any moment now ...

[coderman]

On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 2:34 PM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> ...
> This is interesting to me personally. How would you run
> a Tor node anonymously, without breaking the bank?
>
> Apart from offshore incorporation or finding a host that
> takes cash or anonymous prepaid cards it appears not obvious.

there are a lot who do take anonymous pre-paid cards. i've been using
this method for years for servers and other services.

purchase the cards with cash or barter.

you can load up to $500 without difficulty.  you pay a $5 or so fee
per card; avoid anything that charges percentages loaded. you have a
year to use it, usually, before fees start whittling down the balance.

you can register the cards on-line with privacy preserving billing
detail. be sure to consider country/state of billing address if this
matters for your purchase. (note that Tor is not the only anonymous
option for this :)

once registered with card holder name, address, use as you would any
other Visa/MC/Amex...

(there once was a company called CoinStar. they let you feed bills
into a kiosk to load cash onto Visa plastic which it spat out right
there. you could add currency to an existing card just the same. alas,
they had to change their model due to pressures. while it is hard to
find prepaid systems this convenient and privacy empowering, they do
come round now and then. still, point-of-sale purchase is not so bad
compared to the alternatives...)