This is a Tor exit relay
This Tor relay is operated by Nothing to hide as part of the Tor Anonimity Network, which is dedicated to providing privacy to people who need it most.
Tor works by running user traffic through a random chain of encrypted servers, and then letting the traffic exit the Tor network through an exit relay like this one. This design makes it very hard for a service to know which user is connecting to it, since it can only see the IP address of the Tor exit relay.
The below illustration (full size) shows how a user might connect to a service through the Tor Anonimity Network. The user first sends their data through three daisy-chained encrypted Tor relays that exist on three different geographical locations. Then the last Tor relay in the chain connects to the target service over the normal internet.
Tor’s users
Tor sees use by many important segments of the population, including whistle blowers, journalists, Chinese dissidents skirting the Great Firewall and oppressive censorship, war victims such as Ukrainian citizens, abuse victims, stalker targets, the US military, and law enforcement, just to name a few.
While Tor is not designed for malicious use-cases, it is true that the Tor network can be used for malicious ends. In reality however, the actual amount of abuse is quite low. This is largely because criminals and hackers have significantly better access to privacy and anonymity than regular users whom they prey upon.
What information do we have
In terms of applicable law, the best way to understand Tor is to consider it a network of routers operating as common carriers, much like the Internet backbone. However, unlike the Internet backbone routers, Tor routers explicitly do not contain identifiable routing information about the source of a packet, and no single Tor node can determine both the origin and destination of a given transmission.
As such, as the Tor operator of this Tor relay we can do little to help you track the connection further. This Tor relay maintains no logs of any of the Tor traffic, so here is little that can be done to trace either legitimate or illegitimate traffic (or to filter one from the other).
Contact us
For abuse or complaint related contact you can sent an email to abuse[at]nothingtohide[dot]nl. Please know in advance that logging is fully disabled and no personal identifiable information can be obtained.
That being said, we can (temporarily) block access to affected IP addresses that you own. Please contact us with the relevant information if you would like us to do so.