Anonymously browsing internet - linux anonymizer
If your are concerned about your privacy in regards to internet browsing you may try use tor and the privoxy proxy server to hide your true identity while surfing the internet. The setup is very easy and is definitely worth to try.
First install tor and privoxy packages. On debian or ubuntu just simply type:
apt-get install tor privoxy
then configure privoxy to use tor, which listens on the port 9050 by default. Open vi /etc/privoxy/config file and search for a section forward-socks4 and add line ( do not forget “.” at the end):
forward-socks4a / localhost:9050 .
restart privoxy to apply changes. To confirm that both services tor and privoxy are running use “netstat -ant” and you should be able to see ports:
9050 for tor and 8118 for privoxy.
If you use a firefox web browser install SwitchProxy plugin to make things easier for the next step.
Last step is to make your browser use the privoxy proxy server. Open proxy settings of your browser and add:
127.0.0.1 8118 for all services available and your are done.
There are couple drawbacks:
- browsing is sometimes very slow, this probably depends on your location. tcpdump revealed that I’m using :
onion.celltel-communications.de.9050 address which is quite far from my location
- google is confused I have been redirected to google.de
- google also reports:
We’re sorry…
… but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.
and you need to enter password just to do some search.
However this is just quick setup and I’m sure that there are more setting to tune for both services tor and privoxy.
Filed under: Administration, Security