Configuring Tor to Work in Other Web Browsers

Question

I am trying to configure my internet options so I can use the Tor servers in another browser, specifically Internet Explorer. Yes, I know this is not recommended and it's an old browser, but I need to do this because my web scraping software only allows for this. Having said that, changing the internet options in Internet Explorer does impact other browsers, too.

So, the steps I've taken thus far are as follows:

1. Downloaded Tor and the Windows Expert Bundle from the official website and installed both.
2. In Command Prompt I ran tor.exe --HTTPTunnelPort 8118 (following the advice I found at "This is a SOCKS Proxy, Not An HTTP Proxy").
3. I went into Internet Explorer >>> Internet options >>> Connections and set the proxy ports. See the image below for my setup.

What I found was that HTTPS sites work but HTTP ones don't. I get the following error message when I navigate to a HTTP website: “This is an HTTP CONNECT tunnel, not an HTTP proxy.”

When I go to https://check.torproject.org/, it says: “Congratulations. This browser is configured to use Tor.”

So it looks like it's working up to a certain point, but I don't know why HTTP sites do not work.

Answer 1

According to https://gitlab.torproject.org/legacy/trac/-/issues/27821 , Tor will only support CONNECT proxies, not regular HTTP proxies. Try to use a different client or try to change some setting in IE itself so it can use HTTP CONNECT proxies.

Answer 2

Tor has a built-in HTTPS proxy for a long time, in old times it was a package converting the requests to SOCKS named polipo. Actually - just for your case it's still actual, because it will give you a HTTP proxy you asking for. Don't be afraid that it's no longer maintained: it's finished, no bugs found and it's 100% done. Try it! And there's nothing bad at all to have a HTTP, not HTTPS proxy - it's fine!