Community Case Studies
Learn about some great open-source mobile apps that integrate Tor on mobile
Below are some short interviews with the teams behind four different apps built outside of the Tor community, that have integrated Tor support to provide extra security and privacy to their user communities.
Rethink at https://rethinkdns.com
Say hello to a safer Internet.Block malware, spyware, ads, and trackers across all apps with Rethink DNS. Servers in 300+ locations: Experience Blazing fast speeds.
What inspired you to create this app?
It was a combination of frustration with surveillance economy in tech (where we worked: in BigTech) and internet censorship used to shut down dissent (from where we are: India), particularly from minorities most vulnerable. Rethink wasn't the only idea we wanted to pursue at the time, but fatefully Mozilla funded it with a generous grant in Jul 2020 and we've never looked back since.
Why did you decide to incorporate Tor integrations?
From feedback since our very first release on 8 Aug 2020, our userbase had consistently asked us to integrate with Orbot, and because our project is anti-censorship focused, it was really a no-brainer. Nathan & Hans from the Guardian Project were nice to us, so that was added motivation as well.
How can people best support your work?
Our development team (of 2) bears the entire cost of the public DNS resolvers that serve 40 billion requests per month. We rely on sponsorship to help keep the lights on as costs have steadily risen.
Mumla - https://mumla-app.gitlab.io/
Mumble is a low latency, high quality voice conference and chat system. Connect to one of the many public Mumble servers, or run a server for your own community!
What inspired you to create this app?
I had a need for a Mumble client on Android at the time, and what I found had some annoying bugs, and was appa rently no longer maintained for several years. I therefore forked that software and named it Mumla (which is Swedish for "mumble").
Why did you decide to incorporate Tor integrations?
There was already some support for integrating with Orbot for using a TCP-only protocol connecting over Tor. I polished that functionality and added support for .onion addresses. This was partly motivated by the folks developing Wahay, who contacted me about the feature (see https://wahay.org/). Wahay is a Mumble client/server that only works over Tor. How can people best support your work?
The best support for Mumla would be funding that would allow me to prioritize doing work on it over other work that I do for compensation.
Monocles - https://monocles.de/
monocles is a project founded to move to a more secure, ecofriendly, privacy respecting, fair and open source technical and digital life for everyone.
What inspired you to create this app?
I decided to create monocles chat, monocles browser and the other free and open source monocles apps to help people to protect themselves and move to a more fair and ethically digital life. Also I try to help reducing the resource consumption since the monocles apps and servers need less resources than the common android apps. I don't think it is good when few big companies or countries have too much might or control over too many people because I think that diversity is important.
Why did you decide to incorporate Tor integrations? I think it is especially in restricted countries essential to have Tor integrated in the apps to protect people from totalitarian systems, from suppression and to guarantee the freedom of expression of individuals. Additionally I think that Tor can be good to use in common and “free” environments too because there are still too many companies and institutions which try to get too much data from people which again could lead to something totalitarian too. Therefore I see Tor as an important project for the freedom and protection of individuals but also for societies.
How can people best support your work? Currently the most important help would be financial support to the monocles project since it is still privately funded by me, some few payed accounts and little donations but also code or pull requests for the apps would be really helpful. Additionally using the apps and increasing awareness would be support the my work.
WebMon - https://webmon.dev.akito.ooo/
Android app for monitoring web services. Notifies you of any HTTP or Onion destination not being available.
What inspired you to create this app? I was inspired to develop this app, because I wanted to have the possibility of monitoring some systems I set up as a hobby. I wanted to extend the types of services, which may be monitored, over time, so ideally you can monitor a variety of services. Since FLOSS is very important to me, as I stand behind its values, I wanted to give everyone a chance to use the app in return for feedback, suggestions and other comments, including thank you mails. :)
Why did you decide to incorporate Tor integrations? I incorporated Tor integrations, because many Tor services I visit are sometimes unavailable, since the backends behind it are not stable enough. With my app, you can always check, whether the particular service is up. Additionally, you can make sure, that your clearnet service is also available on Tor. Just because it runs on the clearnet, is not a guarantee, that it also runs on Tor for whatever reason. Therefore, you need to monitor both endpoints, to be sure, that your service is actually available. Besides all that, I'm a long time user and philosophical supporter of Tor, so integrating Tor support was also a matter of principle to me. Finally, I also learned a lot about how to implement Tor, how it works, etc. I love learning new technologies!
How can people best support your work?
Time is the most precious resource a human has. So, my work can be best supported by offering to spend time for the sake of delivering expertise in some area. The most obvious one is of course help in terms of development progress, as I don't have time for this project really anymore and barely may release a feature version bump a year. Therefore, if someone likes the project and is able or wants to learn to develop Android applications, I'd be more than happy to help & review pull requests made by the volunteer.
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