Using a proxy (network)

I’d like to try out using a Proxy network (like TOR or something else) for all (or most) of my internet traffic. How can I do that and which tool/method would you suggest?

Should also be easy to disable/uninstall in case I do not want it around any longer.

if you want to use Tor as anonimizer, then you will first have to setup Privoxy. Tor itself cannot be used as a http proxy.

Here is some very good documentation on how to do it. Tor: Linux/BSD/Unix Install Instructions

Setting up privoxy & tor is actually very simple. If you follow these steps, you’ll be up and running in no time.

Note that the above link only talks about the firefox browser. If you also want your whole KDE to use Tor, then you will have to configure its proxy settings. In KDE3, this can be found in Personal Settings (kde’s control center) -> Internet & Network -> Proxy

Choose “Manual specify the proxy settings” and add for both http and https the below line

http://localhost port 8118

Also enable SOCKS support on the next tab. Note that some KDE applications do not support proxy’s. Konversation (irc chat client) is one of them.

Do not try to use Tor for bittorrent applications!!! This is not recommended and will considerably slow down your up/download.

When using a anonymizer like Tor, your internet traffic will be a lot slower than without it. This comes from the fact that Tor uses relay nodes which do a lot of rerouting and most of them are ran by normal users that support Tor by setting up a relay node.

To add privoxy and Tor to the boot service, as root on the console, type the following:
chkconfig -a privoxy
chkconfig -a tor

To remove it from the boot service, issue:
chkconfig -d privoxy
chkconfig -d tor

If you don’t want to use Tor anymore, then just stop it by issuing as root rctor stop and rcprivoxy stop