[tor-talk] question about bridge relays

[Matthew Finkel]

On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 01:09:39AM -0500, Roger Dingledine wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 04:43:02PM -0600, Kevin Nestor wrote:
> > all of your posts and videos about setting up for to use a bridge rely
> >on an older version of bridge that uses vidalia separately.
> > 
> > Now that everyone can only download the Tor browser bundle that opens
> >as a single browser (mine being a mac), you can not get anything in the
> >settings menu that gives you the option to ?find bridges.?  What can
> >you do to find a local bridge?
> 
> The "find bridges" button was broken on Vidalia anyway, ever since
> https://bridges.torproject.org/ added a captcha to make it harder for
> bad guys to automate pretending to be lots of people and learn lots of
> bridges addresses.
> 
> Now the right answer is to go to https://bridges.torproject.org/ and
> learn some bridges. Then you can either choose 'configure' rather than
> 'connect' when you start TBB the first time, in which case it will walk
> you through adding the bridges you found, or if you've already started
> TBB, go to 'open network settings' in your Torbutton (the green onion near
> the URL bar) and select 'my ISP blocks connections to the Tor network'.
> 

To add to this, be aware that if you go to
https://bridges.torproject.org/ then you will likely receive two types
of bridges. There are "vanilla" bridges and there are bridges which that
Tor Project call Pluggable Transports. If you copy the bridges from the
website into the Tor Browser Bundle, as Roger described, you may only be
able to use some of them, which is fine, you only need one bridge to
work. If you would like all of the bridges on the website to work then
you will want to download the Pluggable Transport-capable Tor Browser
Bundle. It's a little larger in size but it provides additional
functionality that is important if you are somewhere that censors Tor
connections.

The pluggable transport bundle is available from [0]. If you are using a
Mac then you will want to choose one from the first 13 links, the links
that contain osx32 in the file name, and you'll want to choose the link
that provides your preferred language, if it's available (de = German,
en-US = US English, es-ES = Spanish (Spain), fa = Farsi, etc).

There is also a FAQ page which will hopefully answer some of your
questions. One of the sections[1], "How do I use pluggable transports?"
provides instructions and some bridges to help you get started. If
possible, follow Roger's instructions above to add the 'obfsproxy'
bridge lines in that section, if that doesn't work then try to follow
the instructions on that webpage.

The announcement that was made for this pluggable transport-capable TBB
can be found on [2]. It provides some more links and additional
information (including the two links I mentioned above).

Sorry if these instructions are difficult to follow or understand.
Whether or not you need to use the pluggable transport-capable bundle
really depends on where you are. If you don't know if you need to use
pluggable transports then try following Roger's directions first. If you
are still unable to connect to the Tor network then try to follow the
instruction for the pluggable transport-capable bundle.

[0] https://people.torproject.org/~dcf/pt-bundle/3.5-pt20131217/
[1] https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq#PluggableTransports
[2] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-browser-bundle-35-released

> If somebody reading this wants to make some updated screenshots for
> https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges#UsingBridges
> that would be swell.
> 

That really would be swell. The easier we can make this, with
step-by-step visual instructions, the bettwe.

I hope this helps,
- Matt