OONI Probe vs TrackerControl
Side-by-side comparison of two open source alternatives
OONI Probe
Are websites and social media apps blocked? Is your network unusually slow? Run OONI Probe to find out! With this app, you will examine the blocking of websites and instant messaging apps, measure your network's speed and performance, and check whether systems that could be responsible for censorship and surveillance are in your network. OONI Probe is developed by the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), a free software project (under The Tor Project) that aims to uncover internet censorship around the world. Since 2012, OONI’s global community has collected millions of network measurements from more than 200 countries, shedding light on multiple cases of network interference. ▶ Collect evidence of internet censorship You can check whether and how websites and instant messaging apps are blocked. The network measurement data you will collect may serve as evidence of internet censorship. ▶ Detect systems responsible for censorship and surveillance OONI Probe tests are also designed to uncover the presence of systems (middleboxes) that could be responsible for censorship and surveillance. ▶ Measure the speed and performance of your network You can measure the speed and performance of your network by running OONI's implementation of the Network Diagnostic Test (NDT). You can also measure video streaming performance with the Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) test. ▶ Open data OONI publishes network measurement data because open data allows third parties to verify OONI findings, conduct independent studies, and answer other research questions. Openly publishing OONI data also helps increase transparency of internet censorship around the world. You can explore and download OONI data here: https://ooni.io/data/ ▶ Free software All OONI Probe tests (including our NDT and DASH implementations), are based on free and open source software. You can find OONI software projects on GitHub: https://github.com/ooni. Curious to learn how OONI Probe tests work? Learn more: https://ooni.io/nettest/ To receive updates from the OONI-verse, follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory
TrackerControl
TrackerControl allows users to monitor and control the widespread, ongoing, hidden data collection in mobile apps about user behaviour ('tracking').To detect tracking, TrackerControl combines the power of the Disconnect blocklist, used by Firefox, and our in-house blocklist is used, created from analysing ~2 000 000 apps! Additionally, TrackerControl supports custom blocklists.This approachreveals the companies behind tracking,allows to block tracking selectively, andexposes the purposes of tracking, such as analytics or advertising.The app also aims to educate about your rights under Data Protection Law, such the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).Under the hood, TrackerControl uses Android's VPN functionality, to analyse apps' network communications locally on the Android device. This is accomplished through a local VPN server, to enable network traffic analysis by TrackerControl.No root is required, other VPNs or Private DNS are not supported. No external VPN server is used, to keep your data safe! TrackerControl even protects you against DNS cloaking, a popular technique to hide trackers in websites and apps.TrackerControl will always be free and open source, being a research project.
| Feature | OONI Probe | TrackerControl |
|---|---|---|
| License | BSD-2-Clause | GPL-3.0-only |
| Install sources | F-DroidGitHub | F-DroidGitHubIzzyOnDroid |
| Categories | Password ManagerDev ToolsBrowser | Password ManagerFirewallDev ToolsBrowser |
| Features | Ad-FreeOpen SourceNo Tracking | Ad-FreeOpen SourceNo Tracking |
| Platforms | Android | Android |
| Website | ||
| Source code |