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Imagine this:

A person who is a secret agent was sent to another country for a secret mission, his own phone is locked to the local carrier in his country so he needs to buy a phone that can use the services in the country he is now in.

He manages to get a second-hand phone at a cheap price. Then he downloads Tor Browser to send a message to let other agents from the same agency that are in the country that he arrived and they would meet at X secret location.

Days later he ends his mission and again goes to Tor Browser to tell his location to the person who will get him to the airport.

But suddenly the screen flashes and a notification pops up "Screenshot captured" then a second one "Uploading to XDrive".

Turns out that the phone had spyware. But he then started thinking "Why did this happen the second time I sent a message?" "Maybe the first time it was done silently in the background and now they want to let me know so I don't leave the country and stay here hiding?" But he remembers that captures can't be taken by normal means but what about the first one?

Can this agent be safe that his arriving was not monitored and that the capture the second time was not successful and he can safely get back to his country?

(Just a funny way to explain my question.)

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  • I understand that you are trying to explain your question with examples but you've turned potentially one question about Tor into a few questions about different things. --- 1. A tourist wants to buy "communication equipment" in country X, are they suspicious of tourists and why do they sell the phone for cheap; suspicious. 2. Downloading the Tor browser in that country may be illegal or suspicious, causing the local cellular carrier to track the phone's location. 3. No surprise there's spyware, and all phones give an approximate location in order to work. 4. Tor pkts can be injected.
    – Rob
    Commented Nov 23 at 14:00

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Well, you're opening a very broad and important topic, so I'll try to answer briefly, but it can be some sort of a longread...

First of all - nobody is responsible for the person's security, privacy and protection except that exact person. Nobody, nothing and no law can help - just a brain, skills and bare hands of that exact person. Period and no exceptions. No "innocent third parties", no "responsible encryption", no "rightful observations/intrusions", no UFO, no yeti and other cerebral deviations - just a flat facts. That's where the Informational Security starts - in the consciousness of the person

Second - unless you're dependent on observing markets, you'll choose either AOSP or GrapheneOS or LineageOS or another open source build of Android without Google services. You can always either build or download or extract APK from an existing isolated phone - and install it on the phone you need a confidence and privacy on. In your story "an agent" is an amateur of the know-it-all kind - if it's so lame to trust a phone it purchased and haven't reflashed by hand itself. Yes, the predecessor of Tor(The Onion Router) - OR(Onion Router) was designed exactly for the purpose you've described. But like the QR code inventors, the USA government agency guys who invented OR and saw what it can do to help people to protect their privacy and freedom of speech - have done the right thing: they gave it out in fully open source free of charges and claims. It was upgraded later to Tor - and rewritten with time

Neither Tor, nor any other privacy tool like I2P, ZeroNet, Yggdrasil et cetera can not prevent you from doing stupid things

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