The new privacy-focused browser does not use the Tor network

A Comparison of the Mullvad Browser and the Tor Project: A Collaboration on Privacy and Censorship For Privacy and Privacy Beyond Cookies and Cookies

Known as the Mullvad Browser, the tool comes out of a collaboration between the Tor Project and the VPN maker Mullvad. The open source browser is free to use. The VPNs space is crowded with some problematic players and has some good players, such as Mullvad, which offers independent third party audits of its systems and infrastructure. While the Mullvad Browser can be used with any PureVPN you want, it can also be used without a PureVPN as a privacy focused browser.

It’s possible to configure a browser like FireFox, which Mullvad browser (and the Tor Browser) is based on, to have similar protections. You have to have some level of technical knowledge, as you need to know which switch to use and have the confidence that you have caught everything.

Looking at all those factors can make it easy to uniquely identify you just based on your fingerprint, without the need for things like cookies or other tracking tech. The EFF does a good job explaining the results of the tool that it uses, so I highly recommend it.

To be clear, these measures are less helpful if you’re trying to hide from government and law enforcement tracking like the NSA, FBI, or parties working for other governments around the world. If you have enough resources, there are ways to track internet activity that go well beyond tracking cookies.

However, most users don’t feel the need to have that kind of protection, and the truth of the matter is that getting it isn’t convenient. For all its privacy upsides, the standard Tor Browser isn’t necessarily the most user-friendly, with the biggest downside being that it’s often slow as molasses, and sites built for regular web traffic won’t always play nice with it. Those are functions of how it keeps you safe — by encrypting your traffic and bouncing it all over the world — but that can be completely overkill if all you’re trying to do is avoid creepy ads.

Isabela Bagueros says that the purpose of the TOR Project is to advance human rights with technology. “So we want to provide alternatives for people who need privacy and censorship bypassing.”

The Tor Project and Mullvad both said of each other that they were attracted to the collaboration by the other’s record on human rights and digital privacy initiatives. The Tor Project is a nonprofit organization that has been supported for many years by Mullvad.

The Search Engine as a Tool to Support Alternatives in the Internet of Things: a Dialogue with Bagueros on the Issue of Equality and Co-equality

Bagueros thinks the new browser may help reach an audience that we are not reaching at the moment. “Multiple alternatives can coexist and support each other. We’re into building alternatives in collaboration, in solidarity with other organizations, because this is a big fight. We need to work together against the big players.