My tor wont connect to a specific website!

[hexicles]

Well i just recently got back into using tor and it had been working fairly well for me (with the usual bothersome slowness). Now whenever i try to connect to a specific website (apparently not down) and login it tells me that it timed out, howevver this seems to be the only webiste that it does it for. Any suggestions or ideas would be muchly appreciated! Or if anyone has had a similar experience! (yes I've done all the usual crud to try and fix it including reinstalling, restarting my computer, restarting the router, using a different wifi etc.)

[JayBlack]

What's happening is many large websites and countries see the ip addresses of the "exit nodes" for the Tor network and they've blocked these addresses. Google will stop you after a couple of searches stating "your ip seems to be a bot sending multiple searches." Or something similar to that. Also Hulu blocks it. Also the website you're trying to access may be region specific. As in they expect you to be in the US only and you may be coming out of a Germany exit node.

There is a very rare chance you may connect through a small time unlisted exit node and then you will find that works, but it's not likely. For these sites I recommend a VPN. Otherwise you're going to have to dig deep into configuring your exit node to be a small traffic exit node, and a fairly new one at that. And that's hit or miss.

Now if you were having trouble connecting to the Tor network itself, that's a whole other ball game. There is an alternate way to connect to the Tor network. Because countires and business have learned how to single out the specific secure connection to Tor you need to fake it. TorProject has a browser setup to connect to alternative bridges that are not publically listed. They list about 1 or 2 every 30minutes or hour or so. The browser is "Obfsproxy", and it's available on torproject.org for download.

My setup involves 3 parts. I use the Tor network through a VPN and in firefox I blacklist websites I don't want using the Tor network. So any website that uses large videos/transfers/downloads I list under "don't use proxy for these sites" in Firefox. So Firefox connects through my localhost Tor proxy for every site except what I've listed in the do not proxy list. Everything else just flows straight through the VPN. I also have a command line tool called ProxyChains I use before any command line app that I want to tunnel through Tor.

One odd thing that doesn't work through Tor is github's http git clone download. You can still git clone projects, but you actually have to use the ssh download for git if you're going to do it over Tor.

For the record the; most affordable VPN I've found is http://www.privateinternetaccess.com who are also recommended by PC Magazine.

Edited April 22, 2013 by JayBlack

[hexicles]

Thanks a bunch!, it seems to have at least improved the problem (browser now at least recognizes that it is an existing site)! There are still a few problems (captcha wont recognize that I've put the correct one in), but I'm sure they will resolve with a little more research on my part, again, thanks SO much! :)