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I'm thinking about how I can help Tor and its users. However I don't own big servers and also don't want to run a relay from my home. The only thing I have up to now is some private website. Is there anything I can do to help out?

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First, you could set up a web site mirror for torproject.org. It requires approximately 8 GB of disk space. Detailed instructions for setting up a mirror are available.

Second, you could add flash-proxy badges to the web sites you run. This is done by simply adding an iframe to your HTML source. By including the badge, you can easily help users in censored countries.

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The volunteer page on the Tor website lists several easy things you can do to help the Tor Project. A few easy ones are below.

  • If you're willing to spend a tiny bit of money (~20 USD per month) you can set up a Tor bridge relay via Tor Cloud.
  • Know any languages that Tor should be in? You can help with translating tor.
  • And of course, advocacy is always good (and you can use the web resources you already own).
  • You can also mirror the Tor website and/or downloads.
  • Finally, you can help by donating a bit of bandwidth to seed the torrent for Tails (though this really isn't that necessary... the seed/peers ratio is currently 418/25).
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  • Just wanted to add that Tor Cloud will cost a bit more than ~3 USD per month (more like ~20 USD per month, depending on the region you decide to put the Tor Cloud instance in) if you do not qualify for the AWS free tier.
    – Runa
    Oct 2, 2013 at 21:18
  • @Runa Oh, I didn't realize that; thanks. I don't know about the free tier, but I must have qualified for it as it only cost me about ~3.50 or so back when I ran one.
    – user5
    Oct 2, 2013 at 22:26
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However I don't own big servers and also don't want to run a relay from my home.

Probably, if you already use Tor from your home, and you have an external IP address, or may do port forwarding for a web server, you can easy help Tor with a middle relay, not an exit relay. This is simpler than even deploying a web mirror.

Meaning, your relay will not be banned by Google or any other companies who dislike Tor exit nodes.

Simple configuration:

# cat > /usr/local/etc/tor/torrc << EOF
SocksPort 9050
Log notice file /usr/local/var/log/tor/notices.log
RunAsDaemon 1
DataDirectory /usr/local/var/lib/tor
ControlPort 9051
ORPort 9001
Nickname relay
RelayBandwidthRate  1 MB
RelayBandwidthBurst 5 MB
ContactInfo anonymous [email protected]
DirPort 9030
ExitPolicy reject *:*
EOF

You can specify the relay bandwidth to gain optimal speed for your connection.

ExitPolicy reject *:* - set your relay as a middle in the Tor network. That way you increase the security of Tor network. In my humble opinion, this is the best way to help the Tor project, if you only have an Internet connection.

Start your relay with this configuration:

# tor -f /usr/local/etc/tor/torrc
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Even if you cannot contribute any sort of network resource, you can still contribute money that will be used to pay operating costs for running relays. See, for example, https://www.torservers.net/

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