☩ Walking in Light with Christ – Faith, Computing, Diary

If you want to imrpove your internet privacy through tor-rifing your network traffic of ICQ and MSN networks.
Do the following:

1. Install tor server

debian:~# apt-get install tor

2. Install the polipo caching proxy

debian:~# apt-get install polipo

3. Download and overwrite default polipo configuration with the one from torproject.org

This is necessary to configure in order to have polipo adapted to work with tor, so issue the following commands:

debian:~# cd /etc/polipo
debian:~# wget https://svn.torproject.org/svn/torbrowser/trunk/build-scripts/config/polipo.conf
debian:~# mv config config.bak
debian:~# mv polipo.conf config

4. Restart polipo for the new config settings to take affect

debian:~# /etc/init.d/polipo restart

Make sure in your /etc/tor/torrc you have existing the following two torrc directives:

debian:~# vim /etc/tor/torrc
SocksPort 9050 # what port to open for local application connections
SocksListenAddress 127.0.0.1 # accept connections only from localhost
5. Start up tor server if it’s not already started

debian:~# /etc/init.d/tor retart

6. Install pidgin if you haven’t got it installed already

debian:~# apt-get install pidgin

8. Start up the recent installed pidgin multi-protocol instant messanger

hipo@debian:~$ pidgin &

If you already previously properly installed and configured version of pidgin.

9. In pidgin messanger do the following changes to configure it to proxy traffic via tor

In your either your existing ICQ / MSN pidgin account navigate to:
 

• Accounts -> Manage Accounts
• Under Protocol ICQ

• click Modify..

• Now go to Proxy

The default Proxy setting in Debian Sid/Squeeze would Use GNOME Proxy Settings however in other Linux distributions or *BSD it could be either No Proxy or some other setting.
 

• Now substitute whatever options is choosen with SOCKS 5
• In the below data input field with a name Host: type 127.0.0.1
• For the Port: field box type the port 9050

You specify for a local proxy port 9050 because this is the default port where we have previosly configured polipo to proxify traffic to tor’s anonymity network

The settings tor tunneling of traffic for Protocol MSN are analogous like for the ICQ Protocol so I won’t repeat myself on that.

This described tor tunneling for ICQ and MSN traffic should be applicable to other IM protocols under the same logic.
Here is the time to nota that the above instructions should be also applicable for Gain with minor changes or even without any.

Of course because tunneling traffic via Poplipo and it’s handling over to a tor node which will pass traffic randomly through different geographical locations whether tor servers reside will be more time consuming, so login account login time to your Messanger protocol of choice will vary and would be a bit longer.

The use of tor for your MSN and ICQ traffic is twofold:

1. Using tor anonymizing traffic network will keep your anonymity on the net private

2. Using the tor anonimity online services will let you access IM servers despite firewall blocking applied by administrators on certain places for instance (in your School or Your work env) and will therefore let you still use your favourite IM in spite of the applied firewall restrictions.

Anyways as we all know life is not perfect 🙂
Despite the slower logins and the bit slower message transmission, at least you won’t be easily tracable by third party prying eyes,
administrators or any other messanger spying sniffer traffic logger installed somewhere in between yourself and the end side of an IM server.

Hope this article helps somebody out there and will be a step further in the battle for securying your privacy online.