Tor is a command line tool to use its proxy service.

To install tor on OSX:

brew install tor

Then just type ‘tor’ to start the proxy service:

➜  data-collector git:(master) ✗ tor
May 26 14:12:25.869 [notice] Tor v0.2.7.6 running on Darwin with Libevent 2.0.22-stable, OpenSSL 1.0.2g and Zlib 1.2.5.
May 26 14:12:25.869 [notice] Tor can't help you if you use it wrong! Learn how to be safe at https://www.torproject.org/download/download#warning
May 26 14:12:25.869 [notice] Configuration file "/usr/local/etc/tor/torrc" not present, using reasonable defaults.
May 26 14:12:25.871 [notice] Opening Socks listener on 127.0.0.1:9050
May 26 14:12:25.000 [notice] Parsing GEOIP IPv4 file /usr/local/Cellar/tor/0.2.7.6/share/tor/geoip.
May 26 14:12:25.000 [notice] Parsing GEOIP IPv6 file /usr/local/Cellar/tor/0.2.7.6/share/tor/geoip6.
May 26 14:12:26.000 [notice] Bootstrapped 0%: Starting
May 26 14:12:26.000 [notice] Bootstrapped 5%: Connecting to directory server
May 26 14:12:26.000 [notice] Bootstrapped 80%: Connecting to the Tor network
May 26 14:12:26.000 [notice] Bootstrapped 85%: Finishing handshake with first hop
May 26 14:12:29.000 [notice] Bootstrapped 90%: Establishing a Tor circuit
May 26 14:12:30.000 [notice] Tor has successfully opened a circuit. Looks like client functionality is working.
May 26 14:12:30.000 [notice] Bootstrapped 100%: Done

The default socks proxy address is 127.0.0.1:9050

So you can use the proxy sock now. To stop the server, just press control-c.

Sometimes you may want to change the proxy ip address without restart tor.

  1. Generate a hashed password (assume we may want to set the password to ‘changed’):

    ➜  data-collector git:(master) ✗ tor --hash-password changed
16:746D3691E5FC38D860917F1718B60F80EB529B8B9D404550660697EF2D

  2. Configure the tor by editing /usr/local/etc/tor/torrc (you should find a file named ‘torrc.sample’ under that folder). The content of torrc should be like:

    ControlPort 9051
HashedControlPassword 16:746D3691E5FC38D860917F1718B60F80EB529B8B9D404550660697EF2D

  3. Then in terminal, type the following command, then tor will use a new network route.

    (echo authenticate '"changed"'; echo signal newnym; echo quit) | nc localhost 9051

Sometimes you may want to use several different socks proxies at the same time. There’s no need to run several Tor processes separately. (refer: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14321214/how-to-run-multiple-tor-processes-at-once-with-different-exit-ips)

  1. Edit the  /usr/local/etc/tor/torrc to add more SocksPort like below:

    SocksPort 9050
SocksPort 9052
SocksPort 9053
SocksPort 9054

  2. Start Tor process.