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Guardian Project
guardianproject.info · Company blog · on HN since 2010
The Guardian Project builds open-source, privacy-focused mobile apps and tools such as Orbot, ChatSecure, Haven and PanicKit.
What HN saysCommenters like its apps and install them first on a new Android phone; they cite it as a reason to pick Android and praise Haven as a baby monitor.
67HN people shared it
43linked it in comments
39stories submitted
136story points
11 months agolast shared
2010people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1The Guardian Project: Open-Source, Secure Mobile Apps8 people · 1 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 2Orbot: Mobile Anonymity + Circumvention7 people · 1 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 3Building an Open, Verifiably Secure Mobile Ecosystem5 people · 7 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 4Gibber4 people · first shared 2011
- 5OSTN3 people · first shared 2012
- 6Chatsecure3 people · first shared 2014
- 7Signal Messenger is now available on Guardian F-Droid repo2 people · 13 points · first shared 2025 · 3 comments on HN
- 8Phishing for android developers2 people · 2 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 9PanicKit: making your whole phone respond to a panic button2 people · 2 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 10Haven: Building the Most Secure Baby Monitor Ever?2 people · 2 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 11Org.torproject.android2 people · first shared 2021
- 12Implementing TLS Encrypted Client Hello [Nov 2021]1 people · 40 points · first shared 2021 · 18 comments on HN
- 13Combating “Fake News” with a Smartphone “Proof Mode”1 people · 19 points · first shared 2017 · 13 comments on HN
- 14Scanning Apps – Off the Record1 people · 7 points · first shared 2022 · 2 comments on HN
- 15Serving Websites Privately over Tor Onion Services (From Your Laptop)1 people · 5 points · first shared 2022 · 1 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
zeveb · 2017-12-22
I really like the Guardian Project[0]. Their stuff is some of the first stuff I install on any new phone; it's part of what makes Android such a great OS for the privacy-conscious. It's also great to see that — contrary to what Wired reported — this is not just a product of Mr. Snowden's team. He's not trustworthy, but the Guardian Project are.
[0] https://guardianproject.info/
derrida · 2011-12-08
There are real reasons people buy Android over iOS. I bought an Android because of great applications like https://guardianproject.info/ and http://whispersys.com The ability to manage the security of Android down to the finest detail, and get software based voice encryption made me choose it. I agree some of the hardware models feel crappy. Any of the Nexus models feel as well designed as an iPhone.
dannyobrien · 2023-12-15
I don't have favorites, but Spritely is definitely an equal favorite for the projects we support at the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web. Others HNers may also be interested in include:
* Internet Archive's Democracy's Library https://blog.archive.org/2022/10/19/announcing-democracys-library/
* Distributed Press
https://distributed.press/
* Guardian Project
https://guardianproject.info/
* MuckRack Document Cloud
https://muckrack.com/
* Harvard Library Innovation Lab
https://lil.law.harvard.edu/
* Human Rights Data Analysis Group
https://hrdag.org/data-publication/
Longer list here: https://ffdweb.org/explore/#partners
franky47 · 2021-02-13
Thank you, I've been looking for a privacy-first baby monitor app for Android, and it looks like Haven was inadvertently made into one of the best options [1].
[1] https://guardianproject.info/2017/12/22/haven-building-the-most-secure…
SEJeff · 2018-10-23
Here's a D.I.Y. one that looks like a fun project:
https://cryptosense.com/blog/building-a-raspberry-pi-hsm-for-rsa-2014/
The Nitrokey HSM is what the guardian project recommends and is super affordable actually:
https://shop.nitrokey.com/shop/product/nitrokey-hsm-7
Edit: Changed from "what cloudflare uses" to "what the guardian project recommends"[1]. I was reading too many tabs at once and confused things.
https://guardianproject.info/2017/12/18/building-a-signing-server/
Sorry to jgrahamc for the incorrect endorsement.
nextos · 2018-07-08
There are many F-Droid repositories aside from main F-Droid. Please see here: https://forum.f-droid.org/t/known-repositories/721
https://guardianproject.info/ one is particularly interesting. Haven is a Guardian Project app.
guessbest · 2014-10-04
Good catch. It might have something to do with the Palm Lifedrive[1] and its 4gb limit or the NVFS[2] of the Palm 650 and other models. Who knows? It seems like it could be used by a software services company to make a thin client with an encrypted operating system that could detect tampering or cloning. I'm guessing that what the Guardian Project[3] does and why it gets mentioned along with SQLCipher.
[1] http://how-to.wikia.com/wiki/Howto_replace_microdrive_with_compactflas…
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Volatile_File_System
[3] https://guardianproject.info/
thisiswrong · 2014-04-25
> They could've easily, easily taken on the Google/Facebook conglomerate.
Even better that any of these NSA-friendly conglomerates is the ChatSecure App:
"-UNBEATABLE PRIVACY: We keep your messages 100% private using state of the art Off-The-Record (OTR) encryption. Your conversations cannot be logged or intercepted by anyone.
-AD-FREE: We want your love, not your money" [1]
[1] https://guardianproject.info/apps/chatsecure/
guardianproject · 2013-06-24
OStel.co does address this - we are specifically trying to lay out how a privacy-first, security by design VOIP service should be run. We are taking stock, off-the-shelf open-source software, and figuring out the best configuration for it to be run in order to store as little data as possible. We are also thinking about how we can defend against tracking of signaling information - by perhaps running the SIP/TLS portion over Tor.
You can read about this and more on some of our posts on the Guardian Project blog:
http://guardianproject.info/2013/06/12/carrier-grade-verizon-and-the-n…
http://guardianproject.info/2013/01/31/anonymous-cb-radio-with-mumble-…
http://guardianproject.info/2012/12/10/voice-over-tor/
https://guardianproject.info/2013/02/22/lower-bounds-of-the-narrow-ban…
Vinnl · 2025-05-21
> - They claim federation is impossible… yet matrix has it.
