Notices by The Tor Project (torproject@mastodon.social), page 24

Documentation is critical to the health of #opensource projects, but it is often overlooked. We heard from a number of you who wanted to help with ours, and next week is your chance.

Join our DocsHackathon Monday 2 September to Friday 6 September. We’ll be rewarding the top 3 contributors with prizes at the end of the week.

https://blog.torproject.org/join-tors-docshackathon-next-week

After months of work, we have a new stable release series: Tor 0.4.1.5 🙌

This series adds experimental circuit-level padding, authenticated SENDME cells, & improvements to save on CPU consumption. It also fixes bugs in bootstrapping & v3 onion services. https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-0415

Tails, a live operating system relying on Tor that helps you to use the internet anonymously and circumvent censorship almost anywhere you go and on any computer, turns 10 today.

Happy birthday, Tails 🎂

https://lists.torproject.org/…/tor-…/2009-August/002667.html
https://tails.boum.org #FOSS #opensource #surveillance #internetfreedom #privacy

Yikes. "The fingerprints of over 1 million people, as well as facial recognition information... was discovered on a publicly accessible database for a company used by the likes of the UK Metropolitan police, defence contractors and banks." https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/14/major-breach-found-in-biometrics-system-used-by-banks-uk-police-and-defence-firms

If you use Firefox or Chrome, we developed an easy way you can help people bypass censorship.

Our Snowflake extension turns your browser into a proxy that connects Tor users in censored regions to the Tor network. https://snowflake.torproject.org/

"U.S. attorney general William Barr has said consumers should accept the risks that encryption backdoors pose to their personal cybersecurity to ensure law enforcement can access encrypted communications." 🙄 https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/23/william-barr-consumers-security-risks-backdoors/

Oakland has become the 3rd US city to ban facial recognition technology. 👏

Who's next? https://www.salon.com/2019/07/21/oakland-becomes-third-us-city-to-ban-police-use-of-facial-recognition_partner/

We've launched a giving program for monthly donors who help us make privacy a priority.

If you pledge a modest amount each month, we will send you exclusive gifts to show our appreciation.

Become a Defender of Privacy today: https://donate.torproject.org/monthly-giving

🚨 Foreigners crossing certain Chinese borders are being forced to install malware on their Android phones.

"The malware downloads a tourist’s text messages, calendar entries, and phone logs, as well as scans the device for over 70,000 different files." https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7xgame/at-chinese-border-tourists-forced-to-install-a-text-stealing-piece-of-malware

Time to update: There's a new version of Tor Browser available.

Tor Browser 8.5.2 fixes a critical security issue in Firefox and updates NoScript to 10.6.3. Full changelog: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-852

If you have basic command line experience, you can become one of the thousands of relay operators powering the Tor network, the backbone of all Tor software. https://torproject.org/relay-guide

You can download Tor Browser for Android from our website or Google Play. It should be available from F-Droid within the next day. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.torproject.torbrowser

We've got big news.

After months of work, Tor Browser is now stable on Android.

Tor Browser 8.5 brings the highest degree of privacy and censorship-circumvention available to Android users. https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-85

Through Sunday: You can get a limited edition "Tor: At the Heart of Internet Freedom" t-shirt featuring a quote from Snowden on the back for a $39 donation. Enter '39' into the 'other' box, and we will contact you about sizing. https://donate.torproject.org

We have another special offer for you.

For one week only, the Tor sticker pack, including multiple reusable camera covers and our favorite logos, can be yours for a $17 donation.

Just write in $17 into the "other" box on the donate page, and you're set. https://donate.torproject.org

A vulnerability in WhatsApp allowed attackers to inject commercial spyware, developed by NSO Group, on to phones.

The spyware could be transmitted through a call, even if the call was unanswered.

It is unclear how many phones were targeted.
https://www.ft.com/content/4da1117e-756c-11e9-be7d-6d846537acab

Very exciting call for research:

Mozilla has an interest in potentially integrating more of Tor into Firefox 🔥

Tor has never been deployed at this scale, so there are a lot of considerations to research before giving this a try.

Learn more & apply for Mozilla's Research Grant: https://blog.torproject.org/mozilla-research-call-tune-tor-integration-and-scale

Facebook expects to be fined up to $5 billion by the FTC for privacy violations.

Facebook's annual revenue is $56 billion.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/technology/facebook-ftc-fine-privacy.html
.onion: https://www.nytimes3xbfgragh.onion/2019/04/24/technology/facebook-ftc-fine-privacy.html

Ola Bini is a long-time privacy activist and should be released immediately. We are very concerned about the implications of his arrest and his safety. https://blog.torproject.org/ecuador-free-ola-bini

Reminder: Privacy is your right. You shouldn't be exploited for using the internet. #privacy #humanrights