Snowflake Volunteer

Snowflake Volunteer is an open-source Android application that helps users connect to the Tor network where access to Tor is blocked. It is intended for people in countries with Internet censorship who need a way to reach Tor through a different connection path. The application works with volunteer proxies located in countries where the Internet is not censored.

Snowflake Volunteer uses WebRTC, a technology commonly used by video and voice conferencing software. It makes the connection resemble an audio or video call, which can make Tor use less detectable to Internet censors. The application routes the connection through a volunteer proxy before it reaches the Tor network.

Snowflake Volunteer does not provide a complete censorship-circumvention setup on its own. Users who want to browse through this method need a Tor-powered application such as Tor Browser or Orbot and must select Snowflake in that application’s settings. When someone acts as a Snowflake entry point, the websites they access through Tor see the Tor exit node’s IP address rather than the entry point’s IP address.

In the download catalog, Snowflake Volunteer belongs to the Internet & Browsers category because it supports access to the Internet through Tor in restricted environments. MirrorNest mirrors the official Android build directly on its own storage. MirrorNest scans the mirrored build for malware before publishing it.