I never realized my Spectrum router has something called “Security Shield,” but now I see it does and it has a bunch of “Secure Browsing” warnings related to the wired connection with my StartOS node. Here’s a list of URLs Spectrum warns that my StartOS node has attempted to connect to, approximately one attempted connection per day (so each site just shows one connection attempt):
Anyone? Even a guess why my router believes these sites are being connected to from my StartOS node (only running Bitcoin Core, Electrum & Mempool)? I can’t tell if there’s a perfectly good explanation for this, but for now it feels pretty sketchy.
Apologies for the delayed response. It seems your message got lost in the midst of other communications.
Start9’s approach disregards IP addresses entirely; instead, each server is assigned a unique random ID upon its initial boot, completely independent of any other factors. However, we do keep a close eye on service download metrics. Through our registry, we meticulously track total user counts, active users within specified timeframes, and the download frequencies of each service. That’s the extent of our monitoring protocol.
Regarding concerns about connections being flagged by firewalls, it’s important to understand that while specific addresses may not be immediately recognized as Tor relay nodes, they could still be part of the network. Some hosts actively rotate their IPs to evade detection, making it a challenging task for conventional firewall systems to distinguish between legitimate and suspicious activity.