Re: [privoxy-users] Reverse DNS Lookups?

[icmp30 <icmp30@xxxxxxxxx>]

TOR questions should be directed to the onion router mailing list - I've added
them to the cc: list

--- Jim Ford <jaford@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I've just installed Privoxy and am using the Tor plugin on Firefox on a
> Windows XP machine. I installed it after coming across a reference to
> it, and whilst I don't fully understand it, my gut feeling is that it is
>   a 'good thing'.
> 
> Having installed Privoxy and enabled Tor, I quite expected remote web
> sites to be unable to identify my machine with reverse DNS lookup - my
> real IP address being hidden by Privoxy, but I find this is not so. On
> visiting grc.com I find that my machine identification can still be
> recovered.

grc.com is good enough to tell if you've got things configured correctly, but
it isn't a very good test site.  I just tried it & they didn't display my real
IP adddress.  A better test site is
http://metasploit.com/research/misc/decloak/  that one can find my real IP
address if I leave enough plugins enabled.

> I thought that the whole point of Privoxy/Tor was to give the
> user anonymity, including their real IP address.

Are you sure that you've got Firefox configured correctly?  Click on
Tools/Options and then Advanced/Network/Settings.  Make sure "Manual Proxy
Configuration" is selected.  Enter 127.0.0.1 port 8118 for the http host & port
and make sure that "Use this proxy server for all protocols" is checked.

Are you sure that you've got Privoxy configured correctly?  Somewhere in the
main config file you need to have a line like this
  forward-socks4a  /  127.0.0.1:9050  .
to tell Privoxy to forward all traffic to TOR

> I obviously misunderstand Privoxy/Tor and would be grateful for an
> explanation!

I think your browser and/or privoxy is not configured correctly.  Once you
straighten out the configuration issues then you get to deal with the problem
of plug-ins leaking info.  I don't know where the Tor group is with that.. but
it seems like the only resolution is to disable all plugins.  I've been reading
things about running your browser session inside a virtual machine that sends
all of the network traffic through Tor but I don't if or how well that works.

Hope this helps..



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