I’d like to disable logs by default in the nym github repo. I can’t use github, but the team could merge from my codeberg repo where the ansible changes are mostly done already.
This is the branch where I collect all changes:
NOTE: I haven’t merged upstream changes to my repo yet, but if I get this approved I can of course do that.
Already implemented
- nginx access/error logs
- ufw logs
- nym-bridge logs
- Anything already in
ansible/nym-node/playbooks/system-maintenance.yml
To implement
Ansible
- Disable logs by default?
Docs
I haven’t made any changes to docs yet. Therefore this is still TODO.
Questions
Should this be implemented by default?
I’d advise you to implement it by default because of this line in Operator T&C :
you will not collect, monitor, record, log, store, retain, or pass on to any third party Nym Node information or any information or data relating to the activities of end users of NymVPN or the VPN Services.
Currently nym-node/nym-bridge/ufw/nginx all collect in my opinion "data relating to the activities of end users". That data might legally not classify as related to "NymVPN or the VPN Services".
It does however collect:
- nginx logs IPs of API requests
- nym-bridge logs IPs of people connecting (as far as I can tell)
- nym-node logs IPs for various reasons (Didn’t investigate which IPs)
- ufw logs blocked requests, which might in theory include requests from end users
I know that logs also have a reason to exist, but I think that it is not okay to collect the mentioned data because it might potentially log "activities of end users" which is mostly a risk for end users/operators and not a good idea.
Additional Problems
nym-node/nym-bridge logs
The code of nym-node/nym-bridge should be modified to not collect IPs at all and correctly send errors to stderr. Currently WARNING/ERROR messages are not recognized by systemd and therefore the log level does not work for nym-node.
This could allow still logging WARNING/ERROR levels without an IP.
I currently don’t have time to work on the rust codebase however, therefore this might be something for the future.