What's more, about 22-23% of Tor nodes are set up