I use TOR browser which contains Orbot. However I would like to be able to use Orbot as a VPN for Thunderbird. It is possible to run Orbot as a VPN on my Android telephone. It is downloaded separately. I can't see that this is possible in Linux, at least not from the Synaptic Package Manager. I'm using Linux Mint 17.3 with Cinnamon 2.8.8.

Orbot is specifically for Tor traffic, not a general VPN which would end up going through the Tor network. You want Orbot as a free VPN. May I remind you Orbot and the Tor version of Firefox are closed source? Nice idea, but no cigar, I'm afraid.

It is always a concern when people exercise themselves overduly about personal security, as to what exactly they're trying to hide? In North Korea, China, even Russia, simply being of a particular religion is enough to get you locked up. But as Adlai Stevenson put it: "A free country is one where it is safe to be unpopular." Notice 'Unpopular,' not 'Illegal.' What's your application requiring telephone VPN, effectively "scrambling"? I can think of loads of illegal applications, but very few legal ones.

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I use the phone for messages when I'm out of the EU and only have access to a public WIFI.
As for the PC, I'm careful about not giving out any credit card or personal ID data but I've no control over what people send to me. I get quite a bit of nasty attempts. I only open email from unknown senders as text files and can trace where they are from so that is no problem.

Basically what you're saying is "If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear.".. The orgins of that quote is literally based in Nazi propaganda.. This is why Germany today is so sensitive about their privacy rights - cause they learned from their mistakes.. Other countries I guess are not so enlightened, lest they learn the hard way. Saying you dont care about privacy 'cause you have nothing to hide', is the same as saying you dont care about free speech 'cause you have nothing to say'. It's a basic human birth right that we shouldn't take for granted.

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Fair Point.

In Nazi Germany, we (JWs) were the largest Nazi concentration camp population before Reichskristallnacht. In our case, we weren't guilty of much above civil disobedience, which was taken as treason.

You do have commercial VPNs open to you, and they seem to be the way to go.

You've got it completely correct. Thumbs up.

It only took four posts for someone to completely break Godwin's Law?

Amateurs.

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Touché

I could have mentioned the goings on in Communist Russia China, or a host of other countries which Godwin never mentioned, but Germany is probably best known example of repression. In the USSR, it meant 10 years in a Gulag if you were caught as a JW.

OTOH, we've also had 'security' posts from people who evidently are accessing or peddling something highly illegal. In free countries, I don't want to provide any help to what little is illegal.

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Check out topdocumentary.com technology films - lots on security problems, pretty scary. Everyone needs protection.

I could of brought up Germany's Stasi, but like buisness kid said Nazi's are the most well-known.