Test version Tor Browser for Android based on new Firefox appears

The first test version of the Tor Browser based on the new version of Firefox for Android has been released. The test version no longer uses Firefox 68 ESR, but Firefox 81, a version that appeared at the end of last month.

It took months to develop the new version, Ghacks reports. That’s because Mozilla has tweaked the Firefox rendering engine for Android and that required a lot of tweaks to Tor Browser. That browser is based on Firefox for Android, but has adjustments to improve the security and privacy of the browser.

Among those changes are the disabling of telemetry, tls 1.0 and 1.1, Cleartext traffic and push notification capability. When using the Tor Browser, the user’s internet traffic is redirected and encrypted through a network of thousands of servers known as Tor relays. This should make it almost impossible to identify visitors based on the browser and the hardware with which they visit websites, so-called fingerprinting. In addition, the Tor Browser makes it possible to visit pages that have been blocked in some way.

Tor Browser for Android has been around for desktops for years and came out for Android last year. The alpha version of the Tor Browser for Android is available for free on the Google Play Store and on a download page.