Socks and Proxy Server List on Vidalia
DPI systems capable of detecting and blocking Tor does not always inspect Socks and HTTP Proxy traffic, by decapsulating it in order to apply the Tor detection logic.
So Socks and HTTP Proxy server can be an effective way to bypass Tor blocking in short term, as one of the arms for the never ending arm race.
By using a Socks or an HTTP proxy server with Vidalia it's possible to bypass several censorship systems not doing analysis of traffic inside SOCKS or HTTP proxy servers.
There are tons of sites providing free lists of open socks4, socks5 and http proxy server around the internet like: http://tools.rosinstrument.com/raw_free_db.htm?t=3
However those proxy tend to be unreliable, a single proxy can be busy during a period or become useful some minutes later due to overload and other instabilities.
So it's very useful for usability reason to be able to load a list of several socks4, socks5, http proxy servers and try to use each of them in a random loop until one is working.
That way a user can look for his preferred source of open socks/proxy servers and load it into Vidalia increasing his chance to bypass direct Tor blocks.