Tor Project is improving its support for mobile browsing; to bring Orfox at par with Tor Browser

The Tor Project, the Massachusetts-based non-profit organisation responsible for popular software tools like Tor Browser is improving support for mobile browsing. The company announced in a blog post that it will improve the feature set of Orfox for Android to ensure that it provides the same level of features and privacy as the Tor Browser on the desktop.

The group pointed out that it met with Guardian Project to discuss the future of Tor Browser and Orfox on mobile devices. The group has introduced the ‘Security Slider’ in Orfox which allows users to customise their browsing experience along with the ability to increase or decrease the security level provided by the browser.

The important thing to consider here is that your experience could drastically differ according to the security level as the website may not show javascript related functions if the browser has disabled them. The web pages could not show videos as some of the required scripts to run videos could be used by cyber criminals or hackers to reveal information that could be used to identify you.

The post details that both the groups sat down to make mockups and UI copies to arrive at a version good enough to build. Both the groups made a beta version and tested it with 12 users located in India and three users located in the United States. This was the first time when Tor Project followed a full development cycle along with UX best practices. The group had to make a new methodology to help it perform tests with users without collecting data on user behaviour.

The slider is available in the latest version of Orfox on Google Play Store.

Tor Project confirmed that this is not the end and it will actively work to bring new features to the desktop version while ensuring that it works on mobile as well.