Although it isn't a perfect science, IP addresses can be turned into physical addresses with increasing accuracy. + There are public databases that show which ISP owns which IP address with a + good sense of which region they use it in. There are private databases with more accurate information. And, of course, + the ISP knows the exact service address of each IP address.
+ +VPN services can mask a device's IP address from a web server. When a VPN service is engaged, all traffic is encrypted and routed + through the VPN server. The web server only sees the IP address of the VPN server. This is sufficient for maintaining anonymity + from web server operators and advertisers, but it isn't sufficient for maintaining anonymity from oppressive regimes which might + be able to lean on VPN operators to turn over their logs showing the original IP addresses. Those looking for safety from such + regimes or desiring to blow the whistle on government agencies need something more.
+ +The Tor (The Onion Router) network was designed for just such purposes. It bounces encrypted web traffic through at least three independent servers + that volunteer bandwidth to the project. None of the servers have enough information to identify both the IP address of the original computer + and the final destination. Therefore, any government agency wanting to access the information would have to compromise all the machines in the + link, which are dispersed over the globe. This doesn't provide perfect privacy, but it gets pretty close.
+ +The Tor project has an app for Android called Orbot, which is available on F-Droid + and everywhere else Privacy Browser is distributed. Orbot can operate in three modes.
+ +Currently, Privacy Browser works with Orbot in transparent proxy and VPN modes. Support for the standard proxy mode will be added in a + future release.
+ +Because traffic is being routed through several Tor nodes, using Tor is often much slower than going straight to the internet.
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