Tor Browser for Android sometimes continues to create network traffic in the background even after it has been closed

General
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If Tor Browser is used with the Always connect to the Tor automatically setting enabled, it can still create network traffic the background at times. This happens even if the browser is closed by swiping from the recent apps menu or using the quit option in the browser hamburger menu. From what I’ve noticed, if the browser didn’t terminate the network connection during the previous session, the network connection loading animation doesn’t appear on the browser. To prevent this, it is necessary to force stop the browser from the settings or disable the Always connect to the Tor automatically setting.

Have you noticed this, by any chance?

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Is there a ticket for this on their bug tracker? If not, maybe you should make one and include whatever logs/screenshots/reproduction steps/information you can. I’ve always kind of suspected something like this might be happening (I am rather distrustful of apps on Android “stopping” as I’ve often found apps continue to “run” in some sense anyway, even open source ones I am certain aren’t doing so maliciously), and I’m curious as to whether or not this is something that might be fixable.

Can I ask how you’re confirming (the connection isn’t terminated)/(Tor is creating network traffic in the background)? Maybe I can start checking too if I know your method.

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probably used GitHub - emanuele-f/PCAPdroid: No-root network monitor, firewall and PCAP dumper for Android · GitHub and realized that Tor browser was still active while app terminated

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Please excuse my delayed response.

I can monitor network traffic on my router. Or I think we could connect to the router via ssh and monitor traffic using the tcpdump command.

tcpdump -i [interface] host [deviceIP]

I did a quick search on Tor Browser’s Gitlab and didn’t find anything, but I can’t say for sure that there isn’t a similar bug report, and I haven’t filed a bug report with them either. Actually, I thought about starting a thread about this on the Tor Project’s forum, but I didn’t feel like waiting for my account to be approved, and I didn’t want to sign up with an email because I think a project that promises anonymity should also offer the option to sign up anonymously.

I didn’t know about this. I’ll look into it a bit. Thanks.

Edit: With PCAPdroid, I monitored this issue using a more user friendly interface. It’s definitely a great app. Tor Browser was creating more background network traffic than I had imagined.