04-24-06 01:06 PM
George Orwell wrote:
> In article <4447641a$0$31648$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl> "Thomas J. Boschloo"
> <nospam@hccnet.nl> wrote:
>
> Tor is not for http mainly at all. It supports 99% of TCP connections. The
> only ports that are not supplied by anyone is usually port 25 because of
> spam, however the tor node 'torture' has allowed port 25 for many months
> now.
There's some other things blocked by the default torrc configuration, but
in general you're spot on up to this point. Tor is definitely more than an
HTTP tool, in fact a lot of people use it mostly for things like IRC and
IM. It's a full blown SOCKS proxy with an anonymity bonus.
> It also does not need privoxy to be more anonymous. Privoxy just makes it
> easier for browsers to use, because it provides them with an HTTP proxy
> interface which browsers support. Many browsers don't support SOCKS.
>
> Privoxy also scrubs some advertisements, but plugins for Firefox and other
> browsers generally work better at that.
Nope. Privoxy does a lot more than scrub advertisements, and a lot more
than any browser can do. Without it you're probably leaking information
like a sieve, and most certainly are with the mainstream browsers.
Does your browser protect you from web bugs and other graphics based
tracking goodies?
Does your browser or plugin allow you to "anonymize" cookies with random
information so that sites which won't work without cookies can still be
accessed anonymously?
Does your browser scrub its own HTTP headers? Can you configure it to NOT
release things like OS and browser versions, or MIME type information
every time it makes a new connection? Or tell it to refuse to forward a
history of where you're coming from? Or a list of plugins you have
installed and running?
Does your browser allow you the flexibility to selectively reject or
accept specific content based on that content AND/OR its source?
There's more, but that's a good start....
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