[ooni-talk] BOOM! New OONI Mobile App Released!

[Maria Xynou]

Hellos!

Today the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) is thrilled to
announce the release of *ooniprobe mobile app* on *Google Play* and
*iOS* app stores!

*Google Play:*
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.openobservatory.ooniprobe

*iOS:* https://itunes.apple.com/US/app/id1199566366

OONI's new mobile app is easy to use and allows you to monitor:

*- **Blocking of websites;**
**- Presence of systems ("middle boxes") that could be responsible for
censorship and/or surveillance;**
**- Speed and performance of your network.*

Since OONI started monitoring global censorship events five years ago,
we have seen that many cases of internet censorship around the world are
politically motivated, aimed at stifling communications and access to
information during protests, elections, and other political events.
While we may all be familiar with such events, what we often lacked was
*evidence *required to hold those responsible to account. What we also
lacked was real-time understanding of how internet censorship was
implemented, and therefore how it could be circumvented.

Now anyone who owns an Android or iOS smartphone can play an active role
in uncovering information controls around the world.

OONI's new mobile app not only allows you to see which websites are
blocked, how, where, when, and by whom, but it also provides tips on how
to circumvent the detected censorship. It also allows you to measure the
speed and performance of your network, which can be useful in uncovering
more covert forms of censorship, such as throttling (a censorship
technique we have increasingly seen in Turkey and elsewhere around the
world).

All network measurement data collected through OONI's mobile app is
*published on OONI Explorer
*(https://explorer.ooni.torproject.org/world/) and on *OONI's
measurement interface* (https://measurements.ooni.torproject.org/) --
unless you opt out. Open data allows third parties to conduct
independent studies, to verify OONI findings, and to answer other
research questions. It also allows us all to have a more accurate
understanding of information controls around the world. With each test
you run via OONI's mobile app, you are playing an active role in
increasing transparency of internet censorship.

ooniprobe is an investigatory tool and may therefore pose some risks
(https://ooni.torproject.org/about/risks/). When you first install the
app, we require you to answer a quiz correctly, demonstrating your
understanding of potential risks.

We believe that access to information is a fundamental human right and
therefore everyone should have the right and ability to examine their
digital world and the restrictions that may be imposed on it. Moses
Karanja, a Kenyan researcher on the politics of information controls at
Strathmore University's CIPIT said in a statement:

/"What Signal did for end-to-end encryption, OONI did for unmasking
censorship. Most Africans rely on mobile phones as their primary means
of accessing the internet and OONI's mobile app allows for decentralized
efforts in unmasking the nature of censorship and internet performance.
The possibilities are exciting for researchers, business and the human
rights community around the world. We look forward to interesting days
ahead."/

Learn more about OONI's mobile app here:
https://ooni.torproject.org/post/ooni-mobile-app/

Please contact the OONI team with any questions you may have at
*contact at openobservatory.org*.

All the best,

The OONI Team.

-- 
Maria Xynou
Research and Partnerships Coordinator
Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI)
https://ooni.torproject.org/
PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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