Re: Spoofing location - possible?

[Scott Bennett <bennett@xxxxxxxxxx>]

     On Tue, 06 May 2008 07:04:38 -0400 buralex@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
>  Jamie McCarthy <jamie@xxxxxxxxxxx> said on May 05, 2008 12:38 -0400 
>(in part):
>> Please forgive me for not doing more thorough research before
>> emailing. I'm not part of the Tor community and not really
>> interested in getting too into it. I'm just looking for some quick
>> advice.
>I've done even less research than Jamie had for his question and I think 
>have less technical background than he but ...
>
>I came to TOR looking not so much for the ability to surf anonymously 
>but to convince my end target that I'm from a particular country. 
>Primarily to allow use of streaming media (radio and video) from sites 
>that restrict access to those from the United States.
>
>I set up TOR and verified using http://torcheck.xenobite.eu/ that when 
>using TOR I was usually identified as coming from a different country 
>than my location (CANADA). From my limited understanding I would need a 
>means to request/require that my exit node be in a particular country 
>(ie. USA)
>
>In the TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ I found these links that seem somewhat on 
>point:
>https://wiki.torproject.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#ComparisonCommercialOneHop 
>and
>https://wiki.torproject.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#ComparisonProxyAggregators 
>
>
>so ... is what I'm looking for possible?
>and assuming it is ... is there any prospect that TOR would be able to 
>deliver enough throughput for effective streaming?

     This will be highly dependent upon a) the speed of each circuit you
get and b) how long the file being streamed is, relative to how long the
circuit remains operational.  If you're trying to get long files by HTTP
or HTTPS, it helps to add ports 80 and 443 to LongLivedPorts in torrc.
That reduces the (admittedly still huge) number of potential paths that
your client may choose from, but also reduces the likelihood that a router
along the path you're using will go down while you're using that path.
>
>ANSWER: YES!! (google video works) so  did http://www.pandora.com/ 
>(streaming radio - not available non-US locations) but only briefly. 
>Maybe I was temporarily using a US-exit node? Attempting to get 

     Apparently.

>streaming US television from big three www.cbs.com, www.abc.com and 
>www.nbc.com all failed with error messages about US-locations only. (I 
>was able to get one "deleted scene" from NBC but when I tried the next 
>one  got the "you can't watch this from where you are" message)
>
>Now that I've verified (I think) that speed is fine, is there any way to 
>request an exit point from a particular country?
>
>oops ... almost missed this down at the bottom -
>http://security.ngoinabox.org/Documentation/Misc/tor.eff.org/TorFAQ.html#Blossom 
>referred to near the top in
>http://security.ngoinabox.org/Documentation/Misc/tor.eff.org/TorFAQ.html#ChooseEntryExit 
>which says:
>> If you want to choose the exit node for a specific request, you can 
>> give the hostname as hostname.nickname.exit (eg.  
>> http://cnn.com.myfavoritetornode.exit). This will work fine if you're 
>> using Privoxy. You can also install
>> Blossom, which is a client-side Tor controller that lets you specify 
>> what country you want to exit from when accessing a given resource.
>but the link to Blossom: http://afs.eecs.harvard.edu/~goodell/blossom/ 
>gives a 404 and according to the internet archive 
>http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://afs.eecs.harvard.edu/~goodell/blossom/ 
>was last available "live" on Jun 01, 2007. Quick read there seems to say 

>> [Blossom info deleted  --SB]

>so .... is there any way for a non-technical Windows XP user to 
>accomplish my goal?
>
     Yes.  Pick some U.S.-based exit nodes, and use the .exit notation you
referred to above.  It means choosing your exits by hand, rather than
letting tor do that, but it will get you to the exit you want, provided
that exit is running and reachable from your location.  If you're only
doing that when you want to get streaming video or audio, but you let tor
choose the paths for everything else, it shouldn't be that much of a hassle.
The U.S. has a large number of exits running at any given time, so you may
want to choose only exits with at least some fairly good bandwidth, say,
300 KB/sec or so.  In my experience, though, if the file is available for
download, it is much better to do that and then play the file locally than
it is to try to play it in streaming mode via tor.


                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
**********************************************************************
* Internet:       bennett at cs.niu.edu                              *
*--------------------------------------------------------------------*
* "A well regulated and disciplined militia, is at all times a good  *
* objection to the introduction of that bane of all free governments *
* -- a standing army."                                               *
*    -- Gov. John Hancock, New York Journal, 28 January 1790         *
**********************************************************************