A: Yes. But searching a single web page is more easy than do this with a bunch of pages.

A: Please send your question to me using my pager under http://hydra.geht.net/pager.php. From within I2P you can reach it as http://www.tino.i2p/pager.php as well. Do this as follows:

• First check, that you are a "living being" and press Start >>
• You can leave the eMail address empty if you do not want any reply from me. In this case I cannot ask back for more details.
• In the text area state your question and give me a hint to what you are referring to
• Press Preview >> and look if everything looks OK
• Press Send message >>. If no error is shown your message will reach me as fast as possible.

Don't forget to make this message important if it is really important (like there is a legal threat).
You can send me messages in English and German language. Messages in other languages I cannot read and therefor cannot answer, sorry.

A: Because this feature is new and I did not came around to implement it properly.

• In future I plan to support this URL scheme, but for now it does break too much here to support it.
• My idea is to completely get rid of the old naming scheme and replace it by the new hash feature.
• This means for you, if you access "tino.i2p" this will be redirected to the hash, and this hash then will be accessed.

Why this is the proper way to do it:

• For now the naming scheme of I2P is a local thing. That is "tino.i2p" can point at one destination here and somewhere else at other sites.
• Only the hashed destination (.b32.i2p) is unique in the respect, that it does not change regardless from where you access it.
• So if you bookmark an URL with an eepsite name in it, it can lead anywhere, while with the full hash in it it denotes the endpoint.
• For yourself, it is ok to map the destination in hosts.txt. But for a public gateway like this inProxy, which might run distributed on several machines, it is better to have clean requests which can be served without consulting something like a hosts.txt.

On the long term this means:

• I have to rewrite the complete probing engine such, that no more destination names are probed, but in contrast destination hashes.
• Then the hashes are re-written to the meaningful name.
• If there is no such rewrite, the hash (*.b32.i2p) is presented to you
• And if you click on the name, this will be translated to the hash.
• Also blocking will be done on the hash level, no more on the destination name. Which is somewhat cleaner.

Also note, that this method can get rid of the need for addresshelper. All you need is some lookup service, which translates a name to the hash destination. Generally speaking: .b32.i2p destinations are good, but for some sad reason, I cannot support them now.

A: If you found an eepsite with illegal content (see verboten content below) please leave me a message on my pager (see above).
State the eepsite name (URL) and a short remark why you think the content must be blocked.

Notes:

• These pages you found are eepsites and not "my pages". This machine here is only a gateway to sites operated by other people.
• Please note that I am planning to add a "report site" feature here to this inProxy when I find the time.
• For now blocking a destination is a manual process and therefor may take some days.

A: Please report it using my pager, see above.

Please note:

• As it is a manual task blocking may take it's time (for example if I am on holidays).
• Again, these are not my pages. I only operate a public gateway between two public networks. This is much like a telecommunication hub, and you cannot make the carrier responsible for the faxes' content.
• I cannot make sure the document which was blocked will not show up at another destination. This is because my inProxy has not the capacity to do site screening. Also according to my readings of German law, my server here is not allowed to censor based on content.
• I cannot block URLs (this probably never will be implemented), I only can block complete eepsites. This is like ISPs who only block IPs and not URLs.
• Blocking something on my I2PinProxy does not make the URL inaccessible. It only blocks the content on my machine. The content is still there, reachable via I2P, and there might be other inProxy system which allow to access I2P content from outside I2P.
• So having me block a destination is like Don Quixote winning against a windmill.

Some additional words: As a software programmer I hate people violating copyright. Being in an anonymous network does not give anybody the right to ignore the rules. So if you are pirated, you have my sympathy, read: I will block it unconditionally, of course. Promised.

A: Again, these are not "my pages", these are eepsite. If you think, the content on the eepsite breaks the law, either in Germany or in your country (like insults, terrorism, etc.), then please report it to me using my pager, see above. Please state (in short!) why you think this content must be blocked.

• As long as I am not convinced that the content is bad, it is likely that I will not block it.
• If the content is in some language which I cannot read (and the translators do not indicate anything wrong) the former applies.
• When I think the content is unlawful, I will block it.

