TOR

Hello All:

I am a stand alone setup. XP Pro, Opera, dialup.

Not a guru.

For those unaware, TOR is apparently the best in terms of proxy/anonymity and used by the military occasionally. Second only to pay services such as "Anonymizer", but in some other ways better...

It is quite involved though for the uninitiated in SOCKS and a bit of programming...

Anyway,
TOR has been setup, as has Privoxy, it works well now after doing some research. This type of work is a bit out of my league and I havent the time to really research and study more.

A couple quick Qs if I may. "Blackspear" please feel free to chime in. HAt e to bug ya, but I recall reading you used it also.

1: Privoxy. It is setup using port 8118. I cannot quite gather what HTML scrubbing is ? Also, I seem to gather that I do not need anything further to confound ISP/DNS connects as Privoxy does this. Correct?

If not, what do I need to do.

2: I receive (viewing via PortExplorer) packets being received from various locations on TOR.exe. Should I be concerned? For example, packets from a Finland, etc. Apparently the servers are kept clean, and this is *apparently* coming from the onion servers.


I am fried and just don't know. I am trying but this is all a bit above me.


3: Firewall I am using Outpost. Punching a hole to 9000-9050, and 8118 should be fine no?

4: Lastly, apparently it is difficult to block URLs. Even the pay, encrypted tunnel services can block only content.

Has anyone any knowledge/experience with JANUS. A german developer, free software that does encrypt URLs? I think it is www.redewebber.de

thanks again.

 

That link didn't work on my computer in Belgium. Are you sure it's a valid link ?

 

Im an idiot.

www.rewebber.de


as for TOR: tor.eff.org/

However, I have not been able to access the site just the same.

 

Privoxy can filter ads, javascript tricks, popup windows, cookies and other unpleasantness from web pages. However, you may find Outpost's own Active Content plugin easier to use to start with (though rather more limited in its filtering). If you wish to have more control over web page content, then a filter like Proxomitron would be the next step.

Kye-U has put together some good instructions on configuring Proxomitron/Privoxy/Tor in Kye-U's Guide to Setting up Tor with Privoxy and Proxomitron. Also see the Setting up Tor/Proxomitron+SocksCap (How to) thread for suggested Outpost rules with this setup.

Yes, when you send data out via Tor you will get data back in response. You can also run the Tor client as a server in which case your PC will become part of the Tor network, anonymising others' traffic. This is worth doing only if you have a 1Mb bandwidth connection (both ways) but offers the advantage of higher-speed access to Tor plus (slightly) better anonymity - the downside is that you will be handling other people's traffic.

Please see above for Outpost configuration suggestions - if you are running Tor as a server then you will need to add an extra rule to it to allow others incoming access (and you will likely need to amend Tor's configuration file for this too).

Are you talking about preventing others from accessing specific URLs on your PC? If so you can use Outpost's Content plugin for this (though you will need to password-protect Outpost's configuration to prevent it from being altered). If you are talking about a network administrator (e.g. your ISP) being able to filter URLs, then they will not even be able to tell which URLs you are visiting with Tor - everything is encrypted (it should be trivial to check this using Port Explorer's Socket Spy on the outgoing traffic from Tor).

 

Thank you very much for taking time P2000,

most questions resolved and I have a better understanding now.

FWIW, those unfamiliar need to look into and *SUPPORT* "TOR"....link above.

..an outstanding and intelligent system. Read the white paper.

z