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Anonymous Browsing With TOR

by Adam Ross — last modified Mar 18, 2008 04:29 PM
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By combining TOR with Firefox, you can surf the web completely anonymously with just the click of a button. This how-to will show you how to install TOR and its Firefox add-on in just a matter of minutes.

 

Applicable to Fedora Versions

  • Fedora Core 7+ (Could work for previous versions, but this is all I've tested it on).

Requirements

Explanation of requirements.
  1. Firefox 0.9 or greater
  2. No ill-intents. TOR offers true anonymity and can therefore be used for evil. Please use it as the creators intended it to be used: to protect your right to privacy.

Doing the Work

In order to browse anonymously, TOR and Privoxy must first be installed, and then the Firefox add-on.

  1. Download the TOR rpm from the EFF. This How-To uses version 0.2.0.9. Get it here.
  2. Install TOR with rpm:
    3. su -c 'rpm -ivh tor-0.2.0.9.alpha-tor.0.fc7.i386.rpm'
  3. Download Privoxy from their site. This How-To uses version 3.0.6. Get it here.
  4. Install Privoxy with rpm:
    5. su -c 'rpm -ivh privoxy-3.0.6-0.fc6.i386.rpm'
  5. Open the Privoxy config file for editing from /etc/privoxy. 
    6. su -c 'gedit /etc/privoxy/config'
  6. Comment out lines containing 'logfile logfile', 'jarfile jarfile', 'enable-remote-toggle', 'enable-remote-http-toggle', and 'enable-edit-actions' by prefixing their lines with a '#' character.
  7. Add the following line to the config file:
    forward-socks4a / 127.0.0.1:9050 .
  8. Save and close the file.
  9. Restart the Privoxy and TOR services.
    10. cd /etc/init.d
    su -c 'service privoxy restart'
    su -c 'service tor restart'
  10. Download and install the Firefox TorButton from Mozilla by clicking here.
  11. Restart Firefox when prompted.

Troubleshooting

How to test

The best way to test this is to try browsing anonymously!
  1. You'll notice that there is now a button in the bottom right corner of your Firefox browser window that says "Tor Disabled" in red text. Click on it to change the text to a green "Tor enabled"
  2. Visit http://www.ipaddressreport.com to see your current external IP address. If it doesn't match your normal IP address and physical location, then the installation was a success!
  3. Surf the web anonymously to your heart's content.

Common problems and fixes

The most common problem comes from Tor not starting up correctly. You will see a glaringly red Privoxy error page. To fix this, click the TorButton so that it states "Tor Disabled". Then, restart Privoxy and Tor as in step #9 above. Now try clicking the TorButton again.

For more information, check out the TOR documentation repository, linked below in the Added Reading section.

More Information

This was only a basic introduction to TOR and anonymous browsing. I encourage you to explore this subject more thoroughly and to use your new found power for good, not evil!

Disclaimer

We test this stuff on our own machines, really we do. But you may run into problems, if you do, come to #fedora on irc.freenode.net

Added Reading

 
 
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