Silk Road forums

Discussion => Security => Topic started by: Dorset on August 13, 2011, 07:27 am

Title: Privoxy
Post by: Dorset on August 13, 2011, 07:27 am
So after browsing the forums a bit it seems privoxy is the way to go, but I'm a bit confused. Do I simply configure my firefox browser to use privoxy, or do I have to set it up in tor setting? If the latter, do I have tor start privoxy.exe and do some application arguments (whatever that means) or do I go to network setting and check "I use a proxy to access the internet". When I try to get answers out of google I end up reading pages upon pages of unnecessary shit. any help with this is greatly appreciated :]
Title: Re: Privoxy
Post by: Optimus Crime on August 13, 2011, 05:55 pm
Actually these days you really only need tor. Most browsers have socks5 support.
Title: Re: Privoxy
Post by: Dorset on August 14, 2011, 03:18 am
Actually these days you really only need tor. Most browsers have socks5 support.
from what I read privoxy is a non-caching proxy, whereas polipo is caching, which is somehow a security risk. Were they mistaken?
Title: Re: Privoxy
Post by: CrunchyFrog on August 14, 2011, 08:00 am
> from what I read privoxy is a non-caching proxy, whereas polipo is caching, which is somehow a security risk. Were they mistaken?

The thinking could be that Polipo, being a caching proxy, will naturally leave *much* more stuff hanging around in memory than a non-caching proxy such as Polipo.  Months ago I replaced Polipo with Privoxy -- which *used* to come bundled with Tor -- after tiring of Polipo screwing up large file downloads, and I have yet to regret the decision.

> Do I simply configure my firefox browser to use privoxy, or do I have to set it up in tor setting?
> If the latter, do I have tor start privoxy.exe and do some application arguments (whatever that means) or do I go to network setting and check "I use a proxy to access the internet".

The basic procedure I used is:

1. Download and install Privoxy.
2. Prevent Polipo from running alongside Privoxy.
    Open Vidalia's Settings/General menu and UN-check the "Start a proxy application when Tor starts" box.
    Shut down then restart Vidalia.
3. Configure Privoxy.
    Find the file "config.txt" in Privoxy's directory and open it with a text editor. 
    Find the line in that file that reads "#  forward-socks5  /   127.0.0.1:9050  ." and delete the "#" from that line.
    Save the file.
4. Run Privoxy -- no command-line arguments needed -- and test by browsing some .onion sites.

You should *not* need to alter your browser settings; if the browser was happy with Polipo it will work with Privoxy.  I had no luck in convincing Vidalia to run Privoxy automatically via the Settings/General menu, so I launch Privoxy manually.