Just as plain Firefox, though, Orfox deanonymizes Tor users by downloading favicons without respecting proxy preferences, revealing the real IP address. Currently, Orfox is under development (a port of the Tor Browser to Android). Lightning Browser is also unusable for me. Some guides for Orbot recommend Orweb, which has too many open issues to be usable. In combination with Tor, this bug is critical, as the download of favicons reveals the real IP address, defeating anonymization. At the moment, nothing works out of the box, though, as you can see in this thread on the Tor Talk mailing list.įirefox on Android mostly works with Orbot, but downloads favicons without respecting proxy preferences, which is a known bug. Some browsers need to be configured manually, while others are pre-configured. In any case, the browser needs to be configured to use Tor/Orbot as proxy. The Tor port to Android is Orbot, which can potentially be combined with different browsers. Note that my post is unrelated to targeted attacks and espionage. An excellent post by Mike Perry explains how to harden Android devices.Īnyways, I’m using an Android phone (without Google services as explained elsewhere), and I want to use Tor for the occasional surfing while resisting mass surveillance. Be warned! Some believe that Android is simply a dead end for anonymity and privacy, as phones are powerful surveillance devices, easily exploitable by third parties.

I was surprised how complicated anonymized browsing is on Android with Firefox and Tor. If you attempt (3) via Tor on Android devices, you need to be careful. It reads 'Only when device is plugged in and on wifi'.In my previous post, I explained three steps for more privacy on the Net, namely (1) opt out from the cloud, (2) encrypt your communication, and (3) anonymize your surfing behavior. By default there is a setting for using your device as a snowflake that's enable … d called 'Snowflake Proxy Limits'.

Orbot tor for android