We allow legitimate use of Tor. We do not require that you first connect in the clear and register with Services before allowing connections via Tor.
Limiting connections
Given Tor's "anonymous" nature, it is often used for abuse, such as ban evasion and spamming. As such, from time to time, we may have to impose various limiting techniques to mitigate such abuse. We do our best not to adversely affect Tor users not engaging in abuse.
Disabled connections
We may prevent new connections via Tor during times of heavy abuse. New connections will be refused, while those who can maintain their connection will not be affected. This measure is a last resort and often lasts as long as we continue to see such abuse attempts.
Bypassing restrictions
Most Tor-related connection restrictions can be bypassed by those users with an account. This requires the use of the SASL or login-on-connect methods.
Onion service
We provide a version 3 onion service:
Onionv3 gg5kq3jrfshwr7qygs3tl5vwnwf4ocfh6jeahumejdct6frld3kvaqqd.onion
You'll need to use port 6667 (plaintext) or 6697 (TLS). Use of TLS is still required to join TLS-only channels or use SASL EXTERNAL, even though Tor already end-to-end encrypts the connection. Due to our TLS certificates not matching the onion service (i.e., we only serve certificates for irc.darenet.org and servername.darenet.org, as proper .onion certificates are cost prohibitive at this time), you may have to disable the verification in your client.
To help minimize abuse, using the onion service requires using the SASL or login-on-connect methods.