Live data from Hacker News

The Mullvad Browser

mullvad.net

291–300 of 434 posts

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#291
post #31

From the FAQ [0]: > Why is the time is wrong? > The timezone is spoofed, to combat fingerprinting. > What's this weird spacing around the websites? > It’s called letterboxing, a function to combat fingerprinting (using your browser window size to identify you together with other measures). > How do I stay logged into specific websites between sessions? > It’s not possible. It’s an action to combat tracking. Not sure…

Except most of the time I don't want to spoof my timezone, don't want weird spacing around websites, and do want to remain logged in to websites. > How do I stay logged into specific websites between sessions? > It’s not possible. It’s an action to combat tracking. Turns me off immediately

Have you considered becoming a non-user?

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people just want everything, no compromises.

That's not very charitable. Some people just want to pick a different point on the tradeoff between convenience and privacy. Imagine User A uses Fastmail every day, logging in manually every morning. User B uses Fastmail every day, with a saved login cookie. How is User B's privacy any worse? What would User B gain from not having that choice?

It's not a matter of user choice, it's a matter of maintenance and product integrity.

User B's privacy is objectively lessened by allowing tracking cookies, but that is their choice. What is out of the user's control is what mullvad chooses to spend their time supporting.

If mullvad allows users to turn off a privacy feature, now that's a permutation they have to test for. It's also an attack vector they've enabled, either through user carelessness or social engineering. Mullvad wants to be able to say "here's a browser, it's 100% private" and not have to say "as long as you do X, and don't do Y, and...". Every other browser already does that.

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#293
post #20

I guess why not. This is an open source, rebranded Firefox and Firefox-like browsers could use some publicity. It promotes privacy and privacy can use some publicity too. Tor too. Mullvad seems to be honest in the fact that their business model is selling VPNs and it's nice they are saying it's not enough. They are not saying that you might not need one though. We need a Firefox with good defaults and it seems like t…

> it's nice they are saying it's not enough. Mullvad, who has a reputation in the HN comments for being just like... over the top amazing + great (they swear up and down they don't store traffic logs and if you don't trust them, you can pay anonymously somehow or whatever), is having a "hard time" being profitable/growing all while NordVPN, who has a bad reputation in HN comments for being untrustworthy and "not so a…

>> it's nice they are saying it's not enough.

> Mullvad [...] is having a "hard time" being profitable/growing

This is how I originally interpreted the parent comment as well, but they actually meant "a VPN is not enough to maintain your privacy, you also need a privacy-respecting browser."

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#294
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a wash overall with how Chrome for Android lacks support for extensions entirely. Firefox for Android supports uBlock Origin, which greatly cuts down on tracking and chances to be hit by broadly-targeted malvertising.

Firefox on iOS contains no built-in adblocking despite Firefox Focus doing so. More bizarrely, there’s an open Bugzilla and GitHub issue on that, both a few years old. Obviously I have transferred my entire family and social circle over to Brave. If Firefox won’t make their users secure, I will.

> More bizarrely, there’s an open Bugzilla and GitHub issue on that, both a few years old.

I can understand why it's not a priority at this point, at least, given that Firefox on iOS is currently a reskin of Safari, and the door is reportedly about to open for actual competition among iOS browsers due to increasing anti-trust pressures on Apple.

It would make more sense to me to address this with a real port of Gecko to iOS, and then you can just run the full version of uBlock Origin for Firefox on your iPhone.

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#295
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide a few examples? Has this been reported to Mullvad?

Split tunnel + qbittorrent leaks your ip

Using Mullvad (2023.2) split tunnel on my Windows 11 machine with qBittorrent 4.5.2. Every IP tool I know of is showing only my Mullvad IP. What tool are you using that indicates a leak of your real IP?

Tools I've used to verify:

- https://mullvad.net/en/check

- https://ipleak.org/

- https://browserleaks.com/ip

Genuinely curious because I use this setup all the time and want to rest assured it's behaving as I expect.

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#296
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you want random traffic to go through the VPN? Mullvad is quite fast.

It's not about speed. There are many websites where your identity is linked in some fashion (e.g Your bank). I don't want my bank to block my account because I was in one continent in the morning and another in afternoon. The same goes for other critical accounts. I know I know, this is all unlikely, but why bother with it if it can cause a lot of headache. e.g. I know of people whose facebook accounts got blocked an…

I usually just turn off my VPN temporarily if I get blocked and need to continue using a connection.

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#297
post #20

I guess why not. This is an open source, rebranded Firefox and Firefox-like browsers could use some publicity. It promotes privacy and privacy can use some publicity too. Tor too. Mullvad seems to be honest in the fact that their business model is selling VPNs and it's nice they are saying it's not enough. They are not saying that you might not need one though. We need a Firefox with good defaults and it seems like t…

Tor is borderline useless for privacy. It was literally built for the government [1] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(network)#History

The Tor design spec literally says it is not meant to defeat a global passive surveillance panopticon like a world government. Know its limitations and it's a fine tool. By the way, the entire Internet was built for the government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arpanet

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#298
post #20

I guess why not. This is an open source, rebranded Firefox and Firefox-like browsers could use some publicity. It promotes privacy and privacy can use some publicity too. Tor too. Mullvad seems to be honest in the fact that their business model is selling VPNs and it's nice they are saying it's not enough. They are not saying that you might not need one though. We need a Firefox with good defaults and it seems like t…

> it's nice they are saying it's not enough. Mullvad, who has a reputation in the HN comments for being just like... over the top amazing + great (they swear up and down they don't store traffic logs and if you don't trust them, you can pay anonymously somehow or whatever), is having a "hard time" being profitable/growing all while NordVPN, who has a bad reputation in HN comments for being untrustworthy and "not so a…

Well, many libertarians will state the rules of the free market as if they were physics law, but they are not. I think they're just post-fact invented laws to justify the ideology, but that's besides the point.

The law that "in a free market, the best product wins" has been beaten by profit-driven companies with billions at their disposal. Sure, you can have a better product. But maybe it's more profitable to have better marketing, or secondary sources of profit.

It's quite telling that VPN providers sponsor so many YouTube videos... Which require login to the biggest ad-driven company... Which will identify users by their login, no matter if they have a VPN or not!

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#299
Another useless skinjob of Firefox for folks too conditioned and paranoid to use Tor Browser or know how to edit about:config themselves, by a company selling literal snakeoil ("trustworthy VPN").

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#300
post #124

Curious how usable it is for anything with CloudFlare. CloudFlare doesn't like browsers that block fingerprinting, and it doesn't like Tor Browser in my experience, and when I use Mullvad I also get way more CloudFlare Captchas, often getting stuck in an infinite loop. I'm focusing on CloudFlare because it seems half the sites I use are behind their firewall now. (e.g. I have to switch from Brave to Firefox every tim…

I use LibreWolf (hardened Firefox) with Mullvad VPN and in my experience have hardly had any issues with Cloudflare (occasionally I might get a single Cloudflare captcha but this doesn't happen often). Tor browser, on the other hand, gives me tons of captchas and is barely usable.
Post reply on HN