- Tor Browser aims to make all users look the same, making it difficult for you to be fingerprinted based on your browser and device information. MULTI-LAYERED ENCRYPTION Your traffic is relayed and encrypted three times as it passes over the Tor network.
- Tor and Tails still do precisely that. — Edward Snowden, NSA whistleblower Tails expands Tor's protections to an entire operating system, and they do so with an unwavering commitment to their Social Contract. Tails is a favorite companion tool of Tor. — Roger Dingledine, co-founder of the Tor Project.
- Download for OS X Signature. If you are in a country where Tor is blocked, you can configure Tor to connect to a bridge during the setup process.
Running Tor Browser as a Proxy on OSX WARNING: This is not a recommended configuration for using Chrome and Tor, but is a convenient way to get your Chrome browser talking to Tor hidden services. A much more secure method is to use the instructions for setting up virtual machines which can be found here.
Tor Bundle for Mac OS X
Tor Osmundsen Aiken Sc
© May 2019 Anthony Lawrence
I'm sure some people have reasons to want to hide their true identity when browsing the internet. Some of the reasons that immediately come to mind involve illegal or immoral activity, but really there are legitimate reasons also. Tor users aren't necessarily shady characters or people prone to wearing tin-foil hats.
I downloaded the Vidalia Bundle for OS X. This includes Tor, Vidalia (a Tor GUI ), Torbutton (a Firefox tool to control your use of Tor), and Privoxy (a filtering web proxy) into one package, with everything ready to work together. You'll find full instructions for that bundle at https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc-osx.html.en.
You need to have Firefox shutdown while doing the install because it starts up another copy to add Torbutton. You are also asked to reboot. That always raises my eyebrows: just WHAT did you do to my system that requires a restart? A proxy server shouldn't have to hook very deeply into the OS - it just needs to sit on a port. Why the restart? I don't like that..
![Tor Tor](/uploads/1/1/9/7/119754482/775433207.png)
I could not get Torbutton to work. I couldn't even get it to show its buttons and while I did have it installed it prevented Firefox from closing down. This may be because I use NoScript; Torbutton flat out states that they don't like Noscript:
Torbutton currently mitigates all known anonymity issues with Javascript. While it may be tempting to get better security by disabling Javascript for certain sites, you are far better off with an all-or-nothing approach. NoScript is exceedingly complicated, and has many subtleties that can surprise even advanced users. For example, addons.mozilla.org verifies extension integrity via Javascript over https, but downloads them in the clear. Not adding it to your whitelist effectively means you are pulling down unverified extensions. Worse still, using NoScript can actually disable protections that Torbutton itself provides via Javascript, yet still allow malicious exit nodes to compromise your anonymity via the default whitelist (which they can spoof to inject any script they want).
I really can't agree that I'm better off with all or nothing, but there it is. As Torbutton is largely convenience anyway, and as I really have no plans to use Tor extensively anyway, I decided not to pursue the reasons for this failure and just configured Firefox preferences to use localhost:8118 as its proxy. That was simple for Firefox and Opera, but Safari doesn't specify proxies directly. It calls up the OS X network preference pane instead. I could not make that work except for Safari. That is, if I configured my Ethernet connection to use the proxy, Safari would use it but Opera and Firefox would not. That seems wrong.. I would have expected the Ethernet configuration to affect everything, but it didn't.
I think I'd rather have per-browser configuration anyway. If I did have reason to use Tor, I'd probably use it with one specific browser rather than wanting to use it for everything.
But as I said, I have no pressing reason to use Tor anyway. It might be handy now and then if I were testing web scripts that key on IP, but that doesn't come up very often. I just can't think of any other reason I need this.
How about the rest of you? Do you use Tor for anything specific? Or is this conspiracy theorist realm for you?
Be sure to read Why you need balls of steel to operate a Tor exit node if you are thinking about Tor.
There are real risks involved. Your risks from NOT using this would have to be very high before you should consider this. This isn't for some paranoid tin foil hat type who thinks the government cares about their private browsing.
This post describes Tor Hidden Web Service. Comments, Tips for Linux.
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Inexpensive and informative Apple related e-books:
Take Control of Numbers
Take Control of High Sierra
Digital Sharing Crash Course
Photos: A Take Control Crash Course
Are Your Bits Flipped?
These are advanced installation instructions for running Tor in a command line. The recommended way to use Tor is to simply download the Tor Browser and you are done.
Even though Tor Browser comes with a regular Tor, it will only run as long as you keep Tor Browser open. The following instructions will set up Tor without graphical interface or a browser. Many people prefer this over TBB when they host onion services or relay traffic for other Tor users.
Step One: Install a package manager
There are two package manager on OS X: Homebrew and Macports. You can use the package manager of your choice.
To install Homebrew follow the instructions on brew.sh.
To install Macports follow the instructions on macports.org/install.php.
Step Two: Install Tor
If you are using Homebrew in a Terminal window, run:
You will find a sample Tor configuration file at /usr/local/etc/tor/torrc.sample. Remove the .sample extension to make it effective.
If you are using Macports in a Terminal window, run:
You will find a sample Tor configuration file at /opt/local/etc/tor/torrc.sample. Remove the .sample extension to make it effective.
Step Three: Configure your application to use Tor
To use SOCKS directly (for instant messaging, Jabber, IRC, etc), you can point your application directly at Tor (localhost port 9050), but see this FAQ entry for why this may be dangerous. For applications that support neither SOCKS nor HTTP, take a look at socat.
For information on how to Torify other applications, check out the Torify HOWTO.
If you have a personal firewall that limits your computer's ability to connect to itself, be sure to allow connections from your local applications to local port 9050. If your firewall blocks outgoing connections, punch a hole so it can connect to at least TCP ports 80 and 443, and then see this FAQ entry.
If it's still not working, look at this FAQ entry for hints.
Once it's working, learn more about what Tor does and does not offer.
Configure Tor as a relay
The Tor network relies on volunteers to donate bandwidth. If you want to help make the Tor network faster, please consider running a relay.
How to uninstall Tor
Tor Browser For Mac Os X
Change your application proxy settings back to their original values. If you just want to stop using Tor, you can end at this point.
If you want to completely remove Tor, type into a Terminal window:
Osx Tor Start
Tor Tip
Tor For Os X
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