Re: Proxies that work with FTP and Tor?

Jupiter wrote:

First, thanks for all your help.

I was under the impression that one needed Privoxy in order to ensure
remote DNS resolution. However, since I am using Firefox 2.0, that
appears not to be the case since this version of Firefox can do remote
DNS resolution without needing Privoxy, hence one only needs Privoxy for
the HTTP filtering.

Right. If your browser properly supports socks 4a/5 then DNS isn't an
issue. And the relevant filtering is better handled by native Firefox add
on software in my opinion, as long as you choose the right ones. Noscript
and Torbutton are the "must haves".

Don't get me wrong here, Privoxy is a great piece of software and you can
do a whole lot more with it than you can with Noscript or anything else
except maybe Squid and a full blown proxy/gateway setup. But for average
Joes it's a bit of overkill since the advent of things like Noscript and
Torbutton. OTOH, if you're using another browser, one that doesn't
support SOCKS like Opera even, then it or something like it is still
necessary.

Now, the problem:

As mentioned, if I try to connect to a ftp:// site (for example from the
list at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~joe/best-ftp-sites.html) it says
"Privoxy doesn't support FTP. Please fix your setup." That's fine,
since we know that Privoxy does not support FTP.

But then with FTP settings set to localhost 9050 I get: "It appears you
have configured your web browser to use Tor as an HTTP proxy. This is
not correct: Tor is a SOCKS proxy, not an HTTP proxy. Please configure
your client accordingly."

I just accessed several of the ftp sites on that page using Firefox
2.0.0.4 and Torbutton (a lot of them were down by the way), and had no
problem at all.

So how exactly do I get Firefox to use Tor as a SOCKS proxy, rather than
as a HTTP proxy?

Try removing every reference to an HTTP proxy from the Firefox network
proxy setup screen. Click on the "Manual Proxy Configuration. Blank the
settings for HTTP/HTTPS/Gopher, etc. The only proxy you should have
configured is SOCKS, set to use your copy of Tor, usually at
localhost:9050. Check the button for SOCKS v5, and make sure you have
"localhost, 127.0.0.1" in the "Don't use proxy for" section.

Try those FTP connections again. If you're worried about DNS, check Tor's
logs. You should see some "giving Tor an IP address" warnings if you're
accessing normal FTP sites by name and DNS is being done locally. Bump
the log level up and turn off "safe" logging if you're paranoid. ;)

.