Mullvad VPN recently teamed up with the Tor Project to release a new free web browser that focuses on enhancing users’ privacy and security.
The developers behind the Tor Project, who designed the Tor anonymity project and have their own highly secure web browser, along with Mullvad VPN, have worked together in the past. Mullvad VPN is a top contributor to the Tor Project and it’s even one of the founding members of the Project.
Helping Mullvad build its browser also helped the Tor Project address some of its own browser vulnerabilities and legacy issues. The entire endeavor only served to help both companies increase their security.
They worked together to create a browser with the same security features that are offered on the Tor network but without actually being a part of the Tor network. The idea was to create a browser that doesn’t rely on multiple extensions to get basic security features (relying on extensions increases the factors that can result in you losing your anonymity). Helping Mullvad build its browser also helped the Tor Project address some of its own browser vulnerabilities and legacy issues.
The default settings of the Mullvad browser block third-party trackers and cookies and has a simple process to remove cookies in between pages you visit while browsing. If a user has a trusted VPN, they should be able to connect to the browser without any hassle, too. It also has a built-in privacy mode (on by default.)
“The browser’s ‘out-of-the-box’ configurations and settings will mask many parameters and features commonly used to extract information from a person’s device that can make them identifiable, including fonts, rendered content, and several hardware APIs,” says the Tor Blog in their reveal.
As far as monetization goes, Mullvad’s business model doesn’t rely on collecting and capitalizing off of user data — nor do you need to have the Mullvad VPN in order to use this browser.