Live data from Hacker News

The Mullvad Browser

mullvad.net

401–410 of 434 posts

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#401
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…

Great to hear it's a FF fork. Mention of Tor made me think Brave / Chromium.

The official Tor browser is also a fork of Firefox, and intentionally not Chromium-based.

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#402
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

I use TOR to circumvent the government blocking torrent sites, ie 1337.to

No it probably won't help if I want to buy fertilizer for a truck bomb.

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 resid…

I'm not saying I trust the above claim (I have no idea) but this

>can you imagine just how unstable and slow those connections would be

Yes, yes I can and they are. I tried them some time ago before I found out how shady they are and encrypted connections were like 2 Mbit while Mullvad gave me many many times faster bandwidth with higher encryption. Their support was completely useless.

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#404
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It annoys me that the only way to access iPlayer from abroad is via a VPN. Surely opening it up and allowing international customers to pay some form of license fee could be a nice little revenue stream for the BBC? I'm guessing the reason is just "licensing issues" but if they're making the programmes then what's the problem? I'm sure there's an international market for watching the world class output from the BBC.

With the cultural capital that BBC had especially 7 to 10 years ago, I'm pretty sure they would have been at league with Netflix and the like if they had opened it up. Dr Who was huge back then in the US, and you had Sherlock and a few other shows. I think people were just pirating it (?) but lots of people I knew were huge fans.

Absolutely.

Given a) they started experimenting with iPlayer pretty early in the streaming came, and b) they have a huge and valuable back catalogue, it's always amazed me that they didn't open up pay-per-view and subscription options for an ex-UK audience.

I've always suspected there's a good reason why not behind the scenes - maybe because a successful PPV operation would lend huge weight to people in the UK seeking to abolish the license fee?

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#405
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…

Great to hear it's a FF fork. Mention of Tor made me think Brave / Chromium.

[deleted]

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#406
post #158
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…

> We need a Firefox with good defaults and it seems like this browser is such a thing. If you're looking such option for Android, you can check out Mull [1] which is available on F-Droid [2] as well and use it along with uBlock Origin. [1]: https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/mull-fenix [2]: https://f-droid.org/packages/us.spotco.fennec_dos/

"The upstream source code is not entirely Free"

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#407
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 know of people whose facebook accounts got blocked and were asked to provide some id since the accounts were opened from two different geographies.

Ah, I see. Unrelated to VPNs, but if you want another anecdote: I had my FB account blocked because I physically moved to another country, and some months in I decided to recover the password to my account (which I hadn't used in a year or more).

Now, I 100% agree that this was a _super_ suspicious-looking series of events, but out of all possible ways to verify my account, how did FB choose to check my identity?

"Please login with a device that you had previously used to access this account. You must do so within 30 days or your account will be permanently disabled." Of course my old devices were in my old place in another country, and I wasn't going back within 30 days.

Fortunately I only used FB to join some IRL groups or to talk to the occasional person who had no other messenger, so it was no great loss, but I can imagine it would have been a major hassle for some people.

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#408

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…

Can you or someone explain why so many Brits want to watch UK television from abroad? I’m French living abroad and have never missed French TV. The quality of the content is just very sub-par compared to American shows. They just don’t have the budget to compete. Is the UK different because it’s English speaking and perhaps it has access to a wider market and thus more capital?

for me it was for watching live BBC News (BBC World News didn't cut it), and a few weekly quizcoms. plus a couple of kids' channels. there is a vast difference between UK- and American-centric channels which didn't appeal

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#409

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…

Can you or someone explain why so many Brits want to watch UK television from abroad? I’m French living abroad and have never missed French TV. The quality of the content is just very sub-par compared to American shows. They just don’t have the budget to compete. Is the UK different because it’s English speaking and perhaps it has access to a wider market and thus more capital?

The BBC has some extremely good content... nature documentaries (David Attenborough), science shows (Horizon), archaeological/history (Digging for Britain), comedy (Ghosts), comedy/news/current affairs (Have I Got News For You). The US does big budget shows very well, but for a wide variety of content I really miss the BBC when I can't access it. I'm obviously biased though.

Re: The Mullvad Browser

#410
post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Email is in my profile if you wanna find out more about the proxy service I used!
Post reply on HN