It's really driving me crazy that I can't edit my posts after what I think is 24 hours. That should be extended to 48 hours IMHO. And now, I can't hit reply or quote on my own posts, so I'm locked out of the BB code for it, unless I saved a backup. That wasn't the case yesterday. On top of all the problems due to enemies of free speech, that's more stuff that's not frustration free, or user friendly. (/whinge)
Like many things of this nature, revisions happen, and I now have a third revision that should be much easier... just extract the folder, put it anywhere, and run an .exe.
Here it is, revision 3:
-------------------------
This is not best practice (which is to use Tor Browser), but here's how you can use Tor in
any browser (or
any application that allows configuration of a SOCKS5 proxy):
People no longer remember Vidalia, the front end for Tor! (They dropped support for it about a decade ago.) It STILL WORKS!
(I think they dropped it because it too easily allows users to make anything that has a proxy setting work with Tor, such as Bittorrent clients, and they're trying to ease the bandwidth from shit like that on the Tor network. A torrent download via Tor is going to be extremely slow, you should use a VPN for that.)
So, download this:
https://mega.nz/file/Xwo3yTrT#Yk9nEl6HdJp3Dn_WXOQaqnw-xEy64aewcl2BG2NSMaA
Unzip it, there is a folder "
Tor." That can be placed anywhere you like, such as
C:\Tor. I did mine in
C:\Program Files (x86)\Tor.
Run
Tor 0.4.7.10 - Vidalia 0.2.21.exe. (You can run the executables in the
Tor folder through
Virus Total if you're not comfortable... you really should actually, it's best practice, as I could be a mole trying to hit you with malware. I send pretty much all .exe's I get online through there before running them.)
Let it go through the progress bar and fully connect.
That's it. Tor is now running, and you now have a configurable front end for Tor!
Because it's so old, Vidalia is not going to have some of Tor's newer features incorporated directly into its front end, but all the base stuff is there. If you go to Settings -> Advanced, it will show the "ControlPort" as 9051, but you actually need to
point any application you want to use with Tor to port 9050, as a SOCKS5 proxy. (Tor uses SOCKS5 on port 9050/9051 locally.) If you know what you are doing, you can edit
Data\torrc in a text editor to put in advanced configurations. You need to exit Vidalia before you do this. (Don't use the "Settings" -> "Advanced" -> "Edit current torrc" button in Vidalia... that can be used to
view torrc, but if you try to edit and click "OK", you will get an error and it won't save; this is a bug in Vidalia that was never fixed.)
You can right click the Vidalia system tray icon and select "New Identity" to change your current Tor IP.
Try right clicking the Vidalia system tray icon and selecting "Network Map". You can view all the Tor nodes on the Network. You can't really
do anything in here, it's just interesting.
I advise right clicking the
Tor 0.4.7.10 - Vidalia 0.2.21.exe file in the
Tor folder and doing "Create shortcut", then moving the shortcut to the Desktop, the start bar, or wherever you place your Windows shortcuts.
Instead of using your browser's default proxy settings, I recommend browser add-ons for proxy configuration. This will make it so you can use your normal clearnet connection for all sites except for .onion sites, which will route through Tor. This is especially useful if you're browsing an .onion site and there are for example YouTube videos that play from YouTube. The YouTube videos will play from your normal clearnet connection, which will greatly speed things up. (In Tor Browser, everything goes through Tor. That's what you should really use if privacy and anonymity are your top concern.)
For Firefox, use
FoxyProxy.
Click "Add," then configure it like this:
Save it, then click "Patterns" next to the "Onion" entry you saved, then configure it like this:
Save it.
So now, in normal Firefox, you just need to run Vidalia (
Tor 0.4.7.10 - Vidalia 0.2.21.exe), wait for it to connect, then any .onion address in Firefox will load through Tor, as long as you have the FoxyProxy icon's menu set to "Use Enabled Proxies By Patterns and Order." If you want, you can click the FoxyProxy icon and select "Onion" (or whatever you named the connection), then,
everything will go through Tor.
For Chrome/Chromium, use
SwitchyOmega. (Just a note here and it doesn't apply to this, Chrome/Chromium doesn't support SOCKS proxies that require a login. I've no idea why Chrome devs never got around to adding this, as it's been requested for years.)
Click "New Profile" then type a name such as "Tor", then configure it like this (here I got wordy and called it "Onion / Tor (port 9050)":
Click "Apply Changes," then click on "Auto Switch", click "Add Condition," then configure it like this (down on the bottom... yours will be on top if you've just installed this):
Click "Apply Changes."
You now have the same thing for Chrome... run Vidalia, make sure SwitchyOmega's icon is set to "auto switch", then your main Chrome browser will go through Tor for any .onion address. If you want
everything to go through Tor, click the SwitchyOmega icon and select "Onion / Tor (port 9050)" (or whatever you named the connection).
If Tor is updated, download
TorBrowser, run the .exe installer and point it to any folder you want (it's portable so all files go into this one folder). So if you installed (extracted) it to
C:\Tor Browser, go to
C:\Tor Browser\Browser\TorBrowser\Tor. Copy the contents of that folder, and paste them into the folder where you have Vidalia. I usually back up my folder with Vidalia before pasting a new version of Tor. So far, they've always worked with Vidalia.
By the way... if a browser or application does not have a SOCKS5 (or any) proxy setting, you can use a program called
Proxifier to get around that.
