the feature works as advertised (I checked) - if you remove the checkmark of voip App in the app-list offered by the Tor function, it will not get routed via Tor → no increased network-hops or latency for a voip App. (A small “but”: if the App is using firebase-cloud-messaging to notify of incoming calls, there can be a delay in notification / initiation as those messages are routed on Tor - but not influence the actual call itself)
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Thank you for clearing this up! Much appreciated.
@tcecyk @MaMaTT88 So I was struggling to make a phone call this morning, but then once I checked off Advanced Privacy, the call DID go though. I then tried a call with just the “Hide my real IP address” option checked off for the “Phone” app and the call went through again. So it seems pretty important for users to check off the Phone app in order to have basic phone call functionality. Are others having a similar experience?
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Was it a VoLTE or VoWifi phone call, or a regular one?
@MaMaTT88 @tcecyk The network said H+. When that comes up I know the call is very likely to go through and sound good. But I’ve been having mixed results. Later a phone call with the phone app removed from hide-my-ip behaved poorly. Then I made another call with the same setting and I wouldn’t even here the phone dialing. It couldn’t even get connected. So I then had to turn off all of Advanced Privacy to be able to make the call, which then went smoothly through the H+ network.
So what’s the deal? Am I just not going to be able to use the Advanced Privacy feature? I want to be able to use as much of the feature as possible without it negatively impacting my phone calls. I need to better understand how Advanced Privacy works in order to be able to set it up appropriately. I’ve read through this whole thread, but I’m still not clear enough on how everything works.
Okay, so my guess is that the hide-my-ip function is responsible for my phone call issues, since that’s the part of Advanced Privacy that goes through the /e/OS’ version or orbot. Apparently excluding the phone app from hide-my-ip isn’t enough to have good phone call functionality, so I’m wondering if I will also need to exclude “System” from hide-my-ip. Would that then be enough to bring back normal phone functionality?
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I’d disable hide-my-ip at the slightest networking problem, it’s an expert feature imo.
leaving hide-my-ip disabled for a few days could troubleshoot a potential influence on carrier calls by isolation. I think it’s unlikely, especially <4g. I’ll ask more questions in your opened thread
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H+ is what my phone started saying a few weeks before the carrier turned off the 3g network (at which point calls didn’t work at all), i.e. likely 3g workaround or sth, i imagine…
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How about advanced privacy during tethering; do the same features apply to tethered devices (as to the device running AP) whenever AP is turned on?
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If I use proton vpn do I need AP? Can both run together?
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Both can run together. But you’d better don’t use the “Hide my IP” feature from Advanced Privacy as ProtonVPN does it better.
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Agreed. I use a fake Location and Tracker blocking, but I let it use the “real” IP address, which is really ProtonVPN’s IP address. I set it to the same city that my fake location is set to.
I’m still confused about whether your ISP can see what you are doing with AP switched on.
I don’t really understand TOR well enough although I get the basic idea.
If I have the right settings in AP for my browser, Brave for example:
Can my ISP see my searches?
Does my ISP know what websites I am visiting?
The whole IP as well as DNS lookups can be confusing to figure out sometimes. I suggest taking a look through some online info explaining and possibly answering your questions.
Some good info is below. Covers a lot of ground.
A year or so ago I decided to remove phone lines from a few devices after getting home internet. They, along with the /e/ devices, now use data only SIMs with endpoints in Europe (I’m in the U.S.). If I were using just the SIMs then hiding IP wouldn’t be necessary (no links to T-Mobile, AT&T, etc.) but when using the Wi-Fi (internet is T-Mobilel LTE-based), hiding the IP and/or using alternate domain name servers is still needed.
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if TOR is enabled within AP…
… it’s a “No” to both questions.
Orbot as used inside AP mitigates against ISP snooping and moves the trust to the Tor Exit Node. DNS queries are tunneled through Tor too. Even if you’d use plaintext http (you shouldn’t and probably can’t with most search engines), the network leg up until the Exit Node is encrypted by Tor. Now you trust the Exit Node that can infer what your ISP used to be able to infer.
Tor is an expert tool and some applications (UDP based) can’t work, operators discriminate against it (Cloudflare) and network performance is degraded (more hops on potentially less bandwidth). With that said, I recommend trialing it if it works for you personally - for normal text/image browsing it’s a good fit. Though it shouldn’t be enabled ever by default.
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A good VPN (such as Proton, IVPN, … if you can afford it) alongside a good filtering DNS (DoT type like dnsforge or maybe nextDNS ?) is a good way to prevent ISP mass collection of your data, and is pretty good at filtering ads and malware.
Note that the “tracker manager” of Advanced Privacy can’t work with DNS over TLS (DoT).
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ProtonVPN has free option as well from what I know. Limited to 3 countries but still. 
Question is if I can close down the Advanced Privacy with no difficulties to system work :think: This is a nice idea, but at the same time drastically slows down the work of the whole system 
Firstly, i would like to express my great appreciation of the effort that you developers put into these security issues! I noticed AP recently and it didn’t take long to get acquainted to it, and when I realized what it does (tracker controll) i was really pleasantly surprised!
I played with it a little and it did raise some questions:
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Can i really use an external VPN on top of AP? I thought the first post said that AP takes the VPN slot in the system and that the devs are working on the solution. Then somebody later in the thread wrote that it was possible to use both. I find it hard to tell in the actual use, since there is no line that says for instance ‘Active’ or not, next to AP, when another VPN is on.
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Hiding IP with AP does not work for me, because it seem to block all my internet traffic, even for those apps that were not checked in the list of apps you want to hide IP for. What could I be doing wrong? But that is my experience with Tor in general, the internet speed gets really slow and unreliable and that is why I use it very rarely. I do use some VPNs, used Surfshark in the past, nowadays PIA and Calyx’. They seem to work ok.
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I use Viber for keepin in touch with people that are not interested in getting Signal or similar. I noticed that AP blocks 6 trackers, which I of course was very happy for.
But then I compared that with the list of trackers in Viber on the Aurora store’s rapport - there it said that Viber has 7 trackers. And the one that AP missed was called ‘Facebook Ads’. Of course i realize that AP can impossibly catch each and every tracker in use. But I do wonder how I could get around that last one that, being Facebook’s, is especially irritating for me…
But these are minor things, and i find /e/ despite those a wonderful creation! So I’d like to again express my HUGE thank you to all you developers!
AP takes the VPN slot only for the “Hide my IP” function (if activated), not for “Fake my location” and not for “Trackers Blockers”. Your choice if You use all of them or just some of them or AP at all.
If you do not use “Hide my IP” You should be able to use the VPN slot of the system for whatever other app or service that You like.
And Yes, Tor slows it down in general anyways…
see the specific section on “hide my ip”-side effects in the first post
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Thank you for the answer! Short and concise. I appreciate it!
Anyone has any ideas on the last remaining, facebook-tracker?
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The tracker of facebook.net and others are mentioned in this thread, from when Advanced Privacy was quite new.
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