this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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So... you don't trust Google but you trust some shady VPN company? You aren't wrong about quick wireshark tests, it does seem cleaner but long term trust and VPN companies are not something that go into the same sentence.
First off, everything Mullvad deploys is open source, from their clients to their servers. They have been audited and checked by 3rd parties to ensure their servers are running the source code they released. They are not some "shady VPN company" like Nord. They have a continual commitment to transparency that has been tested and true for many years.
Second, MullvadVPN has very little to do with the development of the Mullvad browser. It's just a fork of Tor Browser maintained by the Tor Project as a collaborative effort towards a uniform browser with the benefits of Tor Browser, but to be used without the Tor network. It is funded by Mullvad, but maintained mostly by the Tor Project. Do you not trust the Tor Project? The non-profit that has been open source and audited constantly throughout its lifespan? Here's the source code on the Tor Project's repo: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/mullvad-browser
The only Mullvad affiliation is the Mullvad extension that comes preinstalled (which you can uninstall, of course), the name, and the logo. That's about it. No need to use their VPN, no need to buy anything from Mullvad, it's basically just the Tor Browser without Tor.
I dont use Mullvad VPN, only the browser. I do use NordVPN when I need to show as being in another country, but mostly to circumvent geolocation and keep some stuff from my ISP. I know commercial VPNs are just switching who sees your data, but I'm good having a company that's not my ISP and in my country looking at that. And yes, I distrust Google to no end. The same applies to Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung, etc. There are not many names out there I trust. At the end of the day, anything not under your control, you need to choose how much you trust it, if at all.
Oh yeah.
Me too, the reason why I use ungoogled-chromium is mostly because of that and because when you take Chrome and remove all the tracking and spyware it runs way faster ahah. There are many people and projects that came together in the ungoogled-chromium community and the source code is scrutinized and cleaned up like nothing else.
We're lucky that there are so many nice developers out there just providing these tools for the community to break the ropes that tie us to big tech. Those devs are the real heroes in my book.
Yes!