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Browse Anonymously In Thirty Seconds and Three Easy Steps in Ubuntu

Here’s a quick little how-to guide on setting up Tor and Privoxy in Ubuntu and installing the Torbutton for Firefox add-on to surf anonymously in about 30 seconds. 1. Installation: First we need Privoxy and Tor, then start the services: sudo apt-get install privoxy tor && sudo /etc/init.d/privoxy restart && sudo /etc/init.d/tor restart Then we […]

Here’s a quick little how-to guide on setting up Tor and Privoxy in Ubuntu and installing the Torbutton for Firefox add-on to surf anonymously in about 30 seconds.

1. Installation:
First we need Privoxy and Tor, then start the services:
sudo apt-get install privoxy tor && sudo /etc/init.d/privoxy restart && sudo /etc/init.d/tor restart

Then we need to install the Torbutton for Firefox to toggle the proxy on and off in the browser.

2. Configure:
Save the contents of this Configuration File to /etc/privoxy/config, overwriting the entire file.

3. Use:
Startup Firefox, go into the View > Toolbars > Customize menu and add in the Tor button. Click the button to enable anonymous traffic. Tada! You’re anonymous.

104 replies on “Browse Anonymously In Thirty Seconds and Three Easy Steps in Ubuntu”

Thanks as usual for an interesting post.

One “issue” remains and that is the headers. When I read my awstats or similar it shows I am browsing using Ubuntu Gutsy plus a bunch of additional info. This still keeps you anonymous but is still some form of identification – especially because a very smaill minority of stats show people browsing with a linux specific system.

I have tried the User Agent Switcher Firefox plugin, and while it largely works, you open cannot access certain sites, or some key features on the site – like commenting on some blogs.

Not a big deal but do you have an thoughts or suggestions?

Often times people using Tor think they are completely safe, but it’s still possible to peel the onion route. Not to mention it doesn’t mean people will not be able to see what you’re doing because the exit node will still be able to. Currently I find the most anonymous way to surf is having a linux Virtual Private Server in Sweden and using dynamic tunneling through SSH.

If someone knows information about me that was specific enough to pin me down based on HTTP headers and browser specifics, and they had access to the logs for website X to be able to do that….

I would have a very, very big privacy problem since they know my computers’ signature to track me even when I go anonymous.

On the other hand, I can go through the logs on this site and say “oh here’s someone from City X in the UK, who browses on his Wii with a 720p resolution.”

I guess it’s hard to say either way, but it’s like the police who can go and haul someone off to jail because they match the description of a perp.

“It’s you because you wear a grey shirt and black pants.”
“Anybody could be wearing those clothes.”

After installing the tor extension and user agent, whenever I search from google toolbar (firefox) I end up at the French or German google sites. I only speak a smattering of Espanol so this is pretty annoying. Any ideas?

aug_aug: Try this solution I just cooked up:
Goto google.com, and right click in the search query text box. From the context menu, select:
“Add a keyword for this search.”

Name it: Google
Set a Keyword: gt

Press OK after you’ve filled out the box, then type into the address bar “gt type query here” without quotes and hit Enter, should give you english results every time, since it’s emulating going to Google.com and typing into that page, instead of sending a generic query via the toolbar.

Here’s another option aug_aug:
Goto Mycroft
Look for Google from your country or the generic one called “Google (No country redirect)”
Install that as a new search engine. Now the search bar should work too.

When I tried to overwrite /etc/privoxy/config I get an error message…You do not have the permissions necessary to save the file. Please check that you typed the location correctly and try again.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

I appear to have everything configured as you said here (I’m using your config file), but when I enable Tor, Privoxy gives a “No Such Domain” 404 every time I try to access a page. It just says the domain name couldn’t be resolved. Any ideas? I’m running Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper.

Thanks for running a great blog.

Run this command in a terminal: tail -f /var/log/tor
Then try to visit a site. The terminal output will give a good indicator of what is causing the problem.

If the console output doesn’t make sense, post it in here and I’m sure we can find a solution or someone who can solve your problems.

I’m glad you mentioned that you’re running Dapper – it might have an old version that is no longer compatible with the Tor network and you might need to upgrade Tor to the latest version manually instead of installing from the Dapper repository.

-Wayne

That did the trick. The log said my version wasn’t compatible, and that I should upgrade. I double-checked at ip-adress.com, and I’ve successfully become anonymous!

Thanks so much. Keep up the great work.

I am having such a hard time trying to learn Linux. I tried getting this up and running and get:

Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
tor: Depends: libevent1 (>= 1.3b) but it is not installable
E: Broken packages

What gives? Why can’t anything just install smoothly in Linux?

Thanx in advance

any ideas?
‘Package tor is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
E: Package tor has no installation candidate”
‘

Tor is a browser that lets you access the Internet privately, but it doesn’t mean that it is secured. If privacy is your major concern, then you should consider premium VPN instead. There’re some cheap yet reliable services like Hide My IP encrypts your connection and provides you with an anonymous IP to protect your privacy.

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