Ever want to surf the web anonymously? Forget unreliable and sometimes illegal open proxies that are usually compromised or misconfigured servers. Forget web proxies that spam you with ad frames and pop-ups. Try Tor, an open-source anonymous peer-to-peer network. Using Tor and Firefox is extremely easy. More about Tor in this Wikipedia entry.
I tried the following steps in Arch Linux, but they should apply to any modern operating system. (By the way, Arch Linux is my favorite Linux distribution. I’ll likely write about it at some point.)
- Install Tor using whatever appropriate package manager or installer. In Arch, I simply did “pacman -S tor“.
- Start Tor. In Arch, I did “/etc/rc.d/tor start“.
- Install FoxyProxy for Firefox.
- On first run, FoxyProxy will ask you some questions about Tor. Say you want to configure for Tor. Say you are running Tor without Privoxy (unless you know otherwise). Accept the default port for Tor. Voila.
- Configure FoxProxy to use Tor for specific websites, or chose the “mode” where Tor is used for all websites. Make sure Tor is running.
- Surf like a ninja.
Windows users can get the installer.
To verify if your browser connections are anonymized by Tor, visit TorCheck. You can also visit any of the many sites which show you your IP address. If Tor is working, the IP address shown should be different from yours.
Windows users who need an even simpler method of using Tor should check out the XeroBank (xB) Browser. Read more about it at Wikipedia.
Be warned, don’t use Tor to do anything illegal. Tor has known weaknesses and does not guarantee your anonymity if someone wants to catch you badly enough.
If you’re interested in helping the Tor network grow, consider running a Tor relay.
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