fast and easy (really) proxy surfing

[Carpet Muncher]

remember whothekid's Tor/Privoxy threads at CW? well thanks to a program called Vidalia, all of the headaches seem to have disappeared.

what is Vidalia?

"Vidalia is a cross-platform controller GUI for Tor, built using the Qt framework. Vidalia runs on any platform supported by Qt 4.1, including Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux or other Unix variants using the X11 window system.

Vidalia allows you to start and stop Tor, view the status of Tor at a glance, and monitor Tor's bandwidth usage. Vidalia also makes it easy to contribute to the Tor network by helping you setup a Tor server, if you wish."

more info on Vidalia; http://www.vidalia-project.net/


after downloading/installing the bundle.. yep, 3 programs in one download.. all you have to do is go into your browser settings and change the Port addy to 8118, and check a box to allow proxy surfing.

download page: http://tor.eff.org/download.html.en
set-up page with screen shots for windows: http://tor.eff.org/docs/tor-doc-win32.html.en
for Mac: http://tor.eff.org/docs/tor-doc-osx.html.en

have fun!

[kisanth]

I thought it was great for a while but TOR seemed to run a little faster by itself. Imho...

Still, for someone looking for ease of use and loading, Vidalia is it.

[Carpet Muncher]

k, i don't remember why exactly, but i haven't tried it by itself yet because of what wtk said about tor/privoxy being better/safer together. i also don't know why, but even after i had his method running smoothly, it never ran as fast as this bundle.

have you tried it? because, while it may be due to more ppl acting as servers now, my pages load just as fast as running w/out anything.

[Papi]

Vidalia is the same as tor/privoxy, it's just bundled for easier use and renamed. I don't think it's any less secure than the earlier versions. I love it !

[capt carnuba]

tis tres bueno

[Papi]

P.S., the privoxy portion will block most popups, flash, etc. but it also blocks animated gifs (most browsers) but a simple change of a - to a + sign in the configuration will allow the gifs.

[Carpet Muncher]

no idea what "a - to a + sign in the configuration" means, but c-ray's deer still freaks me out.

what's fun to me is going to an ip checker.. repeatedly.. and never seeing the same ip addy. :)


ps.. now that i think about it, if you're running PGP, sometimes you'll get an error msg seemingly out of the blue.. something about their copy not being registed to them?.. just click 'okay'. i may be wrong, but i concluded the reason the msg is generated is because of tor/priv + pgp.

[Papi]

pgp really conflicts with my firefox browser, freezes it up sometimes forcing a re-boot. Even hushmail does it if I leave the browser window open too long.

[Carpet Muncher]

Papi, ff, opera and avant are all based on netscape.. but w/different tweeks. but even ie runs well with this config.

maybe try another browser and see how it goes?

given that ip masking is the primary goal?

[kisanth]

CM, ya I ran vidalia back in march but it seemed slower than the unbundled (TOR/Privoxy) version. But like you said, it might be faster now that there are more people acting a servers.

I'll give it another run tomorrow, thanx for the reminder.

k.
btw, I believe avant is IE based, but I still use it.

[Carpet Muncher]

k, you're right about Avant.. thanks bro. :)