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prism_breaker

Setup a anonymous residential proxy with tor browser

OPSEC Recommendations: Hardware : Personal Computer / Laptop
Host OS: Qubes (or Qubes OS like you mentionned)
Hypervisor: Xen
Virtual Machine: Whonix VM DEDICATED to the (you -> tor -> residential proxy -> website) setup

Tor is strong protection of user privacy, but some services are not possible to access because tor exits nodes are blocked. These services are usually very privacy unfriendly, because the web service is intentionally deanonymising its users.

A residential proxy will reroute your access through a low risk ip address, which makes your access looks like average Joe. Under this setup you can access those website that attempt to block anonymous users, while still under the protection of tor.

Warning: This setup is not officialy supported by tor project, it should be considered as experimental. It is still recommended to use the default setup of Whonix and Tor browser.

For further research you can refer to this tutorial https://blog.nowhere.moe/opsec/torthroughvpn/index.html

Readers are assumed to have a working Qubes-Whonix setup, and have already acquired monero anonymously. If not, read the below tutorials: to be done

Other useful reference: https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Tunnels/Connecting_to_Tor_before_a_proxy

Proxy Purchase

Warning: All opertions below should be done inside a dedicated new whonix workstation appvm qube!

smspool.net is chosen to be the proxy provider for this demo, the author is not affiliated with this service. It is used because it is monero friendly, other service providers should work similarly.

First you need to register

Choose "switch to hCaptcha" otherwise you might get stuck at the cloudflare verification.

The next step is to deposit monero into the website and purchase the proxy.

When your deposit get credited, purchase the proxy.

Now your proxy is ready, check for the details inside "My Proxy" section.

Copy your proxy ip, port, username, password. It will be used later.

Browser setup

Due to upstream change, the proxy setup method mentioned in whonix tutorial is not working https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Tunnels/Connecting_to_Tor_before_a_proxy/Proxy_Settings_Method

The only method I found that is working is to use the foxyproxy addon. Install an plugin will change tor browser fingerprint, so it is higely recommended you create a new appvm for this setup, and use this setup only when it is absolutely necessary.

Choose the "add-ons and themes" in the firefox menu and search for foxyproxy.

Install the plugin, pin the plugin and allow it to work in private windows.

Connect to Proxy

Finally, we will connect to the proxy we just purchased.

First find foxyproxy in the menu bar and choose "options".

Add the proxy information in the "proxy" tab.

In this demo, the proxy is HTTP, if you use a different provider and it doesn't work, try to check the protocol. Fill all the info and save it.

Now check the website you want to accessed, it is blocked because you are still using the tor exit node.

Choose the proxy you just added in FoxyProxy button, and reset your tor browser identity.

Now access https://check.torproject.org, and you should see a warning says you are not using tor.

Now try the website that blocks tor, it should work now if you did everything correctly!