[tor-talk] Tor SOCKS?

[antispam06 at sent.at]

On Sat, Oct 6, 2012, at 08:06, Matthew Finkel wrote:
> Depending on the version of TBB you have, Tor will randomly select the
> SOCKS5 port it listens on. I don't know of official documentation off
> hand, but I know there are a couple ways to find it. It is specified in
> Data/Tor/port.conf within the extracted directory (on my computer it is
> tor-browser_en-US). Or you can also retrieve it within the Tor Browser
> by checking the proxy settings: Edit->Preferences, in the Advanced menu,
> select the Network tab, click Settings in the Connection section, and
> the port is stated for the SOCKS port.
> 
> I hope this helps.

Thank you Matthew. The answer was right there. And it connected without
problem.

Warning: that should go for XMPP aka Jabber aka Google Talk which does
use a secure connection up to the server. Yahoo is not only wide open,
it will also send the list of contacts in the open. Same might go for
the other popular IMs like MSN or ICQ.

> > Second question: why does Pidgin make a difference between Socks 5 and
> > Tor/Privacy? Socks 5 comes as an improvement over Socks 4 as it can
> > route DNS requests as well. So Socks 4 leaks DNS, Socks 5 shouldn't as
> > long as it is well configured. Than what's the difference?
> > 
> This looks like it should explain it:
> https://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/11110
> 
> tldr; There were still leaks for various reasons (some "unavoidable")
> but the Tor proxy option is a separate implementation.

So Pidgin did leak data even through the Socks 5 implementation. Good to
know.