With the release of Privacy Browser 2.12, the default homepage and search engine has been switched to Searx.me. This only applies to new installs of Privacy Browser. Existing users who upgrade will keep whatever their current settings are until they manually change them. The default Tor homepage and search engine has been changed to http://ulrn6sryqaifefld.onion/,…

Privacy Browser 2.12 has been released. The default homepage and search engine has been changed from DuckDuckGo to Searx. This is a significant enough change that I have written a separate post explaining why the decision was made. This change only effects new installs. Existing installs will maintain their current settings unless updated by the…

There is a bug with recent versions of Orbot (16.0.2-RC-1, 16.0.5-RC-2-tor-0.3.4.9) that causes HTTP proxying to fail (HTTPS proxying works just fine). That means that webpages that begin with https:// will load just fine but webpages that begin with http:// will not. I have filed a bug report with the developers of Orbot. Those who…

Privacy Browser 2.10 has been released. Uploading of files is now enabled for Lollipop and newer (API >= 21). Initially I thought this would require the Read Storage permission, but it turns out that beginning in Android Lollipop (API 21) Google added a system file chooser API to WebKit. This allows the browser to request…

Privacy Browser 2.9 has been released. The major change is that the write storage permission has been added as was previously announced in the roadmap. This allows downloads to be stored in the public download directory, and will also allow for a number of other planned features, like the import and export of settings. It…

Privacy Browser 2.8.1 has been released. This is a bug fix release to work around a problem in recent versions of WebView that made it so that cookies were not consistently flushed to permanent storage. This broke functionality for users who needed to permanently save cookies to make certain websites work as desired.

I receive questions about WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) frequently enough that I thought it would be worthwhile to write a post about it. First, a little bit of background about WebRTC for those who might not be familiar with it. It is a web standard for enabling video and audio chat in the browser. WebRTC…

Privacy Browser 2.8 has been released. EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Fanboy’s Annoyance List, and Fanboy’s Social Blocking List are now used for ad and tracker blocking. This was a significant transition that required much more time than I had anticipated going into it. But the results in terms of user privacy are significant. The previous ad blocking…