Mullvad Browser – ideal to use with TorBox

Monday, 3rd of April 2023, Tor Project and Mullvad announced the launch of the Mullvad Browser. This browser is built on the same principles and with similar safety levels as the Tor Browser — but that works independently of the Tor network. In short: the Mullvad Browser is Tor Browser without the Tor Network. It gives Mullvad Browser some advantages in combination with TorBox. With this combination, you route all client network traffic through tor and use a safe Browser. In parallel, you avoid the problems with the tor over tor situation, which the Tor Browser creates if used with TorBox.

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. 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.

If you want to visit .onion sites with the Mullvad Browser, you have to use the SOCKS v5 proxy functionality of your TorBox and configure the Mullvad Browser accordingly:

Under about:preferences, “General”, scroll down to the bottom and click under “Network Settings” on “Settings…”, choose “Manual proxy configuration”, and under “SOCKS Host” enter following IP: 192.168.42.1 / Port: 9050 (wlan) or IP: 192.168.43.1 / Port: 9050 (cable). Toggle on “Proxy DNS when using SOCKS v5”.

Alternatively, instead of port 9050, 9052 can be used, if you want to use destination address stream isolation. Because with using port 9052, each destination address has its circuit, the performance could be negatively impacted.

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