Configure SOCKS proxy in FireFoxPrecautions when browsing anonymouslyFireFox supports 4 types of proxy servers:
We have already talked about what is a SOCKS proxy server in previous articles and now it is time to configure SOCKS proxy in FireFox . I have chosen FireFox because it is the browser that natively supports the use of SOCKS proxies and in which it is easier to configure the proxy for use.
FireFox supports 4 types of proxy servers:
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HTTP proxy: proxy that works only with the HTTP protocol.
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SSL proxy: proxy that supports HTTP and HTTPS. So when supporting SSL allows encrypting traffic between server and client.
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FTP proxy: proxy that supports the FTP protocol.
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SOCKS server : SOCKS proxy, has the advantage that it supports several HTTP, HTTPS, FTP protocols, etc ...
Configure SOCKS proxy in FireFox
The first step is to know the IP and port of our SOCKS proxy server, for this article and as an example I will use as IP 140.180.152.16 and as port 1080 .
First of all we go to the "Options" of FireFox , it can vary from one version to another of FireFox and it depends on how you have configured the menus, but in recent versions something similar to the following image will be displayed:
Once we access the Options we go to the " Advanced Options" section , then click on the "Network" tab and finally where it says "Connection" we click on the "Settings" button as shown in the following picture:
Now a new window appears on the screen in which we must select "Manual proxy configuration" and then put the data of our SOCKS proxy (IP and port) as it appears in the following image:
In this last step we can also add different domains, IPs, ranges of Ips, Hostnames or even TLDs to exclude them from the use of the proxy.
Finally I always recommend visiting a page of the type http://www.cualesmiip.com/ to verify that the IP shown to us is the IP of the SOCKS proxy server and not ours. This will indicate that the SOCKS server is working correctly and we navigate anonymously.
Precautions when browsing anonymously
I must warn you to be especially careful with some pages (for example PayPal) because if you enter through a proxy server, they usually block the account for security by detecting that you access an IP different from ours.