The best privacy browser or a needle in a haystack? The new Mullvad Browser has just entered the market. This article gives an overview of this browser and other privacy-friendly browsers, and also looks at the Tor Project and VPNs.
Summary
Privacy and anonymity on the internet can be achieved in several ways. The Mullvad Browser is recommended for users without technical expertise, because it comes with Mullvad VPN and offers all the necessary configuration settings. For technically experienced users, alternatives such as Arkenfox and LibreWolf are recommended alongside Mullvad. Above all, the Chrome browser should be avoided.
Introduction
A guest article by Michael Hammer. Comments are forwarded to the author. The images and captions were contributed by Klaus Meffert (and were generated by a computer program).
Privacy enthusiasts were recently surprised by unexpectedly good news: Mullvad, a VPN provider popular in the scene, has released its own browser in cooperation with the Tor Project. Download Windows Client.
The browser, designed explicitly for privacy, is meant to be an everyday counterpart to the Tor Browser and to complement the company's only product so far (Mullvad VPN). Conveniently, the Mullvad Browser already comes with Mullvad VPN built in. Download Browser Extension.
To put understandable concerns of interested users to rest, in this article I would like to take a closer look at the company Mullvad, discuss the alternatives that have been relevant so far (whose relevance has potentially declined sharply since the release), and compare the Mullvad Browser with other privacy browsers (e.g. the Brave browser). The article closes with a recommendation for technically experienced and inexperienced users. Spoiler: regardless of the browser they have used so far, I recommend the Mullvad Browser to both groups for everyday use in the future.
Questions answered in this article:
What is the Mullvad Browser? The Mullvad Browser is a privacy browser that comes with Mullvad VPN and brings all the necessary configuration settings out of the box. What is Arkenfox? Arkenfox is a template for the Firefox browser that changes many browser settings to improve privacy. It is maintained and developed further by an active community of privacy enthusiasts. What is LibreWolf? LibreWolf is a privacy browser that now differs hardly at all from Arkenfox, but comes without an integrated VPN. What is the Tor Browser? The Tor Browser is a browser from the Tor Project that gives users with different technical backgrounds easy access to the Tor network.
Mullvad VPN: One VPN Provider Among Many?
VPNs have always been a topic of discussion among enthusiasts in the field of privacy and data protection. With good reason, I think, because the majority of VPN users have a completely or largely wrong understanding of how virtual private networks (VPNs) work and of what they mean for one's own anonymity on the internet.
This is not least due to the market-driven behavior of many VPN providers, who are interested in profitability, combined with aggressive marketing including misleading statements about how VPNs work and the privacy benefits they supposedly bring (we all know which VPN provider is meant, and it has nothing to do with the south). In addition, many VPN providers often cooperate with government agencies (and advertising companies), and the user data they collect may even be less protected than if you did without a VPN and relied on your local internet service provider.
Info: Using a VPN alone is a drop in the ocean when it comes to your own anonymity on the internet. VPNs can offer further benefits, however, and, depending on your threat model, hiding your own IP address is an absolute prerequisite for anonymity – but as a single measure it is completely insufficient.
Despite the strong aversion that many privacy and data protection enthusiasts have toward VPN providers in general, Mullvad VPN enjoys a very good reputation and has a long history of satisfied users. The technical means by which Mullvad meets regulatory requirements while still ensuring as much privacy as possible can be read in the provider's official policies.
Mullvad is a Swedish company that has been active in the VPN field since 2009. Besides providing its own Mullvad VPN service, the company has run a blog since 2009 that has dealt more and more over the years with topics such as privacy, censorship, data protection and the associated legal regulations.
Info: At the end of March, the Mullvad blog published an article about EU Commissioner Ylva Johansson. In it, countless false statements and incorrect representations by the Swedish commissioner on the subject of “chat control” are first translated into English and then assessed from a technical and logical point of view.
The Tor Project: A Very Short Overview
I assume that most readers of this article know something about the Tor Project. For those who have never heard of it or still cannot grasp it, here is a short explanation from a non-technical point of view. Technically minded readers are advised to have a look at the helpdesk on the Tor website for further research.
The following explanations are based on official statements by the Tor Project.
What Is Tor?
Tor is a program whose purpose is to guarantee users anonymity on the internet. In contrast to a “household” internet connection, with Tor the exchange of data packets takes place over a distributed network of so-called relays, which in turn are operated by volunteers, enthusiasts and associations focused on data protection and privacy.
