randomhumanity

Anonymity is a good thing for everybody, but right now it is Iranian users who need it most. The way Tor is configured out of the box provides anonymity for you, but doesn’t help anybody else much! If you live outside Iran and want to help, you need to configure Tor to act as a relay, which will help route Tor traffic and improve performance and reliability.

Windows (& Mac) Configuration

Download Tor here. It’s the installation bundle you want, not the browser bundle.

Go through the install and have it run when it’s done, then click setup relaying. Select “Relay traffic for the Tor network”.

There is no need to enter a nickname or contact info if you don’t want to. You can set the port to anything you want. Mirroring the directory uses more bandwidth, so if yours is limited disable that as well.

On the exit policies tab, untick misc. other services. This will prevent bittorrent and spam from exiting from your node, while still increasing the availability of more essential services.

You will also need to open the ports you’ve used on any firewalls between your computer and the internet, but that’s a bit beyond this post! Check the documentation of your firewall or router, and ask somebody if you still have trouble.

Linux (Ubuntu/Debian)

Install Tor by running:

sudo apt-get install tor

Edit /etc/tor/torrc with your favourite editor. Uncomment these lines:

RunAsDaemon 1

ORPort 9001

Add the following line to define the exit policy:

ExitPolicy accept *:80,accept *:443,accept *:110,accept *:143,accept *:993,accept *:995,accept *:6660-6669,accept *:6697,accept *:706,accept *:1863,accept *:5050,accept *:5190,accept *:5222,accept *:5223,accept *:8300,accept *:8888,reject *:*

Save the rc file and run this command:

sudo /etc/init.d/tor start

Bridging

Configuring a relay as outlined above is very helpful, and if you leave it at that you will have made a huge contribution. However, there is another element of the Tor network that may become important if they start trying to block it: Bridges. These are somewhat like HTTP proxies in that those who want to use them will need to learn the IP address from somewhere.

A windows guide to setting up a bridge is available here. Ian will also accept bridge addresses by email for forwarding to people who need them in Iran: irancurtain at iansbrain dot com. You can also send them to me@austinheap.com along with you HTTP proxies (new ones are still useful if set up right).

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