Three Easy Steps to Set-up Anonymous Web Browsing on Linux

This is a pretty old "how-to" but I thought I should share this to some of our readers who are new-to-Linux. This simple guide will enable you to surf the web anonymously while using Firefox on Linux. But to do this, you will need to install these two important tools:

* Tor

"Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security known as traffic analysis."

* Privoxy

"Privoxy is a non-caching web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for enhancing privacy, modifying web page data, managing HTTP cookies, controlling access, and removing ads, banners, pop-ups and other obnoxious Internet junk. Privoxy has a flexible configuration and can be customized to suit individual needs and tastes. Privoxy has application for both stand-alone systems and multi-user networks."

Three Easy Steps to Set-up Anonymous Web Browsing on Linux:

Step-1. Set-up Tor and Privoxy:

You can quickly install Tor and Privoxy on Ubuntu with this command:

$ sudo apt-get install tor privoxy

Step-2. Configure Privoxy:

Edit /etc/privoxy/config file using your preferred text editor. For this example, we will use gedit:

$ sudo gedit /etc/privoxy/config

Then, overwrite the entire content of /etc/privoxy/config with this configuration file:

# Generally, this file goes in /etc/privoxy/config
forward-socks4a / 127.0.0.1:9050 .
confdir /etc/privoxy
logdir /var/log/privoxy
actionsfile standard
actionsfile default
actionsfile user
filterfile default.filter

debug 4096
debug 8192

user-manual /usr/share/doc/privoxy/user-manual
listen-address 127.0.0.1:8118
toggle 1
enable-remote-toggle 0
enable-edit-actions 0
enable-remote-http-toggle 0
buffer-limit 4096

Next, restart Privoxy with this command:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/privoxy restart

Step-3. Install Firefox Torbutton plugin

"Torbutton provides a button to securely and easily enable or disable the browser's use of Tor. It is currently the only addon that will safely manage your Tor browsing to prevent IP address leakage, cookie leakage, and general privacy attacks."

Fire up Firefox and install the Torbutton plugin. After installation, restart Firefox and you are ready to surf the web anonymously!