[tor-talk] Turning TOR on/off at will

[Feinberg Mark]

Dear friends,

When clicking on some links in news stories and elsewhere TOR often prevents me from visiting that site. Just now when clicking https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk  I got this message:The proxy server is refusing connections. 
  Firefox is configured to use a proxy server that is refusing connections.      
  Check the proxy settings to make sure that they are correct.
  Contact your network administrator to make sure the proxy server is
    working.

This occurs automatically as if TOR is my default search engine instead of Safari. 

How can I prevent this from happening?

I am Not a "sophisticated user", and hope your reply will be simple to act upon.





Thanks,

Mark