Thanks very much for the explanation. This means when I uncheck the Enable option of Privoxy, I turn off filtering, but the proxy stays. And my current Firefox 3.5.2 + Tor + Privoxy with no filter configuration its not less safe than the polipo configuration in the Tor browser bundle.
I hope I understood right. --- On Tue, 25/8/09, Andrew Lewman <and...@torproject.org> wrote: From: Andrew Lewman <and...@torproject.org> Subject: Re: Something that I don't understand about privoxy To: or-talk@freehaven.net Date: Tuesday, 25 August, 2009, 2:38 PM On 08/25/2009 09:37 AM, Sadece Gercekler wrote: > So here are my questions: First of all, if privoxy is needed for > security, why wasn't it there with the former package? Did I > compromise security when I used without the blue Privoxy icon? Do I > compromise security when I use with the Enable option unchecked? The Tor Browser Bundle, aka the portable bundle, doesn't include Privoxy. It includes Polipo instead. Polipo and Privoxy serve different purposes. Privoxy and Polipo can both filter content at the proxy, before it reaches your web browser. In the Tor Browser Bundle, Polipo is configured without filtering and without disk cache. Polipo caches objects in ram, and generally is used to speed up browsing the Internet via Tor. We use Polipo as a way to get around the Firefox bugs with SOCKS proxies. Using Firefox 3.0 and earlier with Tor directly can be a very slow experience, due to hard-coded timeouts in Firefox. Firefox 3.5.x may or may not fix the SOCKS issues enough to let us remove the http proxy. People install the Vidalia bundle so they can use their favorite web browser (for good or for bad) with Tor and Privoxy. At the time the Vidalia bundle was created, Opera, IE, Safari, and other browsers lacked the ability to filter content via plugins. Privoxy fulfills this role. This situation isn't so much the case today, but we continue to ship Privoxy because no one has come up with a better browser or configuration. And Firefox still has bugs with SOCKS proxies. Torora and TorFox may be the future, where Torbutton's anonymity and privacy protections are built into the browser; and they are faster at interfacing with Tor directly. This removes the need for a http proxy between the browser and Tor. However, research and development continues on both browsers. -- Andrew Lewman The Tor Project pgp 0x31B0974B Website: https://torproject.org/ Blog: https://blog.torproject.org/ Identi.ca: torproject
