How to test from different countries with Tor Browser

Sometimes it happens that you have to test a site from a country other than the one you are in. There are many ways to do this, my favorite is Tor Browser.

What’s Tor Browser? It’s just a modified version of Mozilla Firefox that connects directly to the Tor network. It’s free and available for OS X, Windows, Linux and Android. It can be downloaded from the official website where you can also find more information about the project

To test from different countries with Tor Browser, go via terminal to

~/Library/Application\ Support/TorBrowser-Data/Tor

Then open with vim or nano the file torrc

Append to the bottom of this file the following:

ExitNodes {gb} StrictNodes 1

Between the curl braces goes the identification code of a country, for example use {it} for Italy and {be} for Belgium. The list of all country codes can be found here.

If StrictNodes is set to 1, Tor Browser will be forced to use only the node in the braces.

You can also set multiples countries:

ExitNodes {gb},{it},{be} StrictNodes 1

Or even exclude countries:

ExcludeExitNodes {gb}

Now save your torrc and launch Tor browser. To check if it’s working (and it should) go to www.whatismyip.com, you will see the IP of the chosen country.

This is the kind of post I’m writing to avoid future myself from googling, I hope it will be useful for you too.

Ah! I haven’t forgotten the movie. About things that can be looked at from different points of view, here is a really cool scene from “The Man who shot Liberty Valence” (pay attention it contains a BIG spoiler).

“The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” John Ford 1962