Tor Browser on Android Work Account Mimicing a Sandbox

Support Tor Browser for Android
1

Hello there,

I found these Android Apps that make use of Androids work account feature to use it kind of like a sandbox where you can freeze apps on that account for background activity. For an example there is one called Islands by a dev called Oasis Femg, I am in no way of relationship with them or the app and i am not promoting nor validating this app, which is still in development it seems. I just wonder if i clone Google play on a “island” download a browser like firefox focus. Delete or Freeze Google Play. Download the apk of Tor Browser on Firefox. Delete the Firefox Browser. Install Tor Browser from the defaultly cloned files app. Freeze the Files apps and others. Freeze bloat systems apps just enough that my Tor Browser (in the island) will be functional. Is this any secure way to use Tor Browser on Android mobile ? If so any recommendatition to delete/freeze which systems programs ? There are a few apps like this kimda mimicing(as THEY say, not me), and i wonder if this is a better way for privacy and a million programs that comes default with their own telemetry on an android phone ? But this way the network traffic might be going through the “sandbox” app, i don’t know if it works like that or not. There is an option to nuke “island” with all it’s content. I don’t know if this is something really works on a privacy and security view. I would love to hear your technical views and experience about this kinda usage. Any feedback is greatly appreciated. I am searching ways to somehow put a sandbox arpund Tor browser on my phone, like using a vm on PC, since I really am living in a very authoritarian area where people are being sent to gulag for talking sh!+ about the authorities, and also I need this browser to access some widely used applications that are just straight up banned in my country where a privately owned ISP company is not a very realy thing so Tor is really the only way “I” know that everything I do online is not getting filtered and logged on a massive database, also ofcourse to protect my data if my isp or really just anything connected to it gets breached and me watching start to end of whole 2 seasons of One Punch Man without paying money for the 20th time does not get in a data dump :slight_smile: Also I am having trouble connecting regularly too, tried some bridges not working always, and using wifi to connect is really really slow on public wifi i find. I think this is because the default firewalls my area has on any working wifi. Thank you all… Love and peace…

2

You can install Tor Browser for Android to a “Work“ profile on Android, yes.

FWIW, Tor Browser for Android only requires basic permissions required to function and doesn’t prompt the user for excessive permissions. Any of the tracking code carried over from Firefox for Android (Tor Browser is based on Firefox) is disabled in Tor Browser for Android.

So I am not sure if there are any added benefits for running the Tor Browser app in a separate Android profile.

Just a note there that using Tor Browser for Android, only the traffic from the browser itself will be going through the Tor network. Any other applications installed on your device will not go through Tor. For such a use case you might want to use Orbot.

3

Hello there,

Thank you very much for your feedback, i really do appreciate it. Sorry about the app thing there, it was my wrong phrasing, I was actually referring in my mind to web applications through the browser like this community platform here or gui frontend clients of irc servers for an example. Although, unfortunately some very commonly used apps on google play are not available in my are or have special restrictions of sorts, so have tried Orbot and I very eagerly wanted to be able to use the android Tor Browser on my phone but I just could not maintain the connection as my eye is always on the Tor logs, so I don’t know the Tor on mobile I just couldn’t make work whatever bridges and configs I tried, I think it is just a geolocation wise problem to me. I have used Tails on usb, I have used Whonix Virtualbox, I have used Tor Browser on Vmware workstation, Qemu/KVM via virt-manager and my favourite Gnome-Boxes, with nested Hyper-v machines, but there is this Windows Sandbox that is just extremely practical and I also like running amnesiac tails vms in gnome boxes for that is too like that in a way. So that is why I thought maybe there could be some kind of containment on Android also since I like this kinda stuff but I tried that too and it just doesn’t work on my phone, so I will just continue to stick to the desktop.

Thank you very much again for your answer, I am greatful for your time. I hope someday I can get good enough to contribute code on Tor Project repositories too, since this is free and opensource software which is very cool and awesome, the network hosted by volunteers around the world, and I use it with this gift of freedom, thank you all very much :slight_smile: