Tails will never try to harm you or any of our users, as a core principle of our Social Contract. As part of that commitment, we have written this page to help you make an informed decision about whether you can trust Tails.

We think that Tails is a trustworthy project because:

  • Our work is public

    • Tails is Free Software and security researchers can examine our source code.

    • Known issues in Tails are described publicly in our GitLab issue tracker. We might hide embargoed security vulnerabilities in Tails while we work on a solution, but only as a way of protecting our users.

    • The most sensitive parts of Tails are explained in our design documents.

  • Tails is based on Tor and Debian

    Most of the software included in Tails has not been written by us, but is inherited from Tor and Debian:

    • Debian is one of the oldest Linux distributions and the one with the most derivatives, including Ubuntu. Debian and its derivatives are the most popular Linux distributions on web servers across the Internet. The Debian project is coordinated over the Internet by a team of volunteers whose work is entirely public. All this makes Debian one of the Free Software projects under the most scrutiny by security researchers.

    • Tor is the best anonymity network available. Tor has partnered with leading research institutions and has been subjected to intensive academic research. Tor has received awards from institutions such as the EFF and the Free Software Foundation. Even the NSA qualified Tor as "the King of high secure, low latency Internet Anonymity."

  • Our downloads are verifiable

    Making sure that our users are really downloading an unmodified version of our work is also critical to trust and security:

  • Tails is recommended by renown and diverse people and organizations

    See also our list of sponsors.