a new tor circuit and try again until you eventually find an exit node that hasn't been assigned any evil.

Yes, this gets repeated over and over again, but I have never seen anything in that regard from theymos. E.g. a quick search for posts by theymos resulted in this:

The units of evil are accumulated by IP bans. That exit node was probably used by multiple nuked spammers thus it accumulated this fee. There's nothing else to do but try reconnecting or pay the fee.

The evil associated with an IP also decays over time. So even regularly-abused IPs such as Tor exit nodes shouldn't have super high fees (>$10) unless they were abused recently. However, once you've registered an account, your evil score will not decrease, and you must pay, be whitelisted, or abandon the account.

Fees are often less than $1 (see the inputs of this transaction), but they can be more if the particular IP you're using was banned fairly recently.

The forum makes more money from 2 hours of advertising than from a whole month of registration fees. It's just an anti-spam measure.

This would have been the perfect opportunity to mention a specific rule regarding Tor users. It should also be possible to create an account via Tor without paying a fee. E.g. if you are the first person to register one after someone created a new exit node or something along those lines.

[tspacepilot]

-snip-
Indeed, I saw that from Theymos, however others have suggested that all Tor exit nodes are assigned some evil (I think it was hillarious who told me this).  If it is the case that there's not a blanket evil for tor nodes, then presumably it's also not the case that you have to pay evil for signing up via tor.  If, for some reason, you got evil points on your first try, you can just make a new tor circuit and try again until you eventually find an exit node that hasn't been assigned any evil.

Yes, this gets repeated over and over again, but I have never seen anything in that regard from theymos. E.g. a quick search for posts by theymos resulted in this:

The units of evil are accumulated by IP bans. That exit node was probably used by multiple nuked spammers thus it accumulated this fee. There's nothing else to do but try reconnecting or pay the fee.

The evil associated with an IP also decays over time. So even regularly-abused IPs such as Tor exit nodes shouldn't have super high fees (>$10) unless they were abused recently. However, once you've registered an account, your evil score will not decrease, and you must pay, be whitelisted, or abandon the account.

Fees are often less than $1 (see the inputs of this transaction), but they can be more if the particular IP you're using was banned fairly recently.

The forum makes more money from 2 hours of advertising than from a whole month of registration fees. It's just an anti-spam measure.

This would have been the perfect opportunity to mention a specific rule regarding Tor users. It should also be possible to create an account via Tor without paying a fee. E.g. if you are the first person to register one after someone created a new exit node or something along those lines.

Indeed the fact that he refers to Tor exit nodes as "oft abused addresses" as the reason for their being listed for evil seems to suggest that what you say is exactly correct.  Thanks for the education!

[OgNasty]

I was thinking that since this forum detects whether someone is using TOR...  Perhaps there could be some sort of flag on the user to let others know they are attempting to hide their IP?

[u9y42]

I was thinking that since this forum detects whether someone is using TOR...  Perhaps there could be some sort of flag on the user to let others know they are attempting to hide their IP?

Hmm, if I understood it correctly, the forum can't exactly detect whether someone is using TOR; rather, it simply keeps a list of often abused IPs (TOR exit nodes being prominently featured there).

But, even if it was possible, there are a couple of issues with that idea: even if those users weren't flagged, they could still be using a previously unknown proxy/TOR exit node/whatever; anyone relying on that information could thus be mislead (be given a false sense of security); and more important, personally, I don't think there is anything wrong with trying to hide your IP in the first place - sure, scammers probably do it, but scamming isn't the only reason why you would want to do it.

[tspacepilot]

Hmm, if I understood it correctly, the forum can't exactly detect whether someone is using TOR; rather, it simply keeps a list of often abused IPs (TOR exit nodes being prominently featured there).

I think you're right that the criterion for evil points is whether or not the IP was used for abuse, but it's not that hard to check whether a node is a TOR exit node, the TOR project tells you how to do it here: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorDNSExitList

[nicole7852]

yes it is a joke...

--->http://imgur.com/F0bQFSS

[Mrzinzin]

yes it is a joke...

--->http://imgur.com/F0bQFSS

such wow.

What proxy did he used? Tor or other?

[u9y42]

I think you're right that the criterion for evil points is whether or not the IP was used for abuse, but it's not that hard to check whether a node is a TOR exit node, the TOR project tells you how to do it here: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorDNSExitList

Oh, I guess that part would be pretty simple then.

Still, I assume (maybe incorrectly) that other such services won't be as easy to identify; and in the end, I'm not sure it even makes sense to pursue that.

[nicole7852]

yes it is a joke...

--->http://imgur.com/F0bQFSS

such wow.

What proxy did he used? Tor or other?

maybe TOR.

[Foxpup]

such wow.

What proxy did he used? Tor or other?

Definitely Tor. You can see the old Torbutton plugin in the screenshot.