How can I tell if Tor is working, and that my connections really are anonymized? Are there external servers that will test my connection?
Once you’ve set up your browser to point to Polipo, and (if necessary) your Poliipo to point to Tor, there are sites you can visit that will tell you if you appear to be coming through the Tor network. Try the Tor Check site and see whether it thinks you are using Tor or not. If that site is down, you can still test, but it will involve more effort: http://ipid.shat.net and http://www.showmyip.com/ will tell you what your IP address appears to be, but you’ll need to know your current IP address so you can compare and decide whether you’re using Tor correctly. To learn your IP address on OS X, Linux, BSD, etc, run “ifconfig”. On Windows, go to the Start menu, click Run and enter “cmd”. At the command prompt, enter “ipconfig /a”. If you are behind a NAT or firewall, though, your IP address will show up as something like 192.168.1.1 or 10.10.10.10, and this isn’t your public IP address. In this case, you should 1) configure your browser to connect directly (that is, stop using Polipo), 2)