A: I repeat, these are not "my pages". If the content of an eepsite is bad for children and there is no protection to that content, such that childs can unknowingly and unexpedtedly stumble upon this content, and it looks like the eepsite owner is willing to accept that children are harmed by the content, then I will place a block. This is not to obey some law, this is to protect innocent children. However, please read on.

• In contrast to German lawers, I know that 99.9% of the children surfing the Internet are neither innocently nor unknowingly nor unexpectedly stumbling upon such content!
• Most children know exactly what they are up to do and where to find such things.
• Children are most times better prepared to those content than their parents, as they are actively discussing such things with their schoolmates.
• Blocking those content on the inProxy level does not hide this content. It advertises such content to the children and therefor does by no means protect them from reaching this content.
• Children do not have some "moral imperative" which hinders them to recognize the world (which is a very good thing)! This especially is true when they reach puberty, which differs from case to case, some start at age 11, some are not even finished with 30.
• Most children know how to (actively) work around 99% of protections which should keep children away. They are better in this than most adults trying to reach this content regularily. If you have a problem accessing a porn site, perhaps ask your 13 year old son, he probably can ask one of his classmates who already has free access there for quite some time!
• Hiding adult content from children who are willing to read this content is not protecting them, it's simply censorship, as all people (regardless of age) have the right to freely inform themself from any open information source, this is one basic law here in Germany. Blocking it on an inProxy level does not close the source, it only hinders free access to the source, which continues to stay open for access at any time (within I2P). Therefor I break the law by censoring free access to a free resource at my system. However I will do so for any good reason (as this here is my system), but I will refuse to do so if I cannot see why!
• Asking me to block a destination due to children protective laws is like asking a telephone carrier to block certain numbers in case a child calls there. If a telco does this in Germany, it is simply illegal. I am not a telco, though, and I dislike my systems to transport certain smut, however it is my solely decision to place a block. Therefor if I cannot understand why some content shall harm others directly, I keep it open.
• Also I am pretty sure that the postmodern laws against(!) children's basic rights (aka. protective legislation) are breaking fundamental laws of children and therefor are nothing else than wrong in this respect. Bits and bytes (in this form) do not harm children, usually! (Parents who let their children run into this unprepared are responsible for possible harm!)
• Why do I know this? Because I once was a child. I know what I did. I had good parents. And I know my rights I had as child now, which I would have had if my parents wouldn't have given them to me anyway.
• So parents are responsible for introducing their children into the Internet. And parents are responsible to allow their children to make up their own mind and do their own discoveries. If they do not do, they are bad parents. Period.

Please do not understand me wrong:

• I do not say that parents shall allow their children to smoke, drink alcohol or let see the porn channel on pay TV. (Please note that I do not own any TV, when I gave it up my life improved!)
• However it's not the primary responsibility of the porn channel to protect the minors, it's the responsibility of the parents to do so!
• Enforcing the porn channel to block their program to children is simply governmental enforced censorship. So I cannot blame any eepsite which does not have a hard protection against children if there is adult material in it.
• While I think that it is ok to enforce commercial adult/erotica sites to have some properly working age verification system, I simply do not think it's the task of some proxy service to control or enforce any aspect of this on free eepsites, as it neither stops this content nor hinders children accessing it. It moreover promotes such content, as it becomes "verboten content" then, which attracts the interest of children.
• I think, if we present it to the children as ordinary normal content they will look at it and then start to look for other things they are really interested in. (Like: "Well, yes, I once saw the Eiffelturm. Yes, it's big, and adults love it. I really do not understand, why. However there was a french boy, and we both played in the fountain nearby. I got wet, my parents were not amused!" See?)
• If there is a problem that most parents do not care or are unable to educate their children properly, this is not a problem which can be solved technically by enforcing some "child protection act" on adult sites or such, this is a fundamental social problem which only can be corrected on social level. And this means, doing it by law-enforment by prohibiting things is the fundamental wrong way!
• If you want parents to do their job and prepare their children for life, then it is the obligation of the state to help those parents to do so! The state then must help those parents to not need 3 jobs in parallel for both parents each, just to feed their children. The state must not allow that high (monetary) barriers are placed around the best education, such that parents, who cannot afford the time or material needed to take part of the Internet cannot help their children in this respect. If a state does it wrong this way, it is a bad state, not worth the children who live in it.
• Such states do not have the rights to further restrict what children may see or not. As doing so is transforming a society in prison for children.
• Help our children to evolve to human beings! Do not guard them against things we think they may harm. Only protect them against things, which really do harm for sure. And this starts by not abusing children, neither by dictating them what they must do, by punishing them (not even mentally), or even worse. If your child does something wrong, do not prohibit this specially, explain her or him why it is wrong and show them, how to do it a better way. If you do this reasonably, the child will follow. As you are the parent.
• If children do not follow their parents, it is the solely parents' fault. Children are children!