The advantage is that this “Tor network” makes it harder for outsiders (intelligence agencies, governments, tech companies, etc.) to trace which websites a user visits, from which location they are browsing and what traffic they generate from their device. It is the world's largest and best-known undertaking on the subject of anonymity on the internet.
What Is the Tor Browser?
The most common way to use the Tor network is the Tor Browser. This browser from the Tor Project gives users with different technical backgrounds easy access to the Tor network. The browser itself is based on the Mozilla Firefox browser (technically, it is a so-called “fork”) with an additional focus on privacy.
Info: Since the Tor Browser was created, Mozilla has adopted many of its settings in its own Firefox browser.* This is not least because Mozilla is relying more and more on privacy in Firefox and promotes this focus of its browser very strongly.
*This statement is based on the author's own experience and is not an official statement by the Tor Project, but it matches the real development of the Firefox browser. Interested readers are welcome to compare older versions of the Tor Browser and Firefox and will come to the same conclusion.
The Tor Project in Summary
- The Tor Project is a non-profit organization (NPO) that takes care of the maintenance, upkeep and further development of the Tor software
- The Tor network is a distributed network of relays designed for TCP connections that allows users to use web browsers and more anonymously
- The Tor Browser is software from the Tor Project whose goal is to give users the easiest possible access to the Tor network. The browser is a Firefox fork that makes sure the user's traffic is automatically routed through the Tor network
For technically experienced or interested users, I recommend deeper research into how the Tor network works, relays and the possibilities regarding TCP connections.
Alternatives to the Tor Browser: Why Are They Needed?
If the Tor Browser already exists and the Tor network potentially offers users the greatest anonymity – why don't we all simply use the Tor Browser? The answer, as so often in the field of privacy, is convenience. Using the Tor Browser guarantees the best possible anonymity, but in everyday life the browser is suitable for few purposes. Because of its focus on the highest possible anonymity, the browser lacks important functions that modern websites often require.
And although the Tor Browser can theoretically be adjusted so that at least many websites work on it, it is far from an efficient browser suitable for everyday use – especially since every adjustment toward functionality always comes with reduced anonymity. Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of using the Tor Browser knows what I mean – browsing is much less fun when every URL takes 5 seconds to load and page content is still displayed distorted and skewed afterwards.
Info: The Tor Browser is hardly usable in everyday life or at the office. The great advantages in anonymity come at a great cost in convenience and functionality. Every step to make the Tor Browser work for as many websites as possible has a negative effect on the browser's anonymity function.
The Mullvad Browser: A Revolution in the Browser Market?
Since the Tor Browser unfortunately cannot be used in everyday life, but many of its anonymity features are absolutely recommendable, there is a gap in the browser market that needs to be closed. Many readers will be familiar with so-called “privacy browsers”, whose popularity is not least due to the obvious demand for more anonymity and privacy when browsing.
Without going into the individual solutions in detail and weighing their pros and cons (a list of alternatives to the Mullvad Browser follows later in the article), I would like to explain below the undeniable advantages of the Mullvad Browser.
A Cooperation Between Mullvad and the Tor Project
This fact is remarkable in itself, as Mullvad is one of the most respected VPN services in the field of privacy and the Tor Project is the project when it comes to anonymity on the internet. Combining the expertise of both teams and communities should definitely have a beneficial effect on the development of privacy-based browsers.
A Combination of Convenience and Anonymity
The Mullvad Browser closes the gap between user-friendly browsers with less anonymity and the Tor Browser, which offers a lot of anonymity but is unsuitable for everyday use. With the Mullvad Browser, users get a working browser “out of the box” and also many of the advantages of the Tor Browser – without the Tor network, but including Mullvad VPN.
Info: The Mullvad Browser can also be described as the Tor Browser without the Tor network. The extent to which the settings are identical would have to be examined in detail. There is, however, a lot of overlap between the settings stored in the Tor Browser and the Mullvad Browser and in the technical approach used.
The Browser Is Based on Firefox – Not Chromium
Another advantage, whose merits would trigger a whole new discussion, is the fact that the Mullvad Browser, like the Tor Browser, is based on Firefox (contrary to what is claimed in the top Google search result for the related ZDNet article). Today, Chromium-based browsers (e.g. Chrome) have an incredibly high market share, and Mozilla Firefox is pretty much the only well-known and reasonably widespread alternative to Chromium technology. Every adoption of the Firefox browser therefore has a positive effect on the upkeep and further development of Firefox and ensures that the browser market does not end in a monopoly of Chromium-based browsers.
