A public service started blocking access from Tor users. Blocks like this almost never have the courtesy to acknowledge why you are blocked (Tor) much less why they decided to exclude Tor users from public access. The blockades seem to always be implemented by an asshole.

So I play dumb: “your site is no longer working… here is my screenshot…(‘Unable to connect’)”. I submit that as a complaint.

The response I would hope for: “Oh, we are sorry sir, we will send you a link to our bulletin page that publishes a chronology of all changes we make to the site and have a technician call you to troubleshoot the problem.”

My goal is to burden those behind unjustified/undocumented anti-Tor configs so they spend some time investigating as a consequence of their unannounced change and their useless error messages.

What really happens:

They reply saying: “the server works. No problems were reported. The problem is with your browser. Try another computer/browser”.

So indeed, they double-down on being assholes. They give this snap response having no idea what could have gone wrong. There is no escalation procedure in government when you reach an incompetent person. So what’s the counter-move?

Proposal: network with other Tor users in the region. When one user reports a tor-hostile, everyone else in the group should verify the block and complain at the same time; everyone taking care not to mention Tor. It should remove the the knee-jerk “there have been no complaints” response.

Has anyone tried this?