20 votes

New Alpha Release: Tor Browser for Android

7 comments

  1. [7]
    666
    Link
    They are worried about privacy and surveillance, yet they publish their browser to Google Play instead of F-Droid. What I appreciate about the Guardian Project is that they published their browser...

    They are worried about privacy and surveillance, yet they publish their browser to Google Play instead of F-Droid. What I appreciate about the Guardian Project is that they published their browser to F-Droid, I hope the Tor team eventually publishes it there as an alternative download method.

    5 votes
    1. [2]
      starchturrets
      Link Parent
      Someone actually raised this issue in the comments section.

      Someone actually raised this issue in the comments section.

      Releasing this app on F-Droid is more complicated than uploading onto the website and using Google Play. We do want it to be available from F-Droid in the future, but this will take some time and it wasn't a high priority for the first alpha release.

      7 votes
      1. 666
        Link Parent
        They don't necessarily have to use F-Droid's repo, that's a huge hassle and I understand it. They should be running their own repo, where they can push updates as quick as they want, RedReader...

        They don't necessarily have to use F-Droid's repo, that's a huge hassle and I understand it. They should be running their own repo, where they can push updates as quick as they want, RedReader does it for their reddit app: https://redreader.org/alpha/

        6 votes
    2. [4]
      tvfj
      Link Parent
      I get wanting them to support F-Droid for F-Droid's sake, I don't think this is a "privacy and surveillance" failure, since they also have the APK available on their website. Still, I agree it...

      I get wanting them to support F-Droid for F-Droid's sake, I don't think this is a "privacy and surveillance" failure, since they also have the APK available on their website.

      Still, I agree it would be nice.

      5 votes
      1. [3]
        666
        Link Parent
        I think this is only partly true. People who don't understand much about tech will feel protected by using Tor without realizing they have downloaded it from Google Play and that it is already...

        I don't think this is a "privacy and surveillance" failure, since they also have the APK available on their website.

        I think this is only partly true. People who don't understand much about tech will feel protected by using Tor without realizing they have downloaded it from Google Play and that it is already associated to their email account, name and phone number. For the rest of us, yes, we can download it, but it is unsafe because it doesn't auto-update so we may be stuck using an insecure version until we realize a patch has been released by manually checking their blog for updates.

        2 votes
        1. [2]
          tvfj
          Link Parent
          Are you sure about that? Firefox Nightly uses its own updater, so it's possible the Tor fork does as well. I would check, but my phone is dead 🤷♀️

          because it doesn't auto-update

          Are you sure about that? Firefox Nightly uses its own updater, so it's possible the Tor fork does as well. I would check, but my phone is dead 🤷‍♀️

          4 votes
          1. 666
            Link Parent
            I forgot about that, I should check it, thanks for reminding me.

            I forgot about that, I should check it, thanks for reminding me.