I believe the claim was that it's hard to adapt to changing markets and be federated [1]. Comparing Signal's market share to Matrix's is obviously not a direct cause-and-effect, but Matrix hasn't yet proven that you can get mass adoption that way.
> - They claim openness but are actively hostile to linux distributions and f-droid.
I'm too lazy to find the specific GitHub comment, but IIRC there was a specific list of features they'd need to actively support F-Droid. It is now available in the Guardian Project's F-Droid repository though [2].
[1] https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/
[2] https://guardianproject.info/apps/org.thoughtcrime.securesms/
helsinkiandrew · 2023-01-13
The companies/apps are here:
https://www.eyewitness.global/
https://guardianproject.info/apps/org.witness.proofmode/
I think all these are really doing is ensuring an image isn't modified. Signing/Creating a hash of the image and metadata (timestamp and perhaps location) means that a change after that can be detected. If you trust the people making the apps - or perhaps the companies running repositories they use - you could then trust that the photo was taken because the app is signing it when it is taken. Ensuring when and where the photo was taken does seem harder to prove as the time and location of the device can be fooled.
Trouble_007 · 2022-10-16
Guardian Project – Blog : https://guardianproject.info/blog/
Guardian Project – Repository of All Tools : https://github.com/orgs/guardianproject/repositories?type=all
Guardian Project (software) – Wikipedia : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_Project_(software)
juunpp · 2022-07-24
pabs3 · 2022-03-01
I note that F-Droid are hiring contractors right now:
https://guardianproject.info/contact/android-python-contractor/
snthd · 2021-02-05
>I have a suggestion for signal team: please put tor in the signal, tor is better than any proxys or vpns.
You can get a tor proxy for Android at
https://guardianproject.info/apps/org.torproject.android/
ignoramous · 2020-09-28
You can use https://getintra.org/ and its numerous forks to overcome censorship as implemented by Indian ISPs today.
Then there is Tor on Android https://guardianproject.info/apps/orbot/ and VPN services like https://getlantern.com/ and https://psiphon.ca/ that exclusively focus on anti-censorship measures. Check their privacy policies before committing to use them.
DarthGhandi · 2020-08-23
Haven't used it personally but Guardian Project has something along these lines for Android:
https://guardianproject.info/apps/info.guardianproject.ripple/
theHoatzin · 2019-05-22
I use orbot https://guardianproject.info/apps/orbot/ on my phone. I route most of my phone's traffic through Tor and it doesn't impact speed much, granted I mostly use my phone for messaging and not so much for browsing or working.
sohkamyung · 2018-08-18
Write-up about the project at [1]
[1] IOCipher is the antidote to “Man-in-the-Disk” attack [ https://guardianproject.info/2018/08/17/iocipher-is-the-antidote-to-ma… ]
btown · 2017-09-27
The analogy is one of defense in depth: if you're serious about security, you can use memorized & typed secondary passwords on secure apps, such as secure notes in 1Password, or an app like https://guardianproject.info/apps/pixelknot/ that would steganographically encode secure notes into otherwise normal photos, potentially with independent passwords for complete deniability.
A locked door and a face-locked iPhone are only the first line of defense, and are largely for convenience's sake in both daily use/as a deterrent and in the case of physically being distant from your property. The "guns" are entirely independent.
ewheeler · 2017-02-13
Check out PanicKit: https://guardianproject.info/2016/01/12/panickit-making-your-whole-pho…
ctrijueque · 2016-12-15
>A side issue is that being able to prove authenticity would be valuable...
The first time I heard about CameraV & InfomaCam apps I tought: Why regular cameras don't have this?
https://guardianproject.info/apps/camerav/
https://blog.witness.org/2013/01/how-informacam-improves-verification-…
akerro · 2016-04-14
r0muald · 2015-12-03
I suggest looking at the apps and tools developed by the Guardian Project https://guardianproject.info/code/
There was an encrypted note-taking app but it's not developed any more.
The generic solution is to use GnuPG.
mike-cardwell · 2015-07-10
Please consider making this work with keysync:
https://guardianproject.info/apps/keysync/
higherpurpose · 2015-02-25
TextSecure/Signal - https://whispersystems.org/blog/bithub/
I couldn't find any USD donation button, which is quite strange. They also don't have a donate button on their site. You can donate here, though, and to a few other projects, too:
https://freedom.press/bundle/encryption-tools-journalists
There's also these guys here - but I couldn't find any donate button. Jesus, why are they making it so hard to give them money?
https://guardianproject.info/
OTR - https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/donate.php
You could also donate EFF, which is funding some cool projects such as HTTPS Everywhere, Privacy Badger and soon the free certificate authority https://letsencrypt.org/.
https://supporters.eff.org/donate
Tox - open source Skype alternative: https://donate.tox.im/
bdkoepke · 2015-01-11
I don't know why ChatSecure by the guardian project never comes up in these discussions: https://guardianproject.info/apps/chatsecure/
It uses Otr for encrypted chat, so you can use any otr client for the other side of the chat. I personally use pidgin on my laptop and ChatSecure on my cell. It currently supports at least iOS and Android, which encompasses most people that I know.
justcommenting · 2014-10-27
you may be interested in https://guardianproject.info/apps/orbot/ which at least previously supported running a relay. the same can be accomplished from within the guardian project's lildebi app.
amiramir · 2014-06-22
Another solution to look at: https://guardianproject.info/apps/chatsecure/
Android-only right now but open source.
jjh42 · 2014-03-20
See https://guardianproject.info/apps/orbot/ for some easy to use Tor apps for Android.