If you use the Tor Browser Bundle for web browsing, you may sometimes see "This service is not available in your location" or similar messages when you attempt to use some online services when a service is not available to residents of some countries, if the exit node, i.e., the last hop in the Tor network, for your browser session happens to be in a country for which the oline service is unavailable. You can see the location of the exit node, i.e., the IP address that websites see for your location when you visit them by visiting WhatIsMyIP.com or similar websites that provide geolocation information.
If you wish to specify an exit node in a particular country, you
can use the country code
for the country established by the
International Organization for Standardizaton. Two characters are used
to represent the country code in an online address, e.g. us for
the United States, dk for Denmark, gb for
Great Britain, etc. You can find the complete list of country codes
at
ISO 3166-1-alpha-2 code. The country code to be used for the exit
note must be placed in the
torrc
configuration file used by the Tor browser bundle. Look
for the torrc file in the Data/Tor directory
beneath the directory in which you installed the Tor Browser Bundle. You
can edit it with a text editor, such as Notepad on a Microsoft Windows
system. Put the following line at the end of the file where cc
represents the country code:
ExitNodes {cc}
E.g., for a United States exit node, you would use:
ExitNodes {us}
To confirm the exit node location, restart the Tor browser, if it is running, and visit a site such as WhatIsMyIp. Note: if there is a problem accessing an exit node in the selected country or if you entered an invalid country code, you may find that you don't get past the "Connecting to the Tor network" window when you start the Tor browser. In that case, you may need to select a different country code. Also, some online services may block access from all known Tor exit nodes, since some people use Tor for malicious purposes rather than simply for online privacy. E.g., Wikipedia does not allow editing of articles when an editor is accessing Wikipedia via the Tor network.
Also note that the Tor Project does not recommend specifying an exit node. At Tor FAQ: Can I control which nodes (or country) are used for entry/exit? you will find:
We recommend you do not use these — they are intended for testing and may disappear in future versions. You get the best security that Tor can provide when you leave the route selection to Tor; overriding the entry / exit nodes can mess up your anonymity in ways we don't understand.
But that option is available, if you wish to use it, at least as of version 3.5 of the Tor Browser Bundle.
