Google Chrome Socks Proxy Workaround

  By GeekLad | September 22, 2008 - 12:34 pm | Web Browsers

If you would like to use Google Chrome at work, but are unable because you have a SOCKS proxy, you’re not alone.  It is a known issue that Chrome does not work with socks.  Initially I couldn’t even install Chrome because of my firewall at work.  I did install it on my laptop when I got home the day it came out.  However, when I came back to work the next day I was disappointed to learn that it didn’t work behind a SOCKS proxy.

Yesterday it dawned on me that I could use Privoxy instead of SOCKS!  I already had a machine running Privoxy, so it was just a matter of configuring IE/Chrome to use it.  If don’t yet have Privoxy, here is the Google Chrome SOCKS proxy workaround you’ve been looking for:

  1. Download Privoxy
  2. Modify the configuration file to have Privoxy forward requests to the SOCKS proxy
  3. Configure Internet Explorer to use Privoxy (default would be localhost:8118 for http and secure)
  4. That’s it!  You should now be able to use Google Chrome through your socks proxy.


About GeekLad

Geeklad is a technology enthusiast and programming hobbyist. Occasionally he will put together useful little bits of code (be it JavaScript or PHP) and share them with the world. He also enjoys creating and sharing howtos, describing how to do the things people want to do with their computers.
Tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

  • Pingback: PageRank 0 to 3 in Less than a Month

  • buddhakwee

    I want to get backlink for my site hi-rank THankyou

  • http://proxie.me proxie

    Is that not a bit much work for chrome its still beta…

  • http://geeklad.com GeekLad

    Actually, Google dropped the beta designation from
    Chrome<http://geeklad.com/google-chrome-20>a couple of months ago.
    However, if you ask me I'd say yeah, it's still
    more like a beta browser. If the browser is still having to make use of
    Internet Explorer components and does not have a standalone engine for
    handling proxies, I'd still call it a beta.
    I suspect that once the Mac OS X and Linux versions come along, it should
    finally be handling proxy support within the app, and this workaround will
    no longer be needed. It does take some work, but if you are intent on using
    Chrome behind a socks firewall, it is probably one of the few viable
    solutions out there.

  • Spike

    Hmm, I currently enable an SSH tunnel session with one of my offsite boxes. And then use Firefox to route through localhost:1080.

    Yesterday I installed Privoxy for Chrome and tried it, and it immediately showed my SSH box's IP during surfing. I tried it today, and it doesn't work. So, I did the main configuration file (I hadn't earlier) and added:

    forward / localhost:1080
    forward :443 .

    And now I get this on chrome when I go to whatismyip.com:
    Empty server or forwarder response.
    The connection has been closed but Privoxy didn't receive any data.

    I'm stumped.

  • http://geeklad.com GeekLad

    All I have in my config is:
    forward-socks4a / 127.0.0.1:1080 .

    and it works like a charm. Try changing your lines to that and see if it
    does the trick.

  • Spike

    Looks like it's working!
    Thanks!

  • surfboards

    Hey thanks a lot for such informative post, I was actually looking around for the same from a long time.

  • http://mwolk.com/ proxy

    have you used TOR switching for firefox ? how good is your solutoin as compared to FF plugins ?

  • Kolomona

    Nice, I'll have to try it

  • gnug125

    it would be much easier to simply append this to the end of your shortcut –proxy-server:socks5://localhost:3210

  • Kostya

    Hello there.
    To fix this problem for SOCKS5 (SSH-tunnel) in chrome:
    1) add –proxy-server=”socks5://127.0.0.1:port”, after chrome.exe” in your shortcut;
    2) switch off DNS prefetching function in options.
    that's all.
    Thanx to http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/goog…/

  • Kostya

    Hello there.
    To fix this problem for SOCKS5 (SSH-tunnel) in chrome:
    1) add –proxy-server=”socks5://127.0.0.1:port”, after chrome.exe” in your shortcut;
    2) switch off DNS prefetching function in options.
    that's all.
    Thanx to http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/goog…

  • tylerl

    Chrome actually uses the Internet Explorer proxy settings. So if you set up a SOCKS proxy for IE, it will be used by chrome.