Over the last couple of months people from the Tor Project have been trying to get Apple to remove a fake Tor app from the App Store with no success.
The Tor Browser is a popular program for anonymous Internet browsing, the name has also became mainstream since the rampant reports of surveillance taking place. With Tor or any other anonymity tool, they help to hide your tracks while you surf, so prying eyes won’t be able trace back to you.
The fake Tor app was first reported to Apple in December with Apple responding that they are going to give the developer “a chance to defend their app.”
The app itself costs $0.99 and reportedly contains adware and spying functionality. Adware in a paid app, shady, but that doesn’t necessarily point to maliciousness or that it is fake.
The red flag with this app is that it is not developed by Tor, is using Tor’s name to get installs, and the description fails to mention that it is not affiliated with the Tor Project.
People with Tor are not happy with the results of direct emails with Apple and have taken to Twitter in attempt to get their attention.
Whether this fake Tor app can be trusted to keep you anonymous is unknown at this time, but with the attention it is now getting it might not be around much longer—with its current branding at least.
At the time of this write-up the app is currently still in the App Store.
