Bad Barracuda
As of writing this, I run a Tor middle/guard relay from my home, using my home IP address. This relay runs at 1.62 MiB/s, and was created 51 days ago, only being restarted once for an update through the entirity of it's uptime. I did also have a relay before this which ran for around 60ish days at 512 KiB/s although I stopped this to upgrade to the new one, which currently runs on a Raspberry Pi 4 board. I think it is a good thing to run a relay from your own home, or from whatever network you have access to, but unfortunately I may have to shut this relay down soon.
Why is this related to Barracuda cybersecurity and why do I need to shut the relay down? Well, recently, Barracuda have blacklisted my IP address on their firewalls as I am a "proxy IP", this makes it so that any website or service that uses Barracuda's firewalls will block my home IP from connecting to their site. This doesn't directly affect me much, since I use the Tor browser for the majority of my web browsing (therefore masking my IP address), however it does greatly affect my parents who use our network for connecting to sites such as gov.uk and the HMRC's website, even to websites such as Nationwide's website and the NS&I's website. All of these organisations use Barracuda's firewalls and with the setting to automatically block "Tor proxy" IP addresses (including middle/guard IP addresses) which therefore prevents my parents from connecting to these sites.
This is a great inconvenience, since my parents require these sites to do their jobs and to pay taxes and whatever else. I did try installing the Tor browser for them to evade the IP block, however the soydevs who made these sites also block all Tor exit IPs from connecting to their site, therefore stopping us again. I hate this, I think that organisations that deliberately block publically known Tor related IP addresses are horrible organisations that don't deserve your time or interaction, however in this case I need to sort it so that my parents can access what they need to access from our network. I have tried mobile data tethering to change the IP address of my parent's PC, although this was only partially successful as they cannot set this up on their own for times when I may be out and so doesn't work as a permenant solution.
The obvious solution would be to simply take my Tor relay offline and lease a new IP address, ensuring that we are no longer blocked by Barracuda's firewalls and ensuring that we don't get added back to the blocklist. I feel however that this is exactly what these people want me to do, they are trying to abolish the Tor network through making it so that people who host relays from their own homes can no longer pay their taxes and therefore get arrested, creating a rock and a hard place situation for any individual who wants to host a Tor relay, without outright banning the hosting of Tor relays generally. This in turn makes it so that relays can only be hosted by large organisations, MIT for example, which makes it significantly easier for these same people who want to stop the Tor project to monitor these specific large relays and de-anonymise Tor users.
I will not give in this easily, and so I am planning another way to help the Tor project with my skills without the possibility of being blacklisted since my IP address won't appear in publically accessible listings. I cannot share what this method will be, since I am already a known Tor advocate and relay hoster, and therefore my IP address (or any new one that I lease from my ISP) are monitored for activities related to the Tor project. Sharing what this method is may comprimise said method and may make it redundant.
Do not use Barracuda's security, do not give them your money or attention, and do not do your banking with either the NS&I or Nationwide. Although I still do not like banks, Halifax is a Tor friendly bank that I don't believe uses Barracuda's security, so if you must, use them for your banking. People who deliberately block "Tor IPs" are evil, and should not be supported, especially those who are too dumb to realise that middle/guard relays like the one I host are no threat to their network as these relays make no connection to their site (only the exit relays do). These organisations know what they are doing, organisations like Barracuda are paid by the government to ensure that Tor users and relay hosters are oppressed in their effort to maintain country-wide tracking and privacy violation, so while it pains me to power off my relay in a part of semi-defeat, it pleases me that the new system I will set up will help users evade censorship from these organisations, so I am still winning in that regard, they cannot stop me.
The Barracuda may try to bite me, but I am stood on dry land where it cannot harm me.
