Is there any effort put into limiting/preventing abuse coming from tor exit nodes

Question

Now services like facebook, google and cloudflare can 'misuse' the excuse to block tor because they receive abuse from it.

Eg. I think google on purpose has faulty captcha's that you can enter indefinitely, without ever getting through. Facebook has also capcha, that is not working.

Either facebook and google have incompetent web programmers or they do this on purpose, because they want to force identification of their visitor. The latter is most probable I would say.

I was thinking about adding an exit node. But I also don't want my ip range to get a bad reputation.

If tor would try to limit the abuse it is generating, these excuses are not valid any more and these sites will be under more pressure to allow tor access.

My question: Are you actively pursuing a solution to limit abuse coming from an exit node?

Answer 1

Google and Facebook run commercial services. They can block whoever they want to for whatever reason. If they wanted to block all Tor users, for no reason whatsoever, then that would be their prerogative. All the Tor community can do is to lobby them - through organisations such as the EFF - and ask them kindly not to.

My question: Are you actively pursuing a solution to limit abuse coming from an exit node?

Define "abuse".

This is subjective. Google may have a different definition of abuse than Facebook does. Yahoo! USA might have a different definition of abuse to Yahoo! China. The ISP in my town may have a different definition to the ISP in the next town. Even if the Tor network imposed a definition of abuse itself, there would be no guarantee it would agree with anybody else's.

The Tor network is - as far as possible - deliberately decentralised, and trying to police it would undermine one of the reasons for its existence.

(This rather philosophical answer neglects to mention Bad Relays and the role the Directory Authorities can play in trying to prevent exit nodes from behaving badly.)

Answer 2

Facebook has a hidden service if you wish to access Facebook over Tor. As for google; yes, google is a problem when using Tor. That much is well documented here on this site.