Quicky Mullvad Browser comment

[Likestofish]

In the never-ending quest for a non-Chromium-based secondary browser, I decided to give Mullvad Browser a go. I'm not really going to review it per se, but just note that it strikes me as as a sort of more polished Librewolf, though with some of the same limitations on changing the settings.

I understand why Mullvad does that, but making NoScript unremovable was the deal breaker for me. Others may find that it suits them quite well, but personally I'll just stick with whatever I find to be the least objectional Chromium-based browser as an alternate to Pale Moon. Just a quick note for those who might be curious about it.

[andyprough]

Oh that's strange, I just noticed that. Otherwise it's a good browser, seems to work very well. I guess you can just go into noscript preferences and turn off anything you don't like.

[Moonchild]

The Mullvad Browser is a privacy-focused web browser developed in a collaboration between Mullvad VPN and the Tor Project.

This means you can expect everything to go through the baked-in VPN and to suffer from tor browser limitations like a good number of broken web APIs.

[andyprough]

The Mullvad Browser is a privacy-focused web browser developed in a collaboration between Mullvad VPN and the Tor Project.

This means you can expect everything to go through the baked-in VPN and to suffer from tor browser limitations like a good number of broken web APIs.

No, there's no baked in VPN, it runs on the clear net also. If you want VPN you have to pay for one or set up your own. The Mullvad VPN related thing is that it has a little button on the toolbar that helps you control the Mullvad VPN if you paid for one.

Yes it does suffer from all the Tor browser limitations. It's good for browsing without leaving a unique fingerprint, but other than that it's just Firefox with all the Tor browser limitations built in.

[Moonchild]

I see.
Note that they do set up DoH through their server(s) (without fallback) so you're still married to their services that way and rely on their infra being available. Not entirely decoupled IoW and you're exchanging Mozilla for them in that respect; better make sure you trust them, or disable DoH.

[Likestofish]

Not entirely trusting to the good intentions of Mullvad (or their partners), turning off DoH was one of the things I did, as well as not using their VPN.

Not a bad browser to be sure, but it seems that there's just no way to get a "clean"-ish Firefox that isn't all locked up. I don't need that level of security/privacy/what-have-you, just something that I can customize to my own needs and preferences and works well wherever I need or want to go. Pale Moon accomplishes that for the majority of what I do, just need something else for the rest that doesn't work as well. Regrettably, some iteration of Chromium seems to be the most practical option for my personal use.

[fatboy]

I do like the one strategy the Mullvad Browser are following and that is to make everyone look the same, tor and mullvad browsers have the same fingerprint. That might be a good addon for Pale Moon and Basilisk I do know of the canvas poisoning, which is great, but leaves on being too unique. AFAIK Mullvad is also a lot more hardened than standard FF? But I guess Pale Moon is also

https://mullvad.net/en/browser/why-you- ... ed-browser

[moonbat]

The threat model matters a lot when it comes to these features. I daresay the vast majority of people only have to deal with opportunistic malware or corporate tracking for advertising. If your adblocker setup is foolproof, it doesn't matter if they can fingerprint your browser if any adware or analytics crap they send your way is anyway getting blocked. For the rest, online security/anonymity/privacy can be a matter of life or death if someone broadly belongs to the category of 'have sufficiently pissed off very powerful people who have the resources to target you specifically' or live in a hostile jurisdiction like China or Russia where looking at the wrong things online can land you in legal trouble.

IMO there's no point in obsessing over browser fingerprinting and especially mucking with the global user agent for the sake of privacy or whatever (the latter only breaks websites that do poor feature detection as seen so often here on the forums), block all ads and trackers and your browser will run faster, plus you're safer from malware that spreads through ad networks. Rest assured that if the 3 letter agencies take a special interest in you as though you're Jason Bourne, none of these tricks will be foolproof against them.

[Moonchild]

In short: privacy is a spectrum. Pale Moon aims to be in a balanced position in that respect, not towards either extreme in its default configuration. it won't cover extreme scenarios nor paranoid workflows, but if you really want to, you could make it happen.
Blocking malvertising is a good practice, of course, but as stated in many places, Pale Moon does not want to specifically force-feed any particular set of tools and leave that up to the user's desires and needs.

On a side note I am in talks with NordVPN to start offering their service from the website as a suggestion, considering how it's regularly asked for; as a bonus that will help the project through affiliation (purchases will share revenue with Pale Moon). More on that soon.

[moonbat]

On a side note I am in talks with NordVPN to start offering their service from the website as a suggestion, considering how it's regularly asked for; as a bonus that will help the project through affiliation (purchases will share revenue with Pale Moon). More on that soon.

Off-topic:
You can bet the haters will start drawing comparisons with Mozilla's foray into VPN because of course that was exactly the same as being an affiliate. I called it first here

[Moonchild]

Off-topic:

You can bet the haters will start drawing comparisons with Mozilla's foray into VPN because of course that was exactly the same as being an affiliate. I called it first here

Haha, well, you know what they say: haters gonna hate.
It won't be integrated into the browser in any way - just a suggestion. I'm not sure how many people will be making use of it and I was clear to the VPN folks about that too since we already have a pretty well-established user base with their preferences.