Tips on Tor Browser

If you used Tor Browser (or any other browser with Tor as proxy) you probably found yourself having more difficulty to access websites that beforehand you could normally use, be it because of Google Recaptcha, Cloudfare, IP Blocks or any other security measure that hurt those who seek privacy and/or security online. I made this article to help people that use or want to use Tor in their everyday net-surfing, it’s supposed to be an eternal WIP since I new tools may surge, situations change and I can make mistakes. I'll also focus on alternatives that don't require JS. If something is wrong or you wish to suggest something, please enter in contact.

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Shortcut to quickly change circuits, very useful if you're trying to access a website that blocks Tor or just the country of your current node and is faster that clicking to refresh.

if you're trying to access a website that blocks your Tor IP refreshing circuits might be enough, but when it isn't you can search for snapshots on Archive.is, the reason for the onion link instead of normal one is that it doesn't ask a captcha to load neither to search. I have experienced when tried to save something that sometimes it will ask you to solve a Google Captcha and sometimes not, so i'is worth a try even if you have JS disabled, although it might not work. If you don't care about JS just use Archive.org (Onion).

It's a CLI software that can be used to download Youtube videos to your computer, while Youtube works fine with Tor, if you are using it with JS disabled the site will simple not load, by using Youtube-dl with --proxy socks5:127.0.0.1:9050 (or proxy socks5:127.0.0.1:9150) while Tor is open you will be able to download the video over Tor and watch it on your machine, it's really easy to use, here's an example:

--proxy socks5://127.0.0.1:9050 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

If there's an error due to too many requests, you can just restart Tor and the IP will change allowing you to download.

Alternative front-end for Twitter, allows you to read it's threads without JS enabled *

Bibliogram (Onion)

Similar to Nitter, but for Instagram. *

Search engine

If you're using TBB that's your default search engine, if you're not I suggest using that one because Google will not let you search anything. I also recommend you to use the onion version because sometimes the normal instance doesn't let you search due to too many requests (can be fixed by simply changing circuits, but if you're using the onion it just never happen).

Not the more private of alternatives buf if you're using Tor without JS you can't image search with DuckDuckgo, well, with Yahoo you can.

Not really a searcher but a meta-searcher, but hey, at least you'll be able to search for things without JS, due to it's decentralized nature how private each instance is will vary, here is a list of instances you could use with some comments about them.

File Uploading and Pastebin

A website to share images, one of the few out there that doesn't require JavaScript and don't block Tor, also allows you to put a time or view limit on your images.

Works for both file uploading and pastebin, best of all: Doesn't require JS.

Pastebin alternative but on Tor, works without JS and allow private sharing and self-destructive text

"Multi-host image/file uploader", allows you to upload indirectly files and images to a lot of sites that would otherwise require JS.

Email

Well, despite all the jokes it can be a solid address, firemail and airmail are the two professional looking domians they have, you do need to activate JS to use the webmail but you could instead just use it on an email client and configure it to connect via Tor as proxy. The only problem you'll be facing is that a lot of email providers and sites block them due to spam.

Probably preferable to cock.li if you don't care about your domain being clearly somebodies name, it doesn't even require JS to use their webmail (although I'd still suggest to use an email client) and as far as my test goes, it isn't marked as spam by default.

* Both made and hosted by Amolith, check out his website, lots of other useful things there: https://nixnet.services