Hi Sophie, Hmm...Perhaps Atlas isn't the best choice here. At any given time the exits you can choose from are those you know of locally. It might be better to focus on TorBirdy instead.
When using Tor Browser, the tor process is kind enough to take notice when using certain ports (WarnPlaintextPorts). So maybe TorBirdy should do the same. That is to say, make TorBirdy more verbose about choices for mail server port. Had you been warned that port 25 is not the port you're looking for you might have chosen differently. Even if the port was chosen temporarily, a reminder could've helped. To make things worse you have to switch between TorBirdy and Tor Browser to change identities. Then you have to run something like check.torproject.org to ensure your ip is different from a (potentially blocked) previous ip. So things TorBirdy could do better to avoid this problem in the future include: a) Be more verbose about choosing the mail server port. Possibly include a reminder which can be disabled. Warn when making a hazardous choice such as 25. A known abuse port and one which is blocked in the default exit policy and reduced exit policy. b) Provide new identity functionality in TorBirdy. It would need to be careful not to "step on the toes" of Tor Browser. To this end it could emulate the NEWNYM signal by leveraging stream isolation. New identities triggered by TorBirdy would create streams isolated from previous streams. By tracking streams associated with mail servers TorBirdy can ensure old connections are closed before new ones. It can do this in a way such that no interference occurs with Tor Browser. c) Enable TorBirdy to configure use of TrackHostExits/Expire. Purely a preference to deal with Tor Browser triggering a new identity when you might prefer to have TorBirdy continue to use the last exit for a time. If you've triggered a new identity in TorBirdy to avoid a blocked exit this could also mitigate the problem of a blocked exit being reused. Is there a better way to achieve the same result here? Comments, suggestions, criticisms? --leeroy -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk@lists.torproject.org To unsubscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
