[tor-talk] Tor and Google error / CAPTCHAs.

[blobby at openmailbox.org]

On 2016-09-27 15:50, Alec Muffett wrote:
> 
> Is it possible to use a different proxy way to access Gmail, FB, etc
>> without being seen as suspicious? For example, one could use 
>> proxychains
>> with Tor followed by a SOCKS proxy to login.
>> 
> 
> If I understand you right (?) I think that was exactly the reason
> we/Facebook set up the Onion site.  A Tor-sympathetic access mechanism,
> more likely to be selected by human beings than folk pursuing the
> scraperfriendly adequate location-anonymity which exit nodes provide.
> 

I didn't explain myself very well. With the proxychains tool 
(http://proxychains.sourceforge.net/) you can write something like:

proxychains firefox www.example.com

And then in /etc/proxychains.conf:

socks5 127.0.0.1 9050
socks5 100.101.102.103 33333

Proxychains runs Tor then the SOCKS proxy so the destination website 
sees a SOCKS IP not a Tor exit node IP. Yet the user is still using Tor 
to access the SOCKS proxy.

The problem is that the SOCKS IP itself may be "bad" (perhaps even as 
"bad" as an exit node IP) and hence Gmail, FB, etc, still discriminate 
(and hence demand additional proof).

Since SOCKS IPs, like exit node IPs, can be selected by country and 
(sometimes) via city, it's possible to have an IP which is in the city 
in which the webmail or social network person resides.

IOW: a London-based FB user can have his FB account accessed by a 
London-based SOCKS IP (accessed over Tor). Whether or not the FB login 
algorithm would regard this geographically correct but nonetheless 
SOCKS-based IP as authentic is not something I would know. You mentioned 
in the video that the "problem" with Tor is that the user's IP changes 
and the IP that attempts to login might be in a different continent from 
that which is usual. In this situation, you have a non-Tor IP which is 
geographically correct attempt to login. Yet it is still a proxy IP not 
a home user or business IP. Is that an issue for Gmail, Yahoo!, FB, etc? 
I don't know.