Got to test this.
Could you explain : 5. Create a separate line in each torrc file with a different set of exit nodes; ?
Tor is a wonderful technology for certain uses and utterly insecure for others. It's great for many seo tasks because we don't need ultra-high security against governments or death squads. All we need is a handy free proxy (or two or ten).
Briefly, when you run Tor the program tries to mash up your transmission through a number of Tor routers selected pretty much at random. The IP address your post will have will then come from the last Tor node that get's used, i.e. the "exit node."
The file "torrc" is one of the init files for Tor. It's found under your core directory where Portable Firefox is installed in /data/Tor/.
The manual for torrc is online at:
Code:
hxxps://www.torproject-dot-org/tor-manual.html.en
You want the lines that reads "
ExitNodes node,
node,
..." and "StrictExitNodes 0|
1".
The ExitNodes command lets you tell Tor to not randomize your exit nodes the way it usually does but to use only the nodes you specify. The "StrictExitNodes" tells Tor that it has to do this. If the exit nodes you want are unavailable then Tor won't run (and we use another installation with exit nodes that will).Of course you're probably wondering how you find the exit nodes and draw distinctions among them. You need to go to one of the sites that reports on the status of the Tor nodes. I like Germany's Blood Magic site at:
Code:
hxxp://torstatus.blutmagie dot de/
So let's imagine I want to go into cyberspace from home and come out in Germany. I'll go to
blutmagie and click in the arrow at the far far left to sort all the Tor nodes by country. I then click down to see all the active German nodes. When I do that (at this instant in time) I see that the Tor node called
alice has a bandwidth of 992 KB/s, node
anon1984n6 runs at 1071 KB/s, node
bach runs at 1767 KB/s, and node
blutmagie is supplying 8660 KB/s.So I'll load the existing torrc file into some text editor and add two lines:
StrictExitNodes 1
ExitNodes blutmagie,bach,anon1984n6,alice
So when I fire up my portable "German" Tor it zigs and zags among the first Tor node to use, then it zigs and zags some more for middle nodes. Finally it tries to use blutmagie to exit and send my message off to where I want it to go. If it can't use blutmagie it will try the bach node, then the anon1984ng node, and finally try the alice node.
Since strict exit nodes are set Tor will give up if it can't do this; otherwise it would generate another random exit node.
Now this isn't really the "German" Tor I mentioned. It's my "German #1" Tor. With portable Firefox you get to use lots of separate installs, so I have a "German #2" Tor with a different set of exit nodes, a "German #3" Tor, with a third set of exit nodes in the separate torrc file for my third installation, etc.
Once you've done it you'll spend more time reading this than setting up your exit nodes.