BTW: I have a minor son. And therefor I know it is my task to protect him from Internet odds. Because I do this I know the law is corrupt, as it does more harm than it can help me to do so. In fact, the law makes things worse, as I have less time to educate my son properly because of I have to follow such very stupid laws, like enforcing things which cannot be enforced, or explaining things (like this here) which really do not need to be explained in any free and reasonable society. (However it must be explained, because there is more than a tendency for our civilization to become self-righteous, over-protective and mentally unfree.)

So if I block adult content, I think of my son. I consider, whether there is the possibility that he is harmed by this content. And if I can answer his question when he ever ever asks me why I assisted in taking away the freedeom from the Internet by placing blocks in this inProxy. Please keep this in mind when asking me to block content, you think is not suitable for children.

Please note that IANAL, so what you read here is my personal interpretation:

• German law forbids to even try to look for CP. So it is a criminal act if somebody does a site screening to detect if a site contains CP. Therefor if you report an eepsite to contain CP, I am not allowed to look at that eepsite (if I would even try to do I would break the law).
• If you think this makes it far too easy to have me block something irregularily (as if you say it's CP I have no way to refuse the blocking request usually), you are right! Please contact the German government and try to convince them to make laws which make more sense. However even if a law is nuts (however it is important do outlaw CP), you must obey to it, and I will do so as good as I can!
• Finding out that some site does NOT contain CP is prohibited by law here as well, for the same reason. Looking for the absence of CP technically does not differ from looking for CP, and the lawyers here are not so stupid to allow you to do something which is verboten if you just pretend to do the opposite. So when it comes to CP, only the authorities are allowed to verify such an issue, and nobody else! Please do not laugh, as this is quite serious.
• Note that the only thing allowed (perhaps) would be to delete CP from my systems if it is reported to me or I stumple upon it. However the eepsites are not my systems and no CP is stored on any of my systems, this inProxy only accesses the eepsites and sends the result to you. So even retrieving any third party URL which is reported CP (most eepsites are third party) simply is illegal here.
• So if you happen to stumble over things like CP, please report this to the authorities, too! As I am not allowed to verify when CP is reported to me, I hardly cannot report this myself. If so, what shall I say? "Hey, some anonymous source told me that some anonymous resource has something, which is reported to be CP like. And btw. you can no more access it, as it now already blocked anyway." See?

I really do not know everything, as according to the FUD from Microsoft, anything not approved by Bill Gates shall be illegal. Well, it's not all that bad in Germany, so here is, what I know of which is strictly illegal:

• As noted above: Child Porn, of course.
• Sodomy (sex with animals)
• Pornography, if it is not protected by a properly implemented age verification system. (What a properly implemented age verification system is and which picture is pornographic or not is decided on a per case basis.)
• Nazi lies (like denying the Holocaust)
• Insults or harassment when combined with lies (lying is not covered by free speech. However you *are* allowed to tell the truth, even if this insults others).

A: The fastest way is to call my mobile if you have the number.

• The second fastest public way is to use my pager (see above).
• Then comes eMail and my publicly given phone number (see imprint), which reaches me when I am at home.
• If you do not summon me into IRC, I will not be there.
• If you throw with lawyers at me this (usually) is the slowest way, as perhaps I must go and see my lawyer first to let him translate your request in words which I can understand.

Note that my native language is German. (As an european I am allowed to use English to explain things, too.)

