If, on the other hand, you simply don't want corporations documenting everything you read on the internet, this is the app for you. If your safety or job depends on keeping your web browsing secret, then stick to a personal device and use Tor for desktop. Things are a bit trickier on your phone, but the Tor Android browser (sorry, nothing for iOS) is a step in the right direction. Using the Tor browser, available for a free download on your desktop, is the closest thing you can get to true anonymity on the internet (though there are some important provisos). And no, Incognito mode doesn't do what you think it does. Tor ( Android)Īnonymously browsing the internet is more difficult than you might guess. If you can figure out iMessage or Facebook's Messenger (which you should not use), then you can figure out Signal. We've written about the encrypted messaging app Signal countless times before, but that's because it's earned the praise.įrom ensuring your communications (voice, text, and yes, video) are end-to-end encrypted to making it easier to protect protesters' identities, the open-source app has garnered endorsements from the Mozilla Foundation, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Amnesty International, and even the U.S. Your privacy doesn't need to be another casualty of a brutal year. Thankfully, there are apps to help ensure that what should be private stays that way.įrom messaging to web browsing to email, to open-source camera apps that watch for overzealous authorities pawing through your stuff, phones have the potential to be more than just surveillance-enabling tools.īelow is a list of apps that you should have downloaded in 2020. The ongoing pandemic, the murder of George Floyd and resultant Black Lives Matters protests, and the still-in-progress attempt to overturn the will of the American people: We've navigated these public health and political upheavals, with varying degrees of success, through screens.īut simply because we're more dependent on phones now than in years past doesn't mean the contents of that digital-forward life is anyone's business besides the person who's living it. In case there were any lingering doubts, 2020 swooped in hard to remind us all that life is now mediated through devices.

Tor browser app for ipad