Something that I don't understand about privoxy

[Andrew Lewman]

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