Getting all your data to flow through the Tor network can be tricky — the desktop Tor Browser only tunnels your web-traffic through the privacy-protecting service, and the mobile apps can be tricky and uncertain.
But the independent pro-privacy UK mobile carrier Brass Horn Communications (founded by Gareth Llewelyn of OnionDSL, founded in response to the UK’s passage of yet more mass-surveillance laws in 2016) now offers a data-only SIM that blocks any unencrypted data that leaks out of your phone, ensuring that only encrypted data makes it to the internet.
(Boing Boing’s servers in Toronto run a high-capacity Tor exit node).
The new SIM card, which is still in a beta testing stage, takes that idea mobile. It requires some setup; users need to create a new access point name on their device—essentially so the device can connect to the new network—but Brass Horn provides some instructions to do this. The SIM also requires Orbot to be installed and running on the device itself, and it currently only works in the UK (Llewelyn provided Motherboard with one of the SIM cards for testing purposes; Motherboard confirmed that the SIM does transfer data).
This SIM Card Forces all of Your Mobile Data Through Tor [Joseph Cox/Motherboard]