Orbot v12 now in beta

 Posted on July 24, 2013  |  n8fr8

After much too long, we’ve got a new build of Orbot out, and it is… a stable beta! Nothing radically new here, just many small changes to continue to improve the experience of our hundreds of thousands of active users out in the world. There will likely be one or two more “beta” releases to iron out small issues in v12, but for now, this one is good to go. [Read More]
anonymity  privacy  surveillance  tor  tor project 

The Only Way to Visit Strongbox on a Phone

 Posted on May 16, 2013  |  mark

The New Yorker magazine just launched Strongbox, a whistleblower submission system that’s hosted on a hidden website. There’s only one way to access the hidden site on a phone or tablet, and that’s with our Orweb app. Here’s a simple breakdown of how to do securely and anonymously blow the whistle, explained in an interactive tutorial: Visit guardianproject.info/howto/strongbox for an interactive tutorial on using Strongbox on your phone. The website exists as a hidden site on what is widely known as the darknet, since you are going there hidden or “in the dark. [Read More]
Android  darknet  howto  journalism  magazine  onion browser  orbot  orweb  phone  privacy  proxy  security  strongbox  tablet  the new yorker  tor  tutorial  wikileaks 

Security Awareness Party

 Posted on April 26, 2013  |  mark

In the security world, there’s a pesky belief that a tool can either be secure or easy to use, but not both. Some experts also argue that training people to be safe online is too hard and doesn’t accomplish much (see Bruce Schneier’s recent post Security Awareness Training). Without a thoughtful approach, that’s usually how it plays out. But it doesn’t have to be that way! We’re committed to making online security fun to learn and fun to use, and we’re launching a new series of interactive tutorials to make it happen. [Read More]
censorship  circumvention  education  gibberbot  guardian project  howto  obfsproxy  obfuscation  onion  proxy  tor  torproject  tutorial 

Mumble and the Bandwidth – Anonymous CB radio with Mumble and Tor

 Posted on January 31, 2013  |  lee

The journey towards anonymous and secure voice communication is a long one. There’s lots of roadblocks to get your voice from point A to point B over the Internet if you need to prevent eavesdropping or censorship. There is the limited bandwidth of mobile data connections. There is the high latency of the TCP protocol. To achieve anonymity via Tor, there’s even more latency added to each packet. Mumble is a non-standard protocol that was originally designed for realtime voice chat for video games. [Read More]
anonymity  ostn  push-to-talk  tor  voice  voip 

Voice over Tor?

 Posted on December 10, 2012  |  patch

Voice calls over Tor are supposed to be impossible. It seems this may no longer be the case. Without being able to do voice over IP (VOIP) conversations over the Tor network, people are prevented from being able to route calls outside of censored networks. People ask us if there is any way they can route voice traffic through Tor to avoid blocks. To our surprise, we tested Skype and found that it can work acceptably over Orbot. [Read More]
orbot  tor  voice  voip 

Sometimes the best solution is a library, not an app

 Posted on August 27, 2012  |  Hans-Christoph Steiner

Our general approach to software development starts with surveying existing solutions that are available and in use, to see if there is already enough of an ecosystem or whether we need to seed that. When there is already an adundance of tools and apps out there, we work to find the good ones, provide feedback and auditing, and then build apps and tools to fill in any gaps. For example, this was our approach in the Open Secure Telephony Network. [Read More]
developer tools  encryption  ffmpeg  frameworks  gnupg  gpg  iocipher  libraries  libsqlfs  orbot  orlib  sqlcipher  tor 

Proxy Settings Add-on for Firefox Mobile

 Posted on November 8, 2010  |  n8fr8

The latest beta of Firefox 4 on Android is proving to be very usable, stable and an increasingly viable alternative to the built-in webkit browser. However, it is unfortunately lacking the ability to manually configure proxy settings through any sort of standard user interface. This is a common problem for Android, which also lacks the ability to set browser or system wide proxy settings. This has caused real issues for us with getting Orbot (aka “Tor on Android”) to work for un-rooted Android devices, because for routing through Tor to work, you must be able to set the HTTP or SOCKS proxy settings. [Read More]
add-on  fennec  firefox  proxy  tor 

Orbot Update: New Setup Wizard at Startup

 Posted on July 29, 2010  |  n8fr8

We’ve been working away at the 0.0.9 release of Orbot over the last few months, and have put a decent amount of effort into usability. Specifically, we hoped to better communicate to users what it means to run Tor on your Android phone. In addition, we wanted to clearly lay out how the various configuration options help to improve your mobile web anonymity and ability to circumvent web filters and tracking by your mobile service provider. [Read More]
Android  anonymity  open source  orbot  proxy  tor  usability  ux 

Tor on a Tablet

 Posted on May 25, 2010  |  n8fr8

We recently acquired a Moons e-7001 “iRobot” tablet which runs Android 1.5. This device is also known as the “aPad”. It is a very basic iPad-clone, though honestly, it can’t really compare with the iPad in terms of quality of screen, build or general use. However, it does only cost $185, supports USB host mode, has a built-in camera, and it is running Android, an actual open-source operating system! It should also be pointed out that you can also now get the Archos 7 Android tablet, which is basically the same thing as this, from Amazon for $199. [Read More]
tablet  tor