The two biggest challenges Tor developers on iOS face, as Tigas outlined in this blog post on the Tor Project website, are Apple's requirement that all browsers use the iOS WebKit rendering engine, and the inability to run Tor as a system-wide service or daemon on iOS.ĭevelopers have found workarounds to both problems, and iOS users can soon expect to see a new, improved Onion Browser, as well as a Tor VPN that routes all device traffic over Tor-probably in the first quarter of 2017. (The Tor Project has so far declined to officially endorse an app for iOS.) Advertisement Onion Browser is the leading, community-supported Tor Web browser for iOS, but it lacks some of the features available for Tor Browser (Linux, MacOS, Windows) and OrFox (Android), due to technical roadblocks peculiar to iOS. 'People over there can't get apps you have to pay for, because you have to have a credit card that Apple actually accepts,' he added, noting that economic sanctions forbid Apple from selling to Iranian iOS users. 'Iran is not technically a country where you can get an iPhone, but on the grey market you can,' he told Ars. Global concerns also influenced his decision. 'I think now is as good a time as ever to make Onion Browser more accessible to everyone.' 'Given recent events, many believe it's more important than ever to exercise and support freedom of speech, privacy rights, and digital security,' he wrote in a blog post. The results of the recent US presidential election might have had something to do with this decision, and its impressive results, Tigas told Ars. Since then, its popularity has exploded, with thousands of downloads recorded every day. So a few weeks ago, he made the app free. Expecting little interest, he then put Onion Browser on the Apple App Store at just $0.99/£0.69, the lowest non-zero price that Apple allows.įast forward to 2016, and Tigas found himself living in New York City, working as a developer and investigative journalist at ProPublica, while earning upwards of $2,000 a month from the app-and worrying that charging for it was keeping anonymous browsing out of the hands of people who needed it. He was working as a newsroom Web developer at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington, at the time, and wanted a Tor browser app for himself and his colleagues. When Mike Tigas first created the Onion Browser app for iOS in 2012, he never expected it to become popular.

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