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

Julian Yon julian at yon.org.uk
Mon Oct 31 10:17:03 UTC 2011


On 31/10/11 00:06, Erinn Clark wrote:
> 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. 
> 
> So which apps are these? Anyone know?

As Jacob says, wget. Downloading from Youtube using youtube-dl seems to
require an HTTP proxy too (BICBW).

I point Dropbox at polipo because its SOCKS support appears to be leaky.
The purpose is to hinder correlation with other traffic. I don't trust
them enough to believe they won't hand over details of which user
connected from a particular IP at a given time.

I'm sure there are other apps but these are off the top of my head. The
question surely isn't whether a proxy is useful, but whether it needs to
be bundled? I would have thought that most users capable of deciding
that they need one would also be capable of setting one up. If not,
perhaps a non-caching HTTP proxy (optionally?) built into the Tor client
might be a more robust solution for less savvy users?


Julian

-- 
3072D/D2DE707D Julian Yon (2011 General Use) <pgp.2011 at jry.me>

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