pickaproxy.com blog

pickaproxy.com FAQ: can other programs like Skype use pickaproxy?

In general, yes. Most programs have some way of setting "proxy settings", usually under Advanced Connection settings or something similar.

Skype on Windows uses Internet Explorer proxy settings by default.  You can also go to Tools | Options | Advanced | Connection to change the proxy settings to anything else.

ICQ proxy settings are under Preferences | Connections | Firewall.

Trillian proxy settings are under Trillian Preferences | Advanced Preferences | Proxy Server.  Trillian can also be setup to use the same proxy settings as ICQ or AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) or MSN Messenger or Yahoo Messenger.

Windows Messenger proxy settings are under Tools | Options | Connection.

iTunes proxy settings are not available to configure individually.  iTunes on Windows uses the same proxy settings as Internet Explorer: Tools | Internet Options | Connections | LAN Settings.  iTunes on Mac OS/X uses the system proxy settings: Apple | System Preferences | Network | Proxies.

Tor now more Fast and Stable

Wow. Big jump in the number of "Fast" and "Stable" Tor nodes overnight.  Shows 368 Fast, Stable Exit nodes now vs. 174 yesterday, and just 146 when we first put up our pickaproxy.com snapshots on August 15.  Shows 489 Fast, Stable non-Exit nodes too vs. just 351 yesterday, and 341 back on August 15.

This is no doubt due to a change in the way Tor defines "Fast" and "Stable" in their latest software release that came out last night.  The release notes did say that three "load balancing" patches included in the new release "could raise effective network capacity by a factor of four", which is a big boost in horsepower. But I am very surprised it so quickly changes these snapshot numbers, which come directly from the Tor network itself, via a Tor "controller" connection we make into the network from our server. 

Tor exit nodes by Continent

We added a "Continent Snapshot" this evening of available Tor exit nodes.  This shows how many running exit nodes there are by Continent, which initially shows there are only 5 Fast, Stable Exit nodes in Asia, 79 in Europe, 2 in the Middle East, 2 in Europe and Asia (which I think means Russia), 53 in North America, and 4 in SouthEast Asia. 

This shows that there is not much significant use of Tor yet around the world, at least in terms of fast and stable exit node servers.  My guess is that it is still a lot of trouble - and potential trouble - in choosing to become an exit node.  I know we decided against it after getting an email from an irate web site owner who claimed that we had spammed his site, when in fact it was a Tor user who had used our exit node to do his unpleasant business.  This actually was the impetus for us creating our Real-Time Tor Detection service for web site owners, and which still runs as part of the data we provide to showmyip.com and ippages.com IP Address Lookup users.

More details as to which Countries are included in each "Continent" will follow sometime soon...

Great article mentioned by Roger Dingledine on or-talk last week. An analysis was done by Jeremy Clark (University of Ottawa), P.C. van Oorschot (Carleton University) and Carlisle Adams (University of Ottawa) and is available as a PDF entitled "Usability of Anonymous Web Browsing: An Examination of Tor Interfaces and Deployability". They do an excellent job of describing anonymity, in terms of what it is, what it does, and what it does not do for web users/browsers on the Internet. And they do a thorough analysis of the steps required by users to get, install, configure and use Tor from their desktop.

What their analysis does not touch on is how this compares to using Tor via a server-based proxy service like pickaproxy.com. It seems painfully clear to me while reading their analysis that for typical users trying to start out using Tor the road is bumpy. It seems equally clear that pickaproxy.com will be a great painkiller for this. Why and how?

The installation, configuration and regular monitoring of Tor as a workstation-installed bundle of software (Tor, Vidalia, Privoxy) is completely eliminated from the user's list of things to do.

The need to update this software bundle is completely eliminated.

The need to poke around with proxy settings in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, or Safari (or whatever browser you use) either manually, or with extensions such as IP Changer from iPrivacyTools.com or the Torbutton extension to Firefox, etc. is almost completely eliminated, since we will be enabling use of Proxy Auto-Configuration (proxy.pac) files hosted on our server, and dynamically generated from a web interface for each user. This means users will have to poke around just once and then forget about it. We will followup with more details on how this is done, and what it means with respect to privacy, sometime soon.

Tor snapshot update

As of this morning, I see there were 174 Fast, Stable Exit Nodes in the Tor network.  There were only 146 when we put up our first snapshot on August 15.

There were also 351 Fast, Stable non-Exit Nodes, versus 341 on August 15.

There were "only" 652 nodes now out-of-service, versus 733 on August 15.

I think we will have to automatically build up and display a graph of these numbers so we can all watch them change over time...

Tor network Middleman and Guard nodes

We have tweaked the Tor network snapshots we added to pickaproxy.com a couple days ago. We discovered that we could show a snapshot of "Guard" nodes, and so added this as a 5th snapshot.

However, we realized that we did not really understand the distinction between Guard nodes and "Middleman" nodes, so had to do some digging and found the Tor "Path Specification" dated July 28, 2007.  Reading through this we came to the conclusion that Guard nodes are a special type of Middleman node, neither of which are Exit nodes.  So an Exit node is neither a Guard node nor a Middleman node; a Middleman node can be a Guard node or not; and a Guard node is a Middleman node.

We decided the best way to make our snapshots understandable to the most number of people was to remove references to "Middleman", and refer to them as either Exit nodes, non-Exit nodes or Guard nodes.  If anyone begs to differ please let us know...

Tor network snapshots

We added 4 different snapshots of the Tor network yesterday to pickaproxy.com to give a quick idea of the number of Exit and Middleman servers available and out-of-service.  These snapshots are as follows:

"Country Snapshot", showing available (running) exit nodes by country code, and separated by whether or not they are classified as "fast" and "stable".  Fast and Stable are terms used by and defined by the Tor network itself.  I will have to track down exactly what the specifications are for these terms.

"Summary Snapshot", showing the same thing without the breakdown by country.  This is quite interesting, showing, among other things, how many Fast and Stable Exit nodes are currently available for the entire Tor network to use.  When I last checked this was 146.

"Summary Snapshot" of Middleman nodes, which indicates how many servers are part of the Tor network, but are not available as Exit nodes.  This is currently showing 341 as both Fast and Stable.

"Summary Snapshot" of Out-of-Services nodes, which indicates how many servers are not currently up and running - currently 733 in total!

One thing missing at this time is whether or not any of the servers are "hibernating".  We will add that information later, along with lots of other useful data.  A hibernating server is one that has reached it's maximum throughput, usually for a given day, as defined by the person running the server.  At the start of the next day (or whatever period) the server will automatically wake up and become available again.

These snapshots are currently updated every 15 minutes.