Polipo web proxy (was Re: Tor and Google Image search)

[Mike Perry]

Thus spake Roger Dingledine (arma at mit.edu):

> What I'd like to do actually is move to some other http proxy one day.
>
> 1) In the config.sample, it suggests
> socksParentProxy = "localhost:9050"
> You should either change this to 127.0.0.1:9050, or enable the
> dnsUseGethostbyname config option -- otherwise polipo asks your name
> servers where "localhost" is, with possibly disastrous implications.
> 
> 2) Polipo doesn't do as much application-level scrubbing as Privoxy tries
> to do. But Privoxy isn't very good at it anymore anyway, and Firefox
> is getting better. See previous threads about all the Firefox plugins
> you need so you can discard Privoxy -- I recommend Noscript, Adblock,
> and Adblock Filterset.G.
> 
> 3) I've seen some funny behavior from its caching. But Privoxy also
> gives funny behavior. And Polipo breaks fewer sites than Privoxy does. :)
> 
> 4) It crashes (albeit rarely). The developer knows and is looking for
> more clues.
> 
> 5) I've never tried it on Windows. I don't think its developer has either.
> 
> 6) Polipo writes your hostname in every request. Either define proxyName
> to something else, or set DisableVia = true in your config file.
> 
> See also http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.polipo.user/1016
> 

7) The definition of parent proxy is different between Polipo and
Privoxy. It turns out Privoxy has teh awesoma poweru of being able to
have an HTTP proxy after Tor. This is useful for sites that block Tor,
such as slashdot & wikipedia (for posting), craigslist, IRC, etc etc
etc. I was unable to find a way for Polipo to do this. It made me
sad. Course it aint exactly convenient for Privoxy, but at least it's
there when you absolutely need to start some flame wars on /. ;)

-- 
Mike Perry
Mad Computer Scientist
fscked.org evil labs