Also, isn’t Tor still funded by the US govt? I feel like of you wanted a honeypot, there is no better option than Tor which is already under your wing.
The reality is that there is NO completely anonymous network or proxy that can be 100% trusted. None. Because you have zero ways of independently verifying any of them. You’re better off, especially if you’re political dissident, using a network that might be/probably under surveillance from a country that aligns most with your ideology (Chinese networks if you’re a communist trying to push for communism in the West, for example). It’s a shame for us that it’s actually really hard to get access to a Chinese run VPN in the West. Don’t use a US-developed privacy network if you know the US is not going to like what you send on it is what I’m saying.
I think you are making more of a political and philosophical argument than a technical one. The project for tor browser and associated technologies is a 501c3 nonprofit. It’s technology is open source and can be independently reviewed by third parties. Control of the network and it’s technology is distributed and is not controlled by any single government or entity. It’s not a perfect solution but it’s better in certain contexts than other options. It just depends on your use case but the torproject is not doing anything “wrong” they are not a shill for a particular government.
So we’re trusting Tor but not Mullvad who collaborated with the Tor Project [0] to create this browser?
… developed in a collaboration between Mullvad VPN and the Tor Project
Who’s behind Librewolf and Ungoogled Chromium that we should trust them over Mullvad?
Even Librewolf recommends you use Tor [1].
Can I use LibreWolf with Tor?
Please don’t.
The Tor network is designed to give you complete anonymity, but it can be compromised if you use it with any browser other than the Tor Browser. If you want anonymity, download the Tor Browser.
They’re all open source projects, how do you define who should/shouldn’t be trusted? Seems rather reactionary to discredit Mullvad without any evidence when the alternatives provided suffer the same issue - who’s behind the project and how do you establish trust?
Lastly, Ungoogled Chromium provides almost no privacy enhancing features by default [2], so how could this be a recommended as a privacy preserving browser?
ungoogled-chromium features tweaks to enhance privacy, control, and transparency. However, almost all of these features must be manually activated or enabled.
Lets discuss real alternatives and real issues, not jump to conclusions and throw everything out because it’s not “perfect”
“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good” and all that.
@KLISHDFSDF@HiddenLayer5 I recommend librewolf, arkenfox with firefox, a hardened palemoon, brave browser, ungoogled chromium or maybe a browser without JS entirely… Suckless surf for example xD
@nutomic@cypherpunks Who exactly do trust then comrade? I mean Swedish ISP Bahnhof has a very good reputation when it comes to end user privacy. They even hosted Julian Assanges Wikileaks server… But I mean just look at all the orwellian laws coming from Australia, America, England and the EU where do we go from here bro?? Chat Control, Investigatory powers act bill, Ass Access bill, Restrict Act bill, Chat control… D: World governments are making it hard to have any privacy anymore!
@Rickster@nutomic@cypherpunks As harder some pathetic governments are doing it to have some privacy and stop cancel culture, as faster we evolve towards alternative communication tools.
They can control even the whole internet. We will ditch this service and use mesh networks. Without us paying for the internet, the service will become obsolete.
@mariubrlu@nutomic@cypherpunks Yeah I don’t care where we are politically we all need to unite against a centralised, nation state controlled & fully walled up internet… If we don’t take a united stand against extremely overly broad all encompassing powers that Western governments are trying to give themselves over the internet. We will become China, we are not far off the chopping block to becoming China and having their internet where all non government approved stuff is criminalised!
@Rickster@nutomic@cypherpunks I was just trying to bring some positive thoughts. Even in China the gvmt tried to crack down on protests by shutting down the internet in the area and the people used a mesh network to still be able to communicate.
@Rickster@nutomic@cypherpunks Of course that I play my part in fighting corruption in the establishment. I recently switched every single device in my home to open source auditable software and literally use 0 services from GAFAM. The thing is: if we don’t buy or use their products they will become obsolete. Also by using open source software you can’t be illegally spied as they can’t have access to your data.
The first thing i did upon installing the browser to test it is uninstall the VPN extention. Im very skeptical of the browser myself but im wondering how much grounds your argument against the browser holds. Wouldnt the open-source nature (and hence being able to create our own binaries) and the firefox base create a decent enough privacy experience? One could even scientifically test the telemetry with the right tools, right?
If you disable the VPN then my previous argument doesnt apply. It would probably be more secure than normal Firefox, assuming you trust the developers.
So you can give some Swedish company access to all your web traffic. Great idea if you hate privacy. At least Tor can get some money this way.
Also, isn’t Tor still funded by the US govt? I feel like of you wanted a honeypot, there is no better option than Tor which is already under your wing.
