Android

Unfortunetely, no. On Android, tethering devices cannot use the VPN, and starting from KitKat you cannot even enable tethering while a VPN is active, and vice versa. This is by design and probably not going to change, and there is nothing we can do about it. We believe it's a terrible decision but Google's opinion probably is different as it makes their design much simpler.

Your only option is to run separate instances of Your Freedom on the tethered devices, and not run Your Freedom on the device providing the access.

Most likely the payment has not completed. Please log in to your Google Wallet account and check. If Google Wallet shows a completed payment then please report the payment ID to us and we'll sort out the problem. If the payment has not completed for whatever reason, Google will not charge you for the payment or will refund the payment to you.

It is also possible that you haven't connected through the Android app to our service (or the connection hasn't worked well) since you have made the payment. In-app payments are only completed while you are connected to our service or when you connect the next time using the app.

This message, unfortunately, does mean what it says: a required component of the VpnService API is missing on your phone. In preparation of the use of the VPN service API on Android apps need to acquire permission to use it; the user must confirm this through a dialog. On some phones the "activity" that displays this dialog and grants permission to use the API simply does not exist. We have received reports that this is the case for some Sony Xperia models running Android 4.0.4.

Check with your vendor to see if there is an upgrade available. It is clearly a bug and they need to fix it. We cannot do anything about it.

Open the "Configure" menu, then click "General". Switch on "Enable dump mode". Only switch on "extensive" dumping when asked by support (or when curious :-).

Dumps are written to a directory called "Your Freedom Dumps" on the sdcard (or whereever stuff is usually stored on your phone, same place as the "Download" directory). The name is auto-generated and contains your username, a device hash, and a timestamp. The file is GZIP compressed. It is safe to delete dumps or even the entire directory whenever you like. You'll probably need some other app to access, read and manage the dumps, or email them -- I recommend that you install "ES File Explorer" from Google Play, it contains everything you need and it's entirely free. I could not do without!

Don't forget to disable dumping again when you are done (or before you send the file!). The dump file is only closed when either the YF app is terminated or you stop dumping. Dumping unnecessarily all the time will not only waste flash space and battery, it will also unnecessarily load the CPU of your phone.

Dumps are very useful if you encounter problems and want us to help with them. Please try to reproduce the problem in "dump mode", then attach the dump to your email -- preferrably in its compressed form!

When you try to install the downloaded .apk file, you get a message that "there is a problem parsing the package". This is Android's way of telling you that the downloaded file is corrupted (in most cases it has not downloaded completely). Please try downloading it again.

New app versions have an update function; if you use this function, the downloaded file is checksummed before you are being offered to install it. If you use this update function, the problem cannot appear. (Obviously you cannot use it on the first install.)

The config wizard is wrong, you don't have to configure any apps. It is a text that I just copied over from the desktop version to get started, and it is simply not applicable.

All you need to do is start the connection and wait for the key symbol to appear in the status bar. When it is there, all your apps will automatically connect through the YF tunnel.

This question should be obsolete since version 20130313-01-alpha.

No OpenVPN mode, that's correct. You don't need it. The Android version of YF has its own built-in VPN mode. Right now it is enabled all the time and you cannot switch it off; this may change in the future. Whenever the key symbol is displayed in the status bar, VPN mode is active.

Port forwards are not implemented yet but there is no particular reason why they shouldn't get implemented in the future; the same is true for a local web/socks proxy port. Would you benefit from it? Let us know!

In fact it's not us showing two symbols, it's Android. Let me explain.

The key symbol is Android's way of showing that a VPN service is active. We have no influence on it, Android will always show the key if there is an active VPN.

The door symbol is ours. It indicates that the YF service is running (services are background processes that are not necessarily bound to an activity, i.e. the parts of applications that interact with the user). We'd rather not fill your status bar with unnecessary indicators, but we have to.

Android is very keen on freeing up resources that are seemingly no longer needed (it helps to improve startup time for other apps). If an activity (i.e. what you see in an app) is not currently displayed it is likely killed and removed from memory right away. Next time it is shown, the app will have to restore everything from a previously stored state. Same happens to background stuff, i.e. services: they can get stopped and removed from memory at any time and need to be prepared to restore themselves later. Naturally, this would be disastrous for a VPN service that needs to stay running at all times. The only way to somewhat ensure that it keeps running is to mark it as "user interactive" (same as for example a service that plays music -- you don't want it stopped all the time). There is no guarantee that Android won't kill such services if resources are very low, but at least they will not be first choice. Unfortunately, "user interactive" means that there is a status bar symbol.

Maybe at some point Google will notice that services providing VPN connectivity should not get killed at all. We would then be able to remove "our" symbol and just keep the key symbol.

Because apps that register a VPN service can effectively intercept and manipulate all IP traffic of your phone. That's what such a service is all about, after all. :-) It is arguable whether it would not have been better to just ask for permission at installation time (like with all the other permissions), but it seems Google has chosen to do it that way to emphasize the seriousness. Just imagine some funny app having a trojan function of redirecting all your traffic; too many people just install everything they want without thinking twice about the permissions they grant at installation time.

What happens if you don't allow YF to redirect your traffic? Well, it simply won't work with any applications that do not let you configure a web or socks proxy -- i.e. pretty much all of them.

Right now the process is manual, but automated. Just click "Updates" from time to time in the client and follow the dialog. We may add a configurable choice for fully automated updates soon.

However, if you have access to Google Play, Your Freedom is automatically updated like any other app unless you explicitly disable it.

We don't do that to annoy all those who have older phones, of course. Google has only recently added the required API to Android that allows app programmers to add their own VPNs. Prior to API level 14 (corresponding to Android 4.0) it is just not possible to register a VPN service other than the ones built in by Google.

For other things introduced in new Android versions, Google has provided support for older versions by allowing the app programmer to link the required code into the app (this is why many simple apps are so fat!). This won't work for VPN services though, since the underlying system needs to support it as well.

It is very unfortunate that many phone manufacturers (well, all of them I guess) care less about phones they have already sold than phones they are going to sell. But ask yourself: would you be willing to pay for firmware upgrades? If the answer is yes, tell your phone manufacturer!

Many people have asked us if we can't provide versions for "rooted" older phones. While this would be possible in theory (after all, the underlying system is Linux and apps running with root privileges can make full use of everything the kernel provides) it would mean that we would have to maintain two completely different versions of the application. This is not impossible but right now we are busy enough to maintain the desktop version and develop the "normal" Android version. There is a chance that this will happen in the future -- simply because on the long run we intend to add the VPN mode used on Android to the desktop version as well, and for Linux based systems this would require exactly the same kernel interfacing code as on Android.