[guardian-dev] Testing needed: Proxy Add-On for Firefox mobile

[Nathan Freitas]

(reposted from here:
https://guardianproject.info/2010/11/08/proxy-settings-add-on-for-firefox-mobile/)

The latest beta of Firefox 4 on Android is proving to be very usable,
stable and an increasingly viable alternative to the built-in webkit
browser. However, it is unfortunately lacking the ability to manually
configure proxy settings through any sort of standard user interface.
This is a common problem for Android, which also lacks the ability to
set browser or system wide proxy settings. This has caused real issues
for us with getting Orbot (aka “Tor on Android”) to work for un-rooted
Android devices, because for routing through Tor to work, you must be
able to set the HTTP or SOCKS proxy settings. Why this very basic
feature keeps getting missed or ignored is a mystery to us.

To solve this problem, we at the Guardian Project have created a very
simple Firefox add-on which exposes the proxy settings through a simple,
graphical options menu. This means any user can easily set the HTTP and
SOCKS proxy settings for Firefox, enabling access to web browsing on
networks which require a proxy to access the we. This also means, that
users can connect Firefox to Orbot on Android 2.x devices and browse the
web using the Tor.

However, it must be stressed that this not a full port of the TorButton
add-on, and does not provide for strong anonymity.

We are working on porting TorButton to Firefox mobile, so stay tuned for
that release. In addition, while there are many, many Proxy add-ons for
Firefox on the desktop, none have been ported to mobile. We hope this
small release will encourage one or more of them to port those add-ons
to a mobile version. For now though, if you are eager to play and really
need to access the web via a proxy, you can find the “ProxyMob” add-on
at the following URL. Just navigate to this address from your Firefox
mobile browser, and it will handle the add-on installation process:

http://tinyurl.com/proxymob
aka: https://guardianproject.info/downloads/proxymob-addon-0.0.5.xpi
(gpg sig)

As with all of our work, this is open-source, and we encourage you to
contribute to and improve upon what we’ve done via our Github project:
https://github.com/guardianproject/ProxyMob

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