14 DAY TRIAL // Tor Project, the company that built the already-famous Tor browser, has released the very first mobile version of its application for Android devices.
Tor Browser for Android is still in alpha stage, and it promises to offer “the highest privacy protections ever available.”
The development team says the privacy that the mobile version provides to users is on par with the desktop sibling, though some further tweaks are necessary to benefit from the full feature package.
One of them is installing Orbot, the proxy application already available on Android that is required to connect TOR browser for Android to the Tor network.
However, Tor Project says that in the future it plans to make the Android browser a fully-featured application, so the proxy client would be baked into the browser by default.
Tor for Android features
On Android, Tor comes with features like blocking tracking and monitoring on websites, multi-layered encryption, and complete anonymity regardless of technology bundled into pages.
“Tor Browser for Android makes it difficult for you to be fingerprinted based on your browser and device information,” the organization says.
There’s no version of Tor browser for iOS, and Tor Project says that Orfox will be discontinued next year, as its features are integrated into the new app.
“We're grateful to the Guardian Project for their work developing Orfox, a mobile browser which routes your traffic over the Tor network. With the development of Tor Browser for Android, Orfox will be sunsetted around the time of our stable release, expected in early 2019. You will still be able to use Orbot to route the traffic of all your other apps on Android over Tor,” the announcement reads.
You can download Tor browser for Android from the Google Play store right now, and the development team is also offering a stand-alone APK on the official website.
Keep in mind that the app is still in its early days and bugs are something to be expected.