Connect Chrome to TOR
- by Jack M
I'm having difficulty connecting Chrome to TOR. I started trying yesterday. I started Vidalia and the TOR Browser and then followed the advice at http://lifehacker.com/5614732/create-a-tor-button-in-chrome-for-on+demand-anonymous-browsing - downloading Proxy Switchy and setting it up as stated.
This resulted in Error 130 (net::ERR_PROXY_CONNECTION_FAILED) (in Chrome, when I tried to load a webpage). So I looked into Vidalia's settings and noticed that it appeared to be using port 9051, so I set that instead of 8118 as everyone on the internet seems to be suggesting.
Then I got a new error: Error 111 (net::ERR_TUNNEL_CONNECTION_FAILED). Digging a bit, I found that Tor should be set as a SOCKS proxy, not an HTTP proxy, so I unticked "use same settings for all protocols" in Proxy Switchy and just set localhost:9051 for SOCKS. That got me Error 7 (net::ERR_TIMED_OUT).
And that's when I came here for help. I typed up the above question, but then at the last minute decided to do a bit more reading and found someone here suggested using some command line arguments via a Windows shortcut:
"C:\snip\chrome.exe" --proxy-server=";socks=127.0.0.1:9051;sock4=127.0.0.1:9051;sock5=127.0.0.1:9051" --incognito check.torproject.org
And that worked perfectly. Yesterday. Today it doesn't, so I'm having to post this question after all. check.torproject.org gives me a "no" with Chrome, but a "yes" with the default Tor Browser. I tried closing Chrome and restarting it (yes, with the correct shortcut) after Vidalia started, but still nothing. The port number hasn't changed or anything. What gives?
EDIT: I realized I had a "non tor" instance of Chrome running and that possibly the was causing the command line args t be ignored when I started the new instance. Closed all instances of chrome and ran my Chrome Tor shortcut, and it did get rid of the "not using Tor" message -- because I got another Time Out error instead. Vidalia's bandwidth graph didn't even blink.
