[tor-dev] Tor Browser and Privoxy

[Arthur D. Edelstein]

Hi Paulo,

This sounds highly inadvisable to me. Interposing Privoxy between Tor
Browser and Tor will most likely drastically reduce the anonymity
provided by Tor Browser, for multiple reasons:

1. Privoxy filters and modifies the web page in ways that are likely
to be observable to both to visited websites and to third parties,
including exit nodes. These modifications will distinguish you from
most other Tor Browser users who are not using Privoxy. And if you use
any custom Privoxy settings, those settings may make you unique among
Tor users.

2. It will prevent Tor Browser's normal SOCKS5 connection to the Tor
process, which is what Tor Browser uses to ensure a separate Tor
circuit is used for the connection to each website. In other words,
all your website visits will pass through the same Tor circuit,
allowing them to be correlated.

3. From what I understand, Privoxy (at least by default) does a lot of
logging to the disk of your local computer, including the URLs you
visit. Not good for privacy.

I hope this helps!

Sincerely,
Arthur Edelstein

On Sat, Jun 4, 2016 at 1:34 PM, Paulo Roberto <betobrandao at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> By default the Tor Browser Bundle connects through SOCKS5 to the TOR daemon.
>
> Is there any advantage today to configure Privoxy to use TOR and configure
> the Tor Browser in the Tor Network Settings to use proxy access type
> HTTP/HTTPS pointing to Privoxy?
>
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Paulo Roberto.
>
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