Info: Although Chromium is an open-source technology, the project is mainly maintained by Google. All Chromium-based browsers are highly dependent on Google LLC and, more broadly, Alphabet Inc.
The “Hide-in-the-Crowd” Approach
Finally, I would like to address the “hide-in-the-crowd” approach of the Mullvad Browser, which, incidentally, is also pursued by the Tor Browser. The goal of the highest possible anonymity is achieved by having as many users as possible on the road with an identical fingerprint, so that fingerprinting technologies perceive them as a single user. Fingerprinting is a double-edged sword, and configuring your own browser as individually as possible for supposedly more anonymity often ends up giving you a unique fingerprint, which makes you all the more identifiable as a user.
Info: This approach means that the anonymity of Mullvad Browser users increases as user numbers grow, since more identical fingerprints are left on websites at the same time.
Alternatives to the Mullvad Browser
Personally, I am not a big fan of so-called “privacy browsers” or of marketing browsers as particularly secure in general. Although it has to be said that the current state of the default Firefox browser alone is preferable to Chrome in an incredible number of respects – but anyone who uses (Google) Chrome has lost control over their data anyway.
At this point, however, I would still like to present two very similar technologies before briefly turning to the Brave browser. It is currently unclear how long these two alternatives will remain useful alongside the Mullvad Browser. At present, and given my current knowledge, they are at least worth mentioning.
Arkenfox
The first noteworthy solution is called “Arkenfox”. It is a template for the Firefox browser that changes many browser settings to improve privacy. In Firefox this is done through the so-called user.js file. This file is maintained and developed further in the Arkenfox repository by many volunteer privacy enthusiasts.
The template is extremely restrictive and requires initial effort to get into the documentation. That is also a big advantage of Arkenfox, though, because besides the active community and, in my opinion, conscientious development, there is good documentation including an explanatory sentence for every single changed Firefox setting. This allows users to configure the Firefox browser according to their own wishes and needs and to weigh up, on their own, functionality on as many websites as possible against anonymity.
Last but not least, Arkenfox has its own functionality test / debug mode: if websites do not work as usual, Arkenfox makes it possible to find the relevant setting parameters in user.js with a few test runs and change them if desired. This can be particularly useful in connection with different Firefox profiles, where one profile may have less restrictive settings but works without problems on all websites, and another profile is more restrictive but does not work on all websites.
Info: Arkenfox is a community of privacy, security and anti-tracking enthusiasts committed to developing the Firefox browser settings further toward more anonymity.
LibreWolf
Another project worth mentioning, with which I am personally less familiar, is LibreWolf. You could say that LibreWolf and Arkenfox relate to each other like the Tor Project and the Tor Browser: LibreWolf allows less technically experienced users to enjoy the benefits of the Arkenfox user.js through a ready-made browser – LibreWolf is also a fork of Firefox (just like the Tor Browser and the Mullvad Browser).
Since I am more a friend of understanding than of functionality and like to read at least somewhat deeper into the technical background, I have no personal experience with LibreWolf – but I do with Arkenfox. A fairly recent comment by the owner of the Arkenfox repository is noteworthy here. By their own account, besides developments at the Tor Project and Firefox behind the scenes, they also contributed to the development of LibreWolf: Arkenfox and LibreWolf are nearly identical these days, and a list of the differences between AF (Arkenfox)/LW (LibreWolf) and the Mullvad Browser would end up as a short list.
“If anyone wants a detailed breakdown of differences between AF/LW (which are almost identical these days) vs Mullvad Browser, then it's a short list. It's just a slightly different space – each with pros and cons. If it's not OK to do that here, mods please say so – I don't want to create noise” – the owner of the Arkenfox repository explains the differences between Arkenfox and LibreWolf in a discussion in the Mullvad Browser repository (https://github.com/mullvad/mullvad-browser/issues/1#issuecomment-1495247827)
Brave
I must admit that I have not looked into the Brave browser for quite some time. In the past, Arkenfox was the better alternative for me personally, though that may also come down to my personal preference for looking at the individual settings in detail and reading discussions of their pros and cons. I also seem to remember that Brave was promoted fairly aggressively and, at least in the early days and compared with alternative technologies, did not fare well.
Today, the Brave browser seems to be a noteworthy alternative and is listed by Privacy Guides as one of two recommended desktop browsers – although only in second place and after Firefox. But the mere fact of being listed by Privacy Guides, probably the best-known website on privacy and a first port of call for many interested people, says a lot about the quality of the Brave browser.
