Tutorial en Español: https://jarroba.com/scraping-anonimo-la-red-tor/

Tutorial in English: https://jarroba.com/anonymous-scraping-by-tor-network/

Python, Tor, Stem, Privoxy: with this tools, allow requests new connections via Tor for obtain new IP addresses.

The most common use-case when you are scraping a website is to be able to change your identity (IP) using TOR (or a proxy that rotate an IP) when you have been done multiple requests per unit time with the same IP in a website (like google) and don't block your connection and you can continue scraping this website.

For this program it's necessary install in a one Linux distribution (in this case the author has used Linux Mind) the next tools:

-Tor

-Stem: is a Python controller library for tor.

-Privoxy: is a non-caching web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for enhancing privacy, modifying web page data and HTTP headers, controlling access, and removing ads and other obnoxious Internet junk. Privoxy has a flexible configuration and can be customized to suit individual needs and tastes. It has application for both stand-alone systems and multi-user networks.

Install Tor.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install tor
sudo /etc/init.d/tor restart

the socks listener is on port 9050.

Next, do the following:

• Enable the ControlPort listener for Tor to listen on port 9051, as this is the port to which Tor will listen for any communication from applications talking to the Tor controller.
• Hash a new password that prevents random access to the port by outside agents.
• Implement cookie authentication as well.

You can create a hashed password out of your password using:

tor --hash-password my_password

In this case i put 1234 proof password. The hash password generated is:

´´´ 16:9529EB03A306DE6F60171DE514EA2FCD49235BAF1E1E55897209679683 ´´´

Then, update the /etc/tor/torrc with the port, hashed password, and cookie authentication.

sudo vim /etc/tor/torrc

ControlPort 9051
# hashed password below is obtained via `tor --hash-password my_password`
HashedControlPassword 16:9529EB03A306DE6F60171DE514EA2FCD49235BAF1E1E55897209679683
CookieAuthentication 1

Restart Tor again to the configuration changes are applied.

sudo /etc/init.d/tor restart

if you have any problems, you can enable control port using --controlport flag as follows:

tor --controlport 9051 &

Install python-stem which is a Python-based module used to interact with the Tor Controller, letting us send and receive commands to and from the Tor Control port programmatically.

sudo apt-get install python-stem

# for python3
sudo apt-get install python3-stem

Tor itself is not a http proxy. So in order to get access to the Tor Network, use privoxy as an http-proxy though socks5.

Install privoxy via the following command:

sudo apt-get install privoxy

Now, tell privoxy to use TOR by routing all traffic through the SOCKS servers at localhost port 9050.

sudo vim /etc/privoxy/config

and enable forward-socks5 as follows:

forward-socks5 / 127.0.0.1:9050 .

Restart privoxy after making the change to the configuration file.

sudo /etc/init.d/privoxy restart