Updating from an onion

Last night I managed to install Tor and get it running, although I didn't manage to route the connection through a proxy. Why? Because I was stupid enough to not run the proxy. (DUHH!!!!) Right now, as I type, the next tab says I'm in Sweden. The fascinating thing about this is that I am absolutely certain that I am NOT in Sweden.

So, how did I manage to do this? Very easily. In fact, a lot more easily than I had expected.

Steps to installing and using Tor with GNU/Linux.

1) Download Tor from http://tor.eff.org . Config, make, make install. If you are using Debian, apt-get install tor. You will need libevent to configure and install and make it work.
2) Donwload and install privoxy. (Same procedure)
3) Run privoxy by positioning yourself in the /etc/privoxy folder at the command line and type privoxy (easy, hehe.) Some distros make it run by default. You can find information on how to tweak settings at privoxy's home page: http://www.privoxy.org .
4) Add the following line to /etc/privoxy/config
forward-socks4a / localhost:9050 .
Don't forget the dot at the end. You can add it at the very beginning of the file (I did that).
5) Open Firefox, go to Edit > Preferences > General > Connection Settings and redirect your http traffic and ssl traffic to 127.0.0.1 port 8118
5.a) You can use the "switchproxy" extension for firefox if you wish, it works too.
6) OK everything. Empty your cache, close firefox and re-open it. Point it to http://config.privoxy.org It should tell you whether you're using the proxy correctly.
So far so good.
7) Go to the command line as REGULAR USER. DO NOT DO THE FOLLOWING AS ROOT. type tor
Tor will start and if it's correctly installed, it'll say so.
8) Open a new tab in Firefox, and go to http://www.whatsmyip.com/ Supposedly, you know what your ip is, and if everything is working fine, the site will show you a different ip which can be in any country.
9) That's it. Have fun. ^_^