Add to FAQ most frequent reasons why Briar fails to connect to a contact
Add to FAQ most frequent reasons why Briar fails to connect to a contact
This is a first draft, a suggestion to include this or something like that to the FAQ.
Why is connecting to another Briar user not working for me?
There are 4 reasons that usually cause this, and they are easy to resolve. If you encounter another reason, please get in touch with us.
1. You can your contact must be online over the same connection type.
Make sure that your and your contacts own status is online at least over one of the same connection type. (internet/wifi/bluetooth) You can check your status by touching on the menu symbol or by swiping from left to right. The gray color means that briar will not connect over this connection type and green means it has connection. Orange means it has connection issues. Touch on it to read more and change the connection type if necessary. If it stays orange for a while, restarting your phone might fix it. Also make sure you granted Briar the necessary permissions and that you both have turned on internet/wifi/bluetooth. If you want to reach your contact over bluethooth, you both must have a functioning bluetooth connection. If you want to reach your contact over wifi, you both must be connection to the same wifi. If you want to reach your contact over the internet, you both must have a functioning internet connection.
2. clocks must be in sync.
Make sure that your clock is in sync with the one of your contact (less then 24h difference). That is needed because Briar rotates its encryption keys regularly to provide forward secrecy.
3. Tor can be slow:
Briar uses Tor to tunnel its traffic through the internet, to anonymize and counter censorship. Sometimes Tor is a bid slow, or has a connection issue. Some patience solves that most of the time. If not, restarting Briar/your phone should do so. Doing so gives you a new route through Tor, that hopefully is more stable then the one you had prior.
4. Circumvent Tor cencorship:
Some Internet Service Provider and some countries block Tor. (If the usage of Tor is illegal in your country, make sure to understand the risk of using it.) Briar can help you to circumvent this, by utilizing so called "bridges". A bridge is a entrance node to the Tor network, that in best case is not associated with Tor or known by the Internet Service Provider. They are not fail safe, but they often work to circumvent this censorship. Usually Briar detects such a connection issue by itself, and give you automatically access to a bridge. You can check and change this by: >menu >settings >connections >Connection method for Tor network.