A: Sorry, it's not my task to do so. There seems to be some misunderstanding how name resolving in I2P and my inProxy works:

• My inProxy operates on names, not destinations, so I do not need to update it. My inProxy only learns new names (not: destinations) from my router's address book. The names are resolved as usual using the I2P router.
• I have two routers, each of them has it's own hosts.txt file. Both are learning new destinations from each other. One also learns from i2phost.i2p.
• This does not differ from how any other I2P router works. Changing my local hosts.txt files will only make my name resolution to differ from all other name resolutions, as even other routers which learned the wrong destination from my hosts.txt file already will stay with the old address.
• To replace any destination within I2P the only way to do it is to alter all hosts.txt of each individual router found in I2P. Good luck with this task, as I think other people will refuse such request like I do.
• If you miss one single router, it may be that your old information laters spreads to other routers again, if they happen to learn from this router which still has the "wrong" destination.
• Currently, I2P lacks a way to update an old destination network wide. If such a method would be implemented, I will support it, so my routers then would get updated with the changed information, too.
• For now I think what you want simply is impossible. Doing it manually is not the way to go for an automated system like mine. If I ever would start to do it manually, there will come times where I will be overwhelmed with requests to change destinations. However it's not my part to decide, which destinations points where. It's only my part to decide how my routers learn such information.

Note that I posted a request to zzz.i2p/zzz.i2p.to to be able to automate such updates using revocations. If - what I doubt - the I2P developers would change your destinations in their hosts.txt file and in i2phost.i2p, I might consider to delete the old destination from my hosts.txt file and let my routers re-learn the new one.
But I will not start to spread updated and unverified destinations myself. Sorry, this is not my role in the I2P project.

A: Because I can. If those wouldn't do it, who can do it, who else would do it?

• Anonymity is one of the most important things in life. For example, the right to vote can only live if the voting is free, secret and equal. Anonymity makes you free, secret and equal. So this is nothing new, it's a fundamental thing in a democratic country. Upholding anonymity is one of the most basic democratic necessities which do exist in our universe.
• I like to experiment with things which other people do not understand.
• I2P is not widely known, but I think it's the most useful tool when it comes to anonymity. Exposing I2P content into non-I2P networks therefor is a matter of promotion.
• When everything started, there was no search engine in I2P. This gateway exposes eepsites to Google and others, which basically is a good thing!
• My approach is a good thing for people who are copyright holders, as this way they can more easily find if their content is pirated in I2P. (They probably only need to check sites which are blocked by me, the rest they hopefully can find via Google.)

A: Yes, but I rejected it for several reasons.

• First on, what Opt-In is: New destinations will be added in "blocked" state and are only opened when they are approved.
• I2P is a growing network. In a free world, and I believe that I am living in a free country, nothing is verboten until allowed, it's the opposite round. So everything is allowed unless forbidden. In a good jurisdical system, and I believe Germany belongs to this, too, even the latter can be argued, as sometimes things which are verboten are allowed, as long as nobody is harmed. For example, it is verboten to hurt anybody, but you may hurt anybody to save his life! Therefor for a free and anonymous network, the right choice is to have everything open and allowed until blocked.
• Blocking was not there from the beginning, but was added later on.
• If you must opt-in, not many people would do so, as it is complex to do so (we are dealing with anonymity here, right?). So only a few sites would become reachable via my inProxy. I do not want to put a high effort into something which then has a low value by being something closed and self-righteous.
• It would contradict the idea to promote I2P. Think of somebody who found something in I2P and want to present this to somebody else, but the other one has no I2P installed. As nearly everything is reachable this way, you can hand out the URL. However if the eepsite owner has not opted-in this would not be possible.
• Also this does not get rid of any burden of me in respect of destination blocking. It just makes things less usable but does not help me any bit.
• There is no requirement forcing me to do opt-in. Well, some people expressed their concern because their eepsite suddenly became public. And to be honest, I implemented the blocking for these people, so for the anonymous people who wanted their eepsite not being exposed! However as eepsites are anonymous and public, I really can not see any problem with such eepsites becoming public outside I2P, too.
• In Germany there is the law "Eine Zensur findet nicht statt." So having a way for a public gateway between two public networks is something like censorship. For example like a carrier blocking faxes to certain numbers. So I do not even know if it is rightful to do blocking, however having it the opposite round (block by default) looks me a little bit too wrong.

A: Yes, and I am working on this issue.

