Anonymize Your Android Cell Phone’s Data-browsing With TOR

Good article here:

How do you turn the enemy of privacy into an ally?

Smartphones have long been derided as an invader against digital privacy and anonymity. They watch you, hear you, and most likely know you better than any other device you own. Hackers, telephone companies, governments, and a variety of third parties gleen all sorts of personal data from your phone, often with little consent or knowledge from you.

“Cellphones are tracking devices that make phone calls,” software developer Jacob Appelbaum said in 2013.

That’s not good. Mobile devices like phones and tablets are the most popular, affordable, and fastest-selling devices on the planet. If we can’t figure out privacy for phones, anyone who cares about privacy is losing the battle.

On home computers, a wide range of tools exist to help guard against unwanted eavesdroppers. For instance, the Tor anonymity network is one of the most popular and powerful privacy programs ever, with over 150 million downloads in the last year alone.

Tor has been available on Android phones for some time, but its utility has been somewhat limited. Now, a new suite of programs allows users to anonymize every app they run, giving them the kind of strong protection needed to maintain real privacy. Here are the three apps you should download right now.

The only catch is that to be complete, you have to be able to root your phone using creative hacks online. That will usually require hunting around on google a fair bit, trying several different techniques, and possibly bricking your phone and having to wipe and reinstall a fresh OS a few times, since manufacturers do not like you controlling the phone’s OS. Some will even require rolling back to earlier OSes, rooting, and then copying a new OS back onto the phone from your laptop.

But it could be possibly worth your time if you want to browse anonymously online, or if you are just a privacy hobbyist who wants to understand the technology.

It is only of use against private sector third parties which do not have access to government connections, however. If you think you might be a target of the government’s machinery (and I suspect even the most minor political hobbyists have reason to be paranoid), it is a safe bet there are hardware and software backdoors on the phone which would allow access regardless of anonymity. I would still assume that your camera, mic, keystrokes, and any data stored on the phone are being routed over the anonymized network to a third party, and the machine has already ID’s that IMEI as belonging to you specifically.

In these days, never assume you have privacy.