New Privacy-Focused Browser Comes From Mullvad VPN and Tor Project

The makers of Mullvad VPN and Tor have come together to create a new privacy-focused internet browser that’s designed to stamp out all kinds of web tracking.

On Monday, the two parties introduced the Mullvad Browser, which is free and available(Opens in a new window) for Windows, Mac and Linux. The new product promises to collect no data at all. 

The software builds off of the Tor Browser, which is based on Mozilla’s Firefox and already considered one of the most private browsers on the web. The key difference? The Mullvad Browser strips out the need to connect over the Tor Network, a collection of volunteer-run servers that can hide your IP address, but at the expense of slowing down your internet access. 

Hence, users should get the privacy protections from Tor, without sacrificing the speeds. Instead, to hide your IP address, Mullvad is recommending the browser best be used with a trustworthy VPN. 

(Mullvad)

“The idea is to provide one more alternative —beside the Tor Network— to browse the internet with more privacy,” Mullvad added. “To get as many people as possible to fight the big data gathering of today. To free the internet from mass surveillance.”

Mullvad, which is based in Sweden, specifically designed the browser to prevent data tracking. This includes styming fingerprinting, or when a tech company uses various attributes from your browser, such as time zone, operating system and browser version, to identify your presence. 

To stop the fingerprinting, the Tor Project said(Opens in a new window): “The Mullvad Browser applies a ‘hide-in-the-crowd’ approach to online privacy by creating a similar fingerprint for all of its users. 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.”

The default privacy settings in the browser.
(Mullvad)

The Tor Project added: “By default, Mullvad Browser has private mode enabled, blocks third-party trackers and cookies, and makes it easy to delete cookies between visiting pages during the same session.” No privacy-focused extensions need to be downloaded.

The other plus is that Mullvad VPN isn’t trying to monetize the browser through data collection. In a FAQ(Opens in a new window), Mullvad added: “We don’t earn any money from the Mullvad Browser. Our income comes from our VPN service. The Mullvad Browser is a complement to our VPN service.”

PCMag briefly tried the browser on Monday, and it runs much faster than the Tor browser. But the privacy protections do come with some trade-offs. For example, the software won’t retain your logins into specific websites in an effort to combat data tracking, although the browser’s settings can be changed to your liking.

Looking for other privacy-focused browsers? Check out our recommendations.