• First on, what is Opt-Out: Opt-out is the request to block destinations. Automated opt-out is, when no manual interaction is required to do this.
• I have no good idea today how to implement it. However it must be done, as it is intolerable to have just one person to decide such things. (It's intolerable for me, because I do not have the time to do so, and it is intolerable for the society, as one indivitual deciding is dictatorship.)
• I2P is an ever growing network. There will come the time where I cannot handle the load to block destinations manually. So there must be some process to enable others to report destinations and the blocking then is done automatically.

My plans are as follows:

• Implement a way to "report" a destination. This shall be easy and convenient. This probably will come soon to aid others (for me it still is a manual process then).
• For site owners there shall be an easy way to express their will to have their site blocked. This then can be implemented fully automated, with full interactive online help. This will be added to the "report" function next.
• When the automated blocking for site owners is implemented, there will be site configuration information available, which allows to manage blocking more easily for me. For example I can see a history of state changes and the like. Note that this information then will be publicly available as well.
• Now the complicated task starts: Some way to allow others to state comments to sites and therefor activate blocking. This can be easily abused to trick my system to block everything, so this needs some good and clever countermeasures.
• I am not completely sure how this will evolve, but it then will be work in progress. For the first thing, it certainly will need my approval, however on the long term this must be a fully automated process.
• Currently I think of something which is called "warranted blocking", which means, somebody who wants something blocked quickly (and is not the site owner) must hold some public warrant to enable the block. This warrant then is checked from while to while, and if the warrant no more hold true the block automatically is dropped.
• There then can be guardians, who can express blocks this way, as well as copyright owners who want to suppress their works and public or state agencies, who enforce the law this way. All publicly checkable, such that any abuse can be quickly determined and punished by the community.
• However this all is future works and only can develop naturally. I hope, I2P (and all others) leave me the time to do so.

Please also note, that there will be the time coming where we have to coordinate all efforts. It is futile to fight the same battle each time at different places. So the blocking process must be some open process accessible and easy to implement by others, such that you (the copyright owner, etc.) do not have to fight this battle all over and again and again.
Really, I do not know where this leads, but there certainly is the need for a solution on a global basis, not only for I2P. But if it works for an anonymous, free and uncensored network like I2P, it can work everywhere. (This probably means, blocking is not enforced, but suggested to all people, who want to be honest, nice and friendly. I really think, this is the majority. If I am wrong we do not need this all here anyway.)

A: Yes, or to be more elaborate:

• I am an individual providing an inProxy gateway from WWW to I2P eepsites.
• It's the German law that I have to reveal my identity, because I operate a WWW site. I knew this before I started this inProxy. So you can be sure I am well aware of what I am doing.
• Therefor you can get hold on me personally, for example by sending a court order, as I am a real individual.
• And as I am doing this all here publicly you can be sure that I follow all the laws up to the point!
• So all you can do is to bother me by sending some officials by misleading them to me. However do not expect that those officials who are sent by you abusively will not come back after you, as soon as I have explained to them that they were abused by you just to bother me. So at first I will get into some trouble, but I will recover from this, unlike you, who then will be in deep mess.

A: Not quite:

• This is no FAQ, but I don't like this proposal, as there is nothing precarious in what I do.
• First, of course I have balls, as I am male. But this is a pure biological neccessity.
• I do not need to have balls, as I do not believe in that there is any threat in particular. I do live in Germany, which is a free and democratic country with (mostly) proper laws and a reliable and honest juridical system. If you are a standing democrat and you want to do something for your country, you cannot just sit back and look at others. You have to have to do something. As I am not politically active, this here is my way to contribute.
• For example: People driving at 250 km/h over the Autobahn need to have more balls than somebody who operates a public gateway like me. As there is a real threat, for life and everything. If you drive this fast, if there is only one second where you do something wrong, you are dead. Now compare this to what can happen to me operating a public proxy.
• Perhaps I sometimes have to argue to somebody. Perhaps I get my computers confiscated for some time. Perhaps I have some trouble for a short period of time. But this leads me to the unique opportunity to teach others a story about citizenship. And I really think, this will be worth all the effort. Anyway, I don't think the risk I take is much higher than crossing a street. Some get hit by a bus, but that's the normal risk of life. If you do not take this risk, you do not live.
• Also remember: Robin Hood knowingly broke the law. In contrast, I uphold the law, how daring!

