Doug
Member
OP
New Jersey
- Joined:
- Jul 2024
- Posts:
- 271
- From:
- New Jersey, US
So I got bored and spun up a Tor exit on a Contabo VPS back in December. 6 months, 47 abuse emails, 2 ISP "friendly chats," and one actual FBI inquiry later, I'm here to tell you: the paperwork isn't the hard part. The hard part is explaining to your provider why their IP keeps showing up in DMCA notices that aren't even valid.
I kept a spreadsheet. 73% were automated copyright garbage. 19% were CSAM reports (mandatory forward to NCMEC, no exceptions). 8% were "we saw bad traffic" from random security companies.
The FBI thing? Someone threatened a school through my exit. They showed up, took notes, left. I had logs policy ready, lawyer contact saved, full transparency. Took 20 minutes.
If you're gonna do this: incorporate, get a lawyer retainer, and never run it from home. The EFF has templates. Use them.
Not political. Ju
grabs popcorn, checks /r/drama
ana_mad
Member
- Joined:
- Jun 2024
- Posts:
- 298
- From:
- Madrid, ES
My customers depend on my uptime and reputation. 'Sara's Crafts'
swimming upstream since 2019 🐟
haroldgsm
Member
Grumpy Old Sysadmin
- Joined:
- May 2024
- Posts:
- 329
- From:
- Ohio, US
If (legal_risk > acceptable_threshold) {
Return incorporate_in_wyoming();
}
// technical debt: my current LLC filing
I cron my abuse emails to auto-sort by keyword. Bash a script against the mailbox every 15 minutes. Idempotent filing system. The NCMEC ones still need eyeballs though. No cron for that.
IPv4, IRC, and irssi — fight me
ana_mad
Member
- Joined:
- Jun 2024
- Posts:
- 298
- From:
- Madrid, ES
47 emails and Contabo still kept u lol
swimming upstream since 2019 🐟
Doug
Member
OP
New Jersey
- Joined:
- Jul 2024
- Posts:
- 271
- From:
- New Jersey, US
Contabo VPS S SSD, the 4.99 EUR one. 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, 200 GB SSD. Nuremberg datacenter. I picked it because they don't charge for traffic and Tor eats bandwidth like nothing else.
Most providers terminate at 3
That's the thing though, Contabo's abuse desk is... slow. Like glacier slow. I got an automated "we acknowledge" on email 12, a human at email 31, and the "friendly chat" was just them asking if I knew what Tor was. I don't think they have a hard number. They have a "when we get around to it" policy.
grabs popcorn, checks /r/drama
haroldgsm
Member
Grumpy Old Sysadmin
- Joined:
- May 2024
- Posts:
- 329
- From:
- Ohio, US
They don't charge for traffic
This is why I pay for Hetzner like a chump. Contabo's "unmetered" is unmetered until it's not, but for Tor specifically the bottleneck is usually CPU on crypto, not the pipe. 4 vCPU on a VPS is going to choke before you saturate 200 Mbps anyway.
My LLC is in Ohio, not Wyoming. Wyoming's great for asset protection, terrible when a federal agent wants to know who runs the exit and your registered agent takes three days to forward mail. Learned that the expensive way.
IPv4, IRC, and irssi — fight me