The reality is that there is NO completely anonymous network or proxy that can be 100% trusted. None. Because you have zero ways of independently verifying any of them. You’re better off, especially if you’re political dissident, using a network that might be/probably under surveillance from a country that aligns most with your ideology (Chinese networks if you’re a communist trying to push for communism in the West, for example). It’s a shame for us that it’s actually really hard to get access to a Chinese run VPN in the West. Don’t use a US-developed privacy network if you know the US is not going to like what you send on it is what I’m saying.
I think you are making more of a political and philosophical argument than a technical one. The project for tor browser and associated technologies is a 501c3 nonprofit. It’s technology is open source and can be independently reviewed by third parties. Control of the network and it’s technology is distributed and is not controlled by any single government or entity. It’s not a perfect solution but it’s better in certain contexts than other options. It just depends on your use case but the torproject is not doing anything “wrong” they are not a shill for a particular government.
If not this browser, which one should we use if we want privacy?
Tor browser? Librewolf? Ungoogled Chromium?
So we’re trusting Tor but not Mullvad who collaborated with the Tor Project [0] to create this browser?
Who’s behind Librewolf and Ungoogled Chromium that we should trust them over Mullvad?
Even Librewolf recommends you use Tor [1].
They’re all open source projects, how do you define who should/shouldn’t be trusted? Seems rather reactionary to discredit Mullvad without any evidence when the alternatives provided suffer the same issue - who’s behind the project and how do you establish trust?
Lastly, Ungoogled Chromium provides almost no privacy enhancing features by default [2], so how could this be a recommended as a privacy preserving browser?
Lets discuss real alternatives and real issues, not jump to conclusions and throw everything out because it’s not “perfect”
“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good” and all that.
[0] https://mullvad.net/en/browser
[1] https://librewolf.net/docs/faq/#can-i-use-librewolf-with-tor
[2] https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium#objectives
@KLISHDFSDF @HiddenLayer5 I recommend librewolf, arkenfox with firefox, a hardened palemoon, brave browser, ungoogled chromium or maybe a browser without JS entirely… Suckless surf for example xD
Did I say I trust Tor? I made an entire rant about it.
@HiddenLayer5 @KLISHDFSDF Librewolf and ungoogled chromium and brave those are the 3 browsers I use as daily drivers for different things
@nutomic @cypherpunks Who exactly do trust then comrade? I mean Swedish ISP Bahnhof has a very good reputation when it comes to end user privacy. They even hosted Julian Assanges Wikileaks server… But I mean just look at all the orwellian laws coming from Australia, America, England and the EU where do we go from here bro?? Chat Control, Investigatory powers act bill, Ass Access bill, Restrict Act bill, Chat control… D: World governments are making it hard to have any privacy anymore!
@Rickster @nutomic @cypherpunks As harder some pathetic governments are doing it to have some privacy and stop cancel culture, as faster we evolve towards alternative communication tools.
They can control even the whole internet. We will ditch this service and use mesh networks. Without us paying for the internet, the service will become obsolete.
@mariubrlu @nutomic @cypherpunks Yeah I don’t care where we are politically we all need to unite against a centralised, nation state controlled & fully walled up internet… If we don’t take a united stand against extremely overly broad all encompassing powers that Western governments are trying to give themselves over the internet. We will become China, we are not far off the chopping block to becoming China and having their internet where all non government approved stuff is criminalised!
@Rickster @nutomic @cypherpunks I was just trying to bring some positive thoughts. Even in China the gvmt tried to crack down on protests by shutting down the internet in the area and the people used a mesh network to still be able to communicate.
@Rickster @nutomic @cypherpunks Of course that I play my part in fighting corruption in the establishment. I recently switched every single device in my home to open source auditable software and literally use 0 services from GAFAM. The thing is: if we don’t buy or use their products they will become obsolete. Also by using open source software you can’t be illegally spied as they can’t have access to your data.
Swedish government*
All EU countries have surveillance laws pretty similar to the US yet no one seems to think it’s a problem.
Is the browser not open source? And hence a binary could be built for it to test and verify the degree of privacy to it?
A VPN operator can intercept all the traffic by design. TOR avoids that by going over multiple hops, but this browser doesnt use TOR.
The first thing i did upon installing the browser to test it is uninstall the VPN extention. Im very skeptical of the browser myself but im wondering how much grounds your argument against the browser holds. Wouldnt the open-source nature (and hence being able to create our own binaries) and the firefox base create a decent enough privacy experience? One could even scientifically test the telemetry with the right tools, right?
If you disable the VPN then my previous argument doesnt apply. It would probably be more secure than normal Firefox, assuming you trust the developers.