Combine Tor and a VPN with Mullvad Browser
The most effective way to be invisible online is to combine a VPN service, which hides your IP address and encrypts all your data, with the Tor Browser (www.snipca.com/45733), which connects you to websites through a series of encrypted ‘relays’ around the world. This double layer of encryption and location-spoofing ensures nobody can tell who or where you are, or what you’re doing – which means you can access geo-blocked content, too.
The main drawback to this combination, which is known as ‘Onion over VPN’ (‘Tor’ being short for ‘The onion router’), is that it significantly slows your browsing (see page 71). Tor Browser is designed to let you access sites on the Tor network, which have special 56-character onion addresses and constitute what’s commonly referred to as the ‘dark web’ or ‘darknet’. Despite the dark web’s shady reputation, some of these onion URLS are private versions of reputable news sites that allow people in countries where the internet is censored to view and share information. But because of the roundabout way Tor works, it takes longer to load standard – or ‘clearnet’ – websites than other browsers, and this is made even slower when it’s run through a VPN server.
To address the needs of web users who want the anonymity offered by Tor but aren’t interested in accessing dark websites, the Tor Project has teamed up with VPN company Mullvad to create the Mullvad Browser (www.snipca.com/45678). It describes this as “Tor Browser without the Tor Network” for when “a VPN is not enough” and is packed with privacy features to make you invisible online when combined with a VPN. These include protection against fingerprinting; a ‘New identity’ option (see screenshot above) that instantly closes all tabs and clears your browsing data to let you start afresh; and a choice of security levels – the strictest of which, Safest (see screenshot below left), only allows essential website features and blocks everything else.
Mullvad Browser’s default search engine is Duckduckgo and it comes with ublock Origin installed to block ads, trackers and third-party cookies from the outset, while browser settings that could compromise your anonymity are either excluded or disabled. It’s based on Firefox, so you can install extensions from the Mozilla Add-ons Store, but this isn’t advisable (or necessary) if you want to remain invisible.
You can use Mullvad Browser with any VPN – not just Mullvad’s own VPN, which costs €5 (£4.40) per month – to keep your identity and data completely private as you browse the web. It can also be used without a VPN, but this won’t mask your IP address or stop your ISP seeing which sites you visit. Unlike Tor Browser, your connection won’t be slowed to a crawl or refused by websites that block Tor, because you access sites directly rather than being routed through a series of relays.