What still bothers me personally about Brave, however, is the Chromium base, whose very existence contributes to the monopoly of Chromium technology. Even assuming that Brave is similarly effective in terms of privacy (as its mention at Privacy Guides suggests) as the Mullvad Browser or LibreWolf, I would personally always reach for the latter two or recommend them.
How Relevant Are the Existing Alternatives Still?
At this point, the effect of the introduction of the Mullvad Browser cannot be finally assessed. A fairly obvious thought with a cooperation between two of the best-known privacy institutions on the internet (Mullvad and the Tor Project) on the subject of privacy browsers would be that alternatives are no longer needed. Time will tell whether the Mullvad Browser will prevail. But trust in the browser is already very high a short time after its release, and both Mullvad and the Tor Project have a user base large enough to theoretically prevail in the medium to long term.
The aforementioned owner of the Arkenfox repository holds a similar view. They hope to be able to stop developing Arkenfox in favor of the Mullvad Browser in the medium to long term – at present, the two are simply a little too different.
“[…] long term I am hoping we can retire arkenfox (I can't speak for LW) and just use MB – but they're just a little too divergent for now” (the owner of the Arkenfox repository gives their opinion on the future development of privacy browsers, https://github.com/mullvad/mullvad-browser/issues/1#issuecomment-1495998714)
Mullvad Browser, Arkenfox, LibreWolf or Another Privacy Browser?
In my view, there is no right answer to this question today. It depends a bit on whom you want to trust, how comfortable you want things to be and, of course, on the browser technology you currently use.
Findings after the release of the Mullvad Browser:
- At the latest since the release of the Mullvad Browser, other privacy browsers such as Brave (Chromium base!) or similar have to be measured against it.
- The Tor Browser remains the recommended choice for anonymity, but is not really usable in everyday life or at the office.
Recommendation for users without technical expertise:
- I clearly recommend the Mullvad Browser to you. The biggest advantage is that this browser comes with Mullvad VPN and also brings all the necessary configuration settings out of the box. It is quite conceivable that the Mullvad Browser will become the standard among privacy browsers for everyday use in the future – time will tell.
- LibreWolf might also be something for you. However, as I said, I have no experience with it. If you trust the owner of Arkenfox, LibreWolf now differs hardly at all from Arkenfox, and Arkenfox is in my opinion highly recommendable – but not for users without technical expertise. But note: unlike the Mullvad Browser, LibreWolf does not come with an integrated VPN.
Recommendation for technically experienced users:
- Honestly, I would recommend the Mullvad Browser to you as well. You may be better able to judge whether the Mullvad Browser, the Arkenfox user.js or LibreWolf best matches your threat level. However, I assume that the Mullvad Browser will establish itself as the standard in the long run, because of the cooperation with the Tor Project and the existing user base of VPN customers, to whom the Mullvad Browser will of course be recommended from now on.
- Alternatively, you can get to grips with Arkenfox and the user.js. Setting it up will take some time, and you will probably not get around using several Firefox profiles (which in my opinion is quite sensible and convenient) – but Arkenfox now really, really works very well, and if there are problems there is the “debug mode”, with which I have so far managed to get every website working.
- If you want to know exactly, I recommend using a fairly recent discussion post by the owner of the Arkenfox repository on the differences between the Mullvad Browser, Arkenfox and LibreWolf as a starting point, looking into the topic more closely and choosing an individual solution that matches your own threat level.
Further Information
- https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/
- https://mullvad.net/en/browser
- https://mullvad.net/en/browser/hard-facts
- https://github.com/mullvad/mullvad-browser/issues
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35421034
Key Takeaways (AI-generated, edited)
The Mullvad Browser is a new, privacy-friendly browser that is particularly well suited to users who value anonymity.
Many VPNs do not really offer anonymity, because they may pass data on to authorities or advertisers.
Tor enables anonymity on the internet by routing data through a network of volunteers, which makes it hard to trace which websites someone visits.
The Mullvad Browser offers a good balance between anonymity and ease of use, as it has many of the advantages of the Tor Browser but is easier to use at the same time.
The Mullvad Browser is a good alternative to Chromium-based browsers such as Chrome, because it is based on Firefox and thus contributes to diversity in the browser market.
Arkenfox and LibreWolf are Firefox variants optimized for more privacy. LibreWolf is easier to use, while Arkenfox offers more customization options.
The Mullvad Browser could establish itself as an alternative to other privacy browsers, as it is developed by trustworthy institutions and already enjoys a lot of trust.
The Mullvad Browser is currently the best privacy browser for everyday use, as it is easy to use and already contains all the necessary settings.
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