[tor-talk] which apps require an http proxy?

[Jacob Appelbaum]

On 10/30/2011 05:06 PM, Erinn Clark wrote:
> Hello tor-talk,
> 
> There are a lot of you with somewhat sophisticated Tor setups, so you'll know
> better than a lot of the developers about this topic.
> 

I regularly use the HTTP proxy of Privoxy with wget, Firefox, python
(ooni-probe, other code), and lots of various applications via the Gnome
Proxy settings on Gnome based systems - otherwise, I sometimes use a
HTTP proxy with proxychains to prevent DNS leaky applications that have
not and will never implement SOCKS.

> We want to drop polipo from all of the bundles. Currently it can only be found
> in the "vanilla" Vidalia bundles for OSX and Windows, but it's not in the
> relay/bridge/exit bundles for Windows or any of the TBBs. Users seem to think
> they need an http proxy at times when they do not, but I think there must be
> apps that can use an http proxy but not a socks proxy. 
> 

I don't use polipo anymore - I found that it had a lot of security and
reliability issues. I'm glad that we're dropping it. I use privoxy when
I need some kind of HTTP proxy.

I use SOCKS for IM and web browsing. I use TransPort for lots of other
things. For ssh I use the following in my .ssh/config with socat:
ProxyCommand socat STDIO SOCKS4A:localhost:%h:%p,socksport=9050

All the best,
Jake