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getumbrel / umbrel

A beautiful home server OS for self-hosting with an app store. Buy a pre-built Umbrel Home with umbrelOS, or install on a Raspberry Pi or any x86 system.
https://umbrel.com
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Outbound connections on Tor #1848

Open FKrauss opened 1 year ago

FKrauss commented 1 year ago

I'm writing this as a more generic problem and proposing a couple solutions but really we should discuss what would be the best approach based on community input

Problem

Umbrel makes heavy use of Tor, making the average user think that EVERYTHING in Umbrel is behind tor. That is true for when you want to access your Umbrel it has a Tor server. But that is not true for when your umbrel is accessing things on the web.

Implication

In many places torrents are frowned upon. Even if you're downloading a podcast or simply providing storage to the network by keeping some personal files you are likely to be surprised by the following

  1. get a notification from your ISP that you are engaging and "shady activity"
  2. some places even issue fines for using torrents

A few solutions/Ideas to discuss

  1. Short-term (very short term): Add a disclaimer to the Umbrel App Store on each App's description that connections FROM umbrel are done on clearnet. I created a PR with a modest implementation of it
  2. Medium-term: have a way to confirgure each app to make individual connections via Tor or not. Sounds wishful thinking but Tor by default in SimpleTorrent or Transmission is also not something desirable, because some users dislike the Tor speed.
  3. Long-term: In Settings, configure what apps access the web via Tor/VPN, similar to the way one configures a VPN configures Split Tunneling
  4. How else could/should we solve this issue?
nmfretz commented 1 month ago

Thanks for these suggestions @FKrauss. Transferring issue to https://github.com/getumbrel/umbrel as this is an OS level issue.