I found Orbot and discovered that it is created by the same people who made TOR, and when I first open it up, I thought it looks like it suppose to be an VPN of sorts. But I still don’t have a clear picture of what this app does. I am still trying to learn about network security, TOR and VPNs so I have little clue as to any terminologies.
Ok, first things first.
VPN is a technology that let us funnel all traffic through a server in an encrypted manner. It was designed for the enterprise world, and adopted by the consumer’s market but it was never designed to be anonymous.
Tor is a software that encrypt the traffic and bounce it around.It was designed for anonymity. When you start Tor, in the background Tor makes a simple proxy server on your computer that let’s you connect to the Tor network. (your computer becomes a proxy server but it only serves itself)
To make it easy to use they made the “Tor browser”, a browser that is per-configured to connect to that proxy (and lot of other security settings too).
You can configure a lot of other programs to use that proxy and they will work over the Tor network, but most users don’t know how to configure proxies so the “Tor browser bundle” is nice and easy to use.
Orbot is the Tor proxy for android. However, most android apps do not let us configure proxy, so they made a VPN mode, to force apps to use the Tor network. Android supports VPN by default cause alot of enterprise people need it.
when you use the VPN mode in the background orbot creats the proxy server and a VPN server on your phone/tablet.
The android system connects to the VPN, the VPN connects to the proxy and the proxy connected to the Tor network.
I hope that explanation makes sense.
Orbot routes all traffic coming to and from your phone through the Tor network before it gets in/out of your phone. Just turn on the slider that says VPN mode, press the gray onion icon, and while you are connected, all data from all apps will be sent through the Tor network before making it to their target locations on the internet, and the onion icon will turn green. A non-dismissable notification will show up in your notifications bar alerting you that Orbot is currently on.
Which one is safer Orbit or Vpn and will it protect IP address
So if all my data is sent through Tor’s network, does that mean I am technically using TOR itself similar to its browser?
Also, how does this method compare to what other VPNs like ExpressVPN work? Is it just as secured with a few dents?
I’m having difficulty understanding this. So if I activate orbot using snowflake (regular tor doesn’t work in my country due to heavy restrictions) this will not route all phone traffic through Tor?
If I do not activate VPN mode, then what will get routed through Tor?
You’re not using its browser, but you are using the Tor network, yes.
Tor is much more secure than VPNs due to VPNs’ centralization (leading to one point of failure) and privacy by policy (legalwork claims that you are private and secure) as opposed to Tor’s de-centralization (multiple points of failure + failing nodes can be rapidly replaced) and privacy by design (design is open source = privacy and security can be verified by multiple outside entities and can easily be called out for flaws). The most prominent drawback of Tor is just slow speeds.
There should be another setting somewhere near that shows all the apps on your phone with checkboxes alongside them (sorry, I haven’t used Orbot in a while lol). I believe those checked apps are what gets routed through Tor when VPN mode is off. I’ll check now just to make sure, though.
OK, update, that checkbox thing is the settings for the VPN mode. When VPN mode is off, Orbot’s only function seems to be creating an HTTP proxy and a SOCKS proxy through which you can route apps that have proxy networking settings.
it hits up to 1.3 / 1.4 megabyte/s dl on my pc, it is not that slow but for big downloads it is taking its time