How To Install Tor and Configure Firefox SOCKS Proxy in Ubuntu 14.04

Probably almost anyone knows about Tor Project, a free software and also a privacy solution for internet users. Using Tor network helps us to browse anonymously. Tor Project gives us al least two things, one is the Tor Networks itself and another one is the Tor program. We will show how to install Tor (not the Tor Browser) in Ubuntu 14.04 and configure Mozilla Firefox to connect through its networks.

Install Tor

Add “deb http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org trusty main” (without quotes) in /etc/apt/sources.list file.
Perform command gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv 886DDD89.
Perform command gpg --export A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89 | sudo apt-key add - .
Perform command sudo apt-get update.
Perform command sudo apt-get install tor deb.torproject.org-keyring .

1. Check for Installed Tor

Perform command

ps aux | grep /tor

And you should see similar result like this:

debian-+ 11126  0.1  0.8  21892 16540 ?        S    14:55   0:03 /usr/bin/tor --defaults-torrc /usr/share/tor/tor-service-defaults-torrc –hush

indicating Tor service is running as PID 11126 by user debian-+. This indicates that your Tor is installed successfully.

2. Configure SOCKS Proxy in Firefox

You need to point Firefox into Tor local proxy to enjoy Tor Networks for browsing. The local proxy simply will “forward” you to the anonymous networks.

Open menu Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Network > Settings.
Select Manual proxy configuration.
Enter SOCKS Host: 127.0.0.1 and Port: 9050 and select SOCKS v5 and clear all text in No proxy for: text box.
Press OK.

3. Configure Remote DNS SOCKS Proxy

This step is very important to ensure nobody hijack/listen/spy into every your DNS query.

Open Firefox.
Enter address about:config. Press Yes/OK instead.
You will see many Firefox “secret” entries. They are Firefox configuration keys.
Search for remote_dns entry.
Double click network.proxy.socks_remote_dns entry so its value be true.

Finally, Browse Anonymously

Now after doing 1, 2, and 3, you can get anonymous browsing in Firefox using Tor Networks. Note that this method (using Mozilla Firefox to connect to Tor Networks) is not officially recommended by Tor Project itself. To revert them back, just do 1, 2, and 3 reversely you will get your normal connection back.