Get anonymous with Tor and Privoxy

Introduction

Sometimes you may need to surf anonymously, either afraid of showing your real IP address, of letting your administrator know about the sites you visit, to avoid intrusions to your online payment, etc.
Please check whether the law allows you to use such softwares. I am actually in Czech Republic where the use of those proxies is legal. Use it at your own risk.

Tor is a toolset for a wide range of organizations and people that want to improve their safety and security on the Internet. Using Tor can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and other applications that use the TCP protocol. Tor also provides a platform on which software developers can build new applications with built-in anonymity, safety, and privacy features.

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

Installation

To install the bundle, use first yum in order to download and install tor
yum install tor

Unfortunately, privoxy does not exist in the Fedora repository (yet), that's why you should download it from sourceforge
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118

Choose the RPM, download and install it
rpm -Uvh privoxy*rpm

Configuration
Start to edit /etc/privoxy/config

forward-socks4a /
127.0.0.1:9050 . # Do not forget the final dot!! It forwards socks4a to
tor
listen-address 127.0.0.1:8118 #Port
confdir
/etc/privoxy
logdir /var/log/privoxy
actionsfile
standard  # Internal purpose, recommended
actionsfile
default   # Main actions file
actionsfile
user      # User
customizations
filterfile default.filter
logfile
logfile
debug  
1    # show each GET/POST/CONNECT request
debug  
4096 # Startup banner and warnings
debug  
8192 # Errors - *we highly recommended enabling this*
toggle 
1
enable-remote-toggle  1
enable-remote-http-toggle 
1
enable-edit-actions 1
buffer-limit 4096
forwarded-connect-retries 
0

Start the services tor and privoxy
service tor start
service privoxy start

Now it should be operational
export proxy variables in the console to check if it works


http_proxy=http://127.0.0.1:8118/
HTTP_PROXY=http://127.0.0.1:8118/
export http_proxy HTTP_PROXY

Please note, the proxy does not support FTP protocol, which could be a security issue for your anonimity
Try to check if it works

whois $(curl whatismyip.org 2> /dev/null) | grep ^country
country:        AT

Sounds okay. Now, configure Firefox.
Edit, Preferences, Network, Settings.


Have a nice anonymous navigation!