Conversations

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Currently, as of version 1.13.2, Conversions only supports Tor on a global level, i.e., either all or none of the traffic gets routed through Tor. It would be much handy if this could be set on a per account basis. Desktop clients like Pidgin and Gajim, and even ChatSecure for Android, provide this feature.

With a per account approach, users could add accounts with different anonymity requirements, without harming usability, and with no increase on mobile data budgets. For instance, you could set up your top secret account to use Tor, while your public account connects via clearnet. This way, your public account would still fetch messages on networks that are either too slow, short lived or expensive (mobile data) for Tor. Right now, the only sane solution is to have all accounts use Tor. This adds unnecessary network overhead to both your connection and the Tor network.

If you only send your top secret stuff through Tor, you make it very easy for anyone watching you to figure out what you're doing, thus defeating the point of using Tor.

It all depends on your threat model, i.e., what you are using Tor for.

If your adversary is your ISP, or someone else able to record all your network traffic, then it makes sense to route everything through Tor. On the other hand, if your threat model is more relaxed, for instance, you are just using Tor to avoid the recipient (e.g. a XMPP server) from knowing your real IP, then using it alongside a clearnet account won't be detrimental.

+1

+1

+1

+1

socks5 greatly preferred

else use iptables front end to constrain conversations to vpn connection

+10 SOCKS5

+1 There are plenty of reasons why it would be very helpful to be able to connect to your accounts with different proxy settings. Please add this feature :) Is it difficult to implement this? In my imagination it shouldn't be too hard or dangerous, but unfortunately I had no time yet to look into the code :/

+1

This would be a very useful feature.

FYI, using an .onion server would get that account (at least?) used over Tor.

Essential..

Waiting for this to be added.. I have to use Telegram instead of XMPP, because it supports custom proxies.

@iNPUTmice @voey

Heads-up, as of Orbot-16.1.0-BETA-2 the HTTP proxy port is no longer 8118, but set up randomly on each Orbot start, while Conversations is hardcoded to try and connect to port 8118.

Same for SOCKS and others, but at the moment you can setup the SOCKS port in Orbot back to 9050, but there is no such control for HTTP.

/LE: Ref: https://gitlab.com/guardianproject/orbot/commit/397391f0580c4997444bfb520fe13c64fa6c973f

^^^ @n8fr8 How is an app supposed to cope with this randomness?

Two ways:

1. Orbot sends out broadcasts on status with the ports. You can see an example here of how to handle them, or just use our OrbotHelper class in the NetCipher library. https://github.com/guardianproject/NetCipher/blob/master/libnetcipher/src/info/guardianproject/netcipher/proxy/OrbotHelper.java https://github.com/guardianproject/NetCipher

2. A user can override in Orbot settings, to set the ports to a static value

@n8fr8 As of BETA-4 I don't see a way to override HTTP port specifically, did I miss it?

You may be right! Will make sure that gets in. We might also add a setting on the main screen to make it easy for people to set to static ports.

In the future, we either want apps to use the OrbotHelper/Broadcasts or for people to use the App VPN feature, thus static ports must end! :)

https://gitlab.com/guardianproject/orbot/issues/1

(using our new clean tracker on gitlab!)

@n8fr8 the issue is gone?

Anyway, appears fixed in BETA5

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

IMHO you should reconsider the usage of this stale bot to close issues. An issue should only be closed when it gets solved or it is no longer relevant. This issue, which is actually a feature request, reached none of those stages. If you wish the bot to work as a reminder please disable it from closing issues. As it is, it just forces issue reporters to make pointless comments (as this one). I had this same discussion on a few other projects. The general agreement was that this bot creates nothing but superfluous discussions.

@dllud your comment didn't add anything of value

@licaon-kter Exactly. But I was forced to add a comment due to the stale bot. That's the whole point of my comment: disable this bot, as otherwise you'll get pointless comments just to keep an issue alive.

@dllud no you were not forced to write that comment. Those issues are here to help the project. If I don’t want stale issues around that I haven’t worked on in 4 years that's my decision.

This would be useful not only for Tor, but especially I2P in order to connect to the XMPP server.

I think if nobody did it since years I'll give it a try myself.

Conversations with I2P support: https://github.com/r4sas/Conversations-I2P

@iNPUTmice maybe you will add support?