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The Mullvad Browser

mullvad.net

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Re: The Mullvad Browser

#331

Post by hotpathdev »

lazyeye wrote: post #286
hotpathdev wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long-term services are great targets for governments. If you were to looking for some trust in a VPN, you would want them to offer locations in privacy friendly countries, and highlighting them as such. That would potentially funnel more used to those servers which would be beneficial. You would also want the VPN to ensure the servers in those countries are run by companies based in that country, and not be head-quar…

None of these things prevent tracking. In fact they are are an attractive intelligence asset precisely because people believe they are more secure. Crypto AG https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG

I didn't say it prevents tracking, I was offering a litmus test for a VPN to the question of red flags. If it doesn't pass the litmus test, preventing tracking is the least of your concerns.

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#332

Post by 867-5309 »

idiot900 wrote: post #323
867-5309 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a few years ago I moved outside the UK and spent the best part of 3 months (on and off) trying to access BBC content, legally, still holding residency, paying domiciliary and employment taxes, and paying for a bladdy TV loicence of course, I wanted to do this for as close to free as possible, since plugging an aerial into a tv at home also cost next to nothing VPNs were already being detected and banned. I tried at l…

Perhaps roll your own VPN using a home router that can act as a VPN server? That way you can use your home internet connection...assuming its upload speed is fast enough. A shame BBC can't accommodate its paying customers who happen to be abroad.

yes in hindsight, had I known the BBC would stoop, I could have set up something from an actual home IP. whether that be forwarding their web streams or forwarding a few OTA DVB-T2 streams. but even that could require physical presence for emergency debugs, reboots, retunes..

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#333

Post by 867-5309 »

domh wrote: post #315
867-5309 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a few years ago I moved outside the UK and spent the best part of 3 months (on and off) trying to access BBC content, legally, still holding residency, paying domiciliary and employment taxes, and paying for a bladdy TV loicence of course, I wanted to do this for as close to free as possible, since plugging an aerial into a tv at home also cost next to nothing VPNs were already being detected and banned. I tried at l…

I used a small independent proxy company that I paid £50 a year annually through PayPal. I think they must've been small enough to fly under the radar of the detection algorithms. When I went onto google maps connected to the proxy, it always thought I was in Dubai, which gives you an idea of the clientele. Maybe it was something to do with the fact that it was a Proxy and not a VPN, though I'm not sure if this makes…

I dabbled with free and cheap paid-for proxies which were either injecting javascript or too flaky for live video. I saw a few of those smaller providers, but the initial outlay would have been too risky, because I am convinced the BBC throw a lot of money at residential geolocation, so if they haven't already their IP address blocks will be blacklisted at some point in the near future

interesting about Dubai though, makes me wonder if they have some sort of expat or economic deal with them. if Google thinks you're there, you can bet BBC do too. I discovered they use multiple CDNs and delivery mechanisms as fallback/best effort for the gamut of user agents, network health and device capabilities, which sometimes (but not always) sieved most (but not all) VPN and proxy locations in an indeterminate (yet authoritatively intentional) fashion, so perhaps Dubai is whitelisted on one of those. who knows. sometimes it's like rolling dice. inconsistency and implied mischief sure are strong deterrents. might investigate further at some point if I can swallow some bile first

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#334

Post by Stagnant »

Spinnaker_ wrote: post #302
dirheist wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC the mylobot botnet is responsible for providing the vast majority of residential (home) IP addresses for residential VPN providers (who are then sold to expressvpn/nordvpn). The whole business is incredibly shady and nefarious and nordvpn/expressvpn must know from whom they contract their residential vpn services from. BHProxies is the largest residential proxy provider on the internet and almost all of their pr…

Is there a source for expressvpn actually using BHProxies? I had no clue it was that sketchy. It is owned by a public company, so that's pretty substantial news if true.

I would be very skeptical of the claim, quite worrying to see multiple people accepting that as a fact without any kind of evidence to support the claim.

I'd be shocked if any of the major VPN providers were involved with illegal residential proxies. It just doesn't make sense, can you imagine just how unstable and slow those connections would be? Why would they risk being legally liable when there exists legal residential proxy providers that get their IP's from people that voluntarily share their connection (honeygain etc.)? I've never heard of any of the big VPN providers offering residential connections. As I understand the VPN providers that promise support for netflix and similar streaming services just acquire newer IP's from time to time but the connection still goes through a regular datacenter, definitely not from some random dude's home.

The proxy market is more so targeted towards developers who scrape data and criminals that do credential stuffing/other criminal activity.

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#335

Post by _rdvw »

mcsniff wrote: post #29

Here's to hoping they maintain this for a while. There are a lot of "hardened Firefox" forks around, none of them that I would trust to follow upstream for a long enough time to switch. I already trust Mullvad enough to use as VPN, and am likely willing to extend that trust to a fork of Firefox they manage, but truthfully, I always concerned when achieving goals means new ventures and projects as it may mean resource…

re Android & fork maintenance I track this here for Firefox: https://divestos.org/misc/ffa-dates.txt

and for Chromium: https://divestos.org/misc/ch-dates.txt

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#336

Post by _rdvw »

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #265
mcsniff wrote: post #29

Here's to hoping they maintain this for a while. There are a lot of "hardened Firefox" forks around, none of them that I would trust to follow upstream for a long enough time to switch. I already trust Mullvad enough to use as VPN, and am likely willing to extend that trust to a fork of Firefox they manage, but truthfully, I always concerned when achieving goals means new ventures and projects as it may mean resource…

Firefox runs like cold molassas on Android, unfortunately. Bromite seems like its sticking around, fortunately.

Bromite has not been updated since December 12th 2022 per my history here: https://divestos.org/misc/ch-dates.txt

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#337

Post by _rdvw »

hotpathdev wrote: post #6

The last time I tried the Tor browser, it did not sufficiently handle browser finger prints. I don't have high expectations out of this project either, but at least they offer a firefox extension. I'd have to dig into it to determine how effective it is, but as it stands there are other firefox extensions that already do an excellent job.

Tor Browser currently has _the best_ mechanisms to protect against fingerprinting.

Most tests are biased to certain methods or do not have a large enough dataset or are only viewed in isolation.

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#338

Post by sundarurfriend »

detrites wrote: post #28

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…

> > Why is the time is wrong?

> > The timezone is spoofed, to combat fingerprinting.

The annoying thing about this (assuming it's the same as in Firefox) is that the times displayed in your own local History page are also "wrong" i.e. shown in UTC.

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#339

Post by brucethemoose2 »

_rdvw wrote: post #336
brucethemoose2 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox runs like cold molassas on Android, unfortunately. Bromite seems like its sticking around, fortunately.

Bromite has not been updated since December 12th 2022 per my history here: https://divestos.org/misc/ch-dates.txt

Oh dear, you are right. Last commit was in January.

Thorium was comatose for awhile but come back, so I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#340

Post by lxgr »

SadTrombone wrote: post #319
hiccuphippo wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'd like is a Mullvad container in regular Firefox so I can choose what sites to open in it, or rather make it the default and move a site to another container if I want permanent cookies. I use temporary containers now but the extra fingerprinting features appeal to me.

You could look into Mozilla's VPN offering, it does what you want and is powered by Mullvad.

It’s a neat feature, but beware: Per-container VPN reveals your real IP if you‘re also using uBlock in the default configuration at the moment due to a limitation in Firefox: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dashboard:-Settings#u...
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