BEST WAY TO USE OWLI

Owli protects you by design. A few habits make it stronger.

None of this is required to use Owli — it works safely out of the box. But since Owli has no account recovery, no support desk that can reset anything for you, and no company holding a backup of your data, a handful of habits are what actually stand between you and permanently losing access.

FOR MAXIMUM ANONYMITY

Using Owli with Tor and Tails

Owli already encrypts what you say. Tor adds a separate, complementary protection: hiding that you're the one saying it, by routing your connection through independent relays so nothing you connect to sees your real IP address.

What Tor actually protects

  • ✓Hides your real IP address from the Nostr relays Owli connects to, and from anyone watching those relays' traffic.
  • ✓Resists traffic analysis that would otherwise link "this IP address" to "this pattern of activity" over time.
  • ✓Encrypts your connection in layers across three relays, so no single relay on the path knows both who you are and what you're connecting to.

Common mistakes that quietly undo it

  • Using Owli in a normal browser tab while Tor Browser is open in another

    Only traffic from Tor Browser itself is routed through Tor. Owli has to be open inside Tor Browser for this to apply at all.

  • Resizing or maximizing the Tor Browser window

    Tor Browser deliberately ships with a uniform window size so every user looks the same to a fingerprinting script. Resizing it makes your session more unique and easier to pick out.

  • Installing extra browser extensions

    Same fingerprinting problem — an unusual set of extensions narrows down who you could be, even with your IP hidden.

  • Logging into an identified account over Tor

    Tor hides your IP, not who you tell a service you are. If you log into something tied to your real identity in the same session, that correlates you regardless of the network layer.

  • Mixing a Tor session and a normal session with the same identity carelessly

    Timing and behavior patterns can still correlate two sessions even if the IP is different — think about when and how you switch between them if this matters for your situation.

Who benefits most

Anyone whose safety depends on hiding that they're communicating, not just the content — journalists and sources, activists organizing under hostile scrutiny, and anyone in a region where connecting to certain services at all is itself risky. If your situation is "I don't want this specific message read," Owli's own encryption already covers that. If it's "I don't want anyone to know I'm using Owli in the first place," that's what Tor adds.