A: The safe bet is "no":

• Do not trust anybody as long as you do not know the other personally.
• Even if you know somebody personally, you only should trust from what this person is doing or because you are related to each other.
• Even then you still shall not trust others fully and still keep back something for you in case you are betrayed.

The wise bet still is "no":

• Believe in others. Believe in that they fail. Believe that others do irregular things from your perspective.
• And protect yourself from the most fatal harm which can happen if your trust is broken.
• In an anonymous network, the most fatal harm is if anonymity is broken.
• From this perspective I cannot protect you if you use my inProxy.
• So if you want to stay mostly anonymous, install I2P and abstain from my inProxy.
• If you aware of the risk that I perhaps can trick you, you can happily use my services.
• Please note that anybody providing service to you in Internet can trick you the same way. So this is nothing special.

Please keep this all in mind when you access my freenet gateway fproxy.tino.i2p. However as you can only do this from within I2P this probably is not a big problem.

A: Not really.

• I want to stay as independent of I2P as possible, as anytime it may be the case that I have to shutdown everything at my site for some reason or another.
• In such a case I would not like to see that I2P gets into some trouble or another just because my service faded away.
• Perhaps somebody can be found who takes over then. However I am not sure how to handle it if, for example, I am no more around to help.
• Also please note, that I do not know anybody else of I2P personally and I want to keep it this way, as it is easy to get hold on me, as my name is on the web pages. So best is, I think, to separate I2P into an anonymous crowd, who develops I2P and provides core services, and a fully separated second public crowd, who provides some public frontend to I2P. The public crowd shall not run any core service, though, and AFAICS there still is a long way to go in this direction.

For the inProxy case the best thing would be if somebody else starts to create an alternative to my inProxy. Or to found a group who operates it. The solution here is able to scale, in that, it is easy to add other relays to it in a round robin fashion. I will happily dedicate the domain i2p.to into such a project, as well as the complete code base of this inProxy. However this group, in contrasts to the I2P team, must stay fully publicly.

A: I do not block you. The default settings of most download accelerators are a braindead. By using them you are unfriendly because you are stealing more bandwidth which belong to others. This braindead technology perhaps can help to download braindead content provided by braindead people, but when it comes to I2P these "accelerators" become extremely harmful.

My system here has limited capacity. It can survive 1 or 2 such braindead accelerators, but if 5 people start to use them with the default settings (or what they think are "improved" settings) this is like a DDoS-Attack seen here, as this accelerators then eat up all possible connections and there is nothing left for others.

Therefor my system blocks you if your resource consumption becomes too high. In stress situations the default setting of many browsers (more than 2 parallel connects) might trigger this blocking already. (In extreme stress situations, my machine will already block you after your first request.)

This blocking is a fully automatic defense system to allow others to be not harmed by those which access the web with braindead settings. If you use a download accelerator and you do not configure it to friendly settings (this is: No more than 1 request in parallel, retry wait period of 1 minute) to back off from heavily loaded systems, this will certainly block you very quickly.

This blocking now is sustained as long as the wrong behavior is seen. It even might "burn" your IP, currently there is no limit (which can be considered a bug), so IPs might get blocked for years. (Before if was a little bit random, now the blocking is fixed to be more predictable.)

You can see how long you are blocked if you try to access I2P over this proxy. DO NOT RELOAD THE PAGE, to stay informed, AS THIS MIGHT RAISE YOUR COUNT. Stay calm and wait the given time. And wait 15 minutes more or so. Note that it depends on your IP stack and your ISP how long my system sees you. If your ISP has a transparent proxy this might improve your situation or even hinder you, it depends.

Note that you are not treated differently from others like robots or crawlers. However crawlers usually are very well designed, only do 1 request in seconds and have a well behaving IP stack. This is honored by my system here because it then is unlikely that these are blocked.

Windows IP stacks are known to be extremely "dirty", so they often leave half open connections to other systems. This is penalized here, as this can quickly raise your blocking count to hours. I cannot help for this, except that it is your fault to use such unfriendly systems to surf the web. So there is nothing wrong at my side here. If you are blocked, there is something at your side.