How can I make sure my stock apps are connecting through orbot? I've installed orbot & it's seems to be working as google throws captcha in orfox but stock apps such as youtube still opens page pointing to my location. I configured orbot to make all apps connect through it. Orbot doesn't start at boot time. Thank you.
1 Answer
"Stock apps" may be getting your location from the local device through GPS, knowledge of visible cell towers or visible wireless networks. There is nothing that network level location anonymity can do if the local application is snitching on you.
As such, you should be careful which apps you use and you should be careful about forcing transproxy across all apps. Since transproxy has no context for what it is transferring over the tor network, different applications may share the same circuit which could end up linking e.g. your youtube usage with your twitter or facebook usage, even if one of these is intended to be unlinkable to your other online identit{y,ies}.
Mike Perry wrote a good summation of what approaches may be taken and what problems still remain: Mission Impossible: Hardening Android for Security and Privacy
Android, especially with GApps, is a privacy nightmare. Cyanogenmod's "Privacy Guard" may help but ultimately maintaining a list of permissions and dealing with the unexpected breakages from them is a daunting and ultimately overwhelming task. You should attempt to use application that respect your privacy, and work with you to help maintain it, from the very beginning rather than trying to force apps to stop actively trying to betray you.
answered May 13, 2016 at 20:31
