Big Data knows you better every day, search histories become a bit "too" precise, and as we've seen in the past, some companies have no problem selling or giving away that information. The first option in the private and anonymous user's list is the Tor network, but accessing it through a mobile device was never fully comfortable. The Orfox browser, derived from the official Tor Browser, seeks to change that.
A common action when browsing is to visit an e-commerce site, search for some items and delay the purchase for a while. Most likely a couple of hours later, that e-commerce portal sends you an email saying "Are you still looking for this?" with a list of the products you had explored. It is even possible that they appear with a discount to smooth the transaction. This is a basic example of "remarketing", but at the same time it is one of the many methods companies use to track your activity and build a digital profile.
If we extend that tracking capability to the major services of the Web, it is logical that some people wish to wrap themselves in a cloak of anonymity. On desktop systems, the main option is the Tor Browser; however, on the Android platform there is Orfox.
Orfox: Tor for Android
One of Orfox's goals is to simplify access to Tor from a mobile device, but beyond its intentions, the truth is that the user needs to get their hands a little dirty. Orfox is just a browser, and before that we must install the Orbot proxy for it to connect correctly (Orfox will request Orbot's presence when it runs for the first time).
Once the link via Orbot is established, Orfox will work like any copy of mobile Firefox, with the difference that it comes with an active copy of the popular NoScript extension, meaning the browser can block JavaScript on certain sites, prevent the automatic playback of multimedia content and disable fonts.
The next step in Orfox's development is to integrate other extensions (HTTPS Everywhere was mentioned) and much more polished mobile versions of NoScript. To finish, we must note that Orfox is not perfect, it presents errors on some devices, and performance issues on others. It can be downloaded from its official page.
