The simplest way to make use of the digital anonymity service Tor is through the Tor Browser. You obtain and use it like an everyday browser, and it covers your digital footprints as you go, making it very tough for anybody to trace your on-line exercise. On prime of that, the Tor Browser is designed with countersurveillance measures that block trackers and stymie gadget fingerprinting strategies. But you may not need to use the Tor Browser on a regular basis, as a result of it has comparatively gradual web page load instances and is usually a bit cumbersome. But launching in the present day, a brand new browser developed by the Tor Project’s consumer expertise and purposes groups gives the identical privateness focus constructed with totally different infrastructure to include VPN assist as an alternative of Tor.

Known because the Mullvad Browser, the instrument comes out of a collaboration between the Tor Project and the VPN maker Mullvad. The free, open supply browser is available now for download. The VPN house is crowded and has some problematic players, however Mullvad has consistently been a well-regarded and trusted VPN as a result of it is open supply, would not monetize consumer knowledge, and gives impartial third-party audits of its methods and infrastructure. Nonetheless, the Mullvad Browser can be utilized with any VPN you belief or can be utilized with out a VPN as merely a privacy-focused browser.

“We’re not here to compete and to win browser market share; we are here because our mission is to advance human rights with technology,” says Isabela Bagueros, govt director of the Tor Project. “So we want to provide alternatives for people who need privacy and censorship bypassing.”

Both the Tor Network and virtual private networks encrypt your web traffic and tunnel it through an intermediary, but Tor is focused on the anonymity that comes from a specific scheme of sending your traffic through a series of “hops” or particular servers. VPNs, in distinction, do not take such nice pains to anonymize your site visitors and as an alternative give attention to providing privateness protections by making a system through which solely you and the VPN supplier can see your internet exercise. As a end result, VPNs have a sophisticated fame, as a result of they’re solely as non-public because the VPN supplier is reliable. Depending in your use case and circumstances, although, they could be a precious instrument.

“Mullvad’s mission is to make mass surveillance impractical, and a VPN alone is not enough for achieving online privacy—you also need a privacy-focused web browser,” says Mullvad CEO Jan Jonsson. “We wanted to offer a privacy-focused browser as good as the Tor Browser but for those who want to connect to the internet through a VPN instead of the Tor Network. The collaboration is all about providing more privacy alternatives for people.”

The Tor Project and Mullvad both said of each other that they were attracted to the collaboration by the other’s record on human rights and digital privacy initiatives. And Mullvad has been a longtime financial supporter of the Tor Project, which is a nonprofit.  

There are other well-regarded privacy browsers, like Brave, and they can also be used with a VPN or even have built-in VPN capabilities. But the Tor Project says that their years of experience pioneering antitracking techniques like cookie isolation and other anti-surveillance technologies means that Mullvad Browser is launching at a very high quality. Tor Project’s Bagueros adds that, while developing Mullvad Browser, the team made some discoveries and improvements that have now been incorporated back into the Tor Browser.

“Maybe this new browser will reach an audience that we’re not reaching right now,” Bagueros says. “Multiple alternatives can coexist and support each other. We’re into building alternatives in collaboration, in solidarity with other organizations, because this is a big fight. We’re going against big players, so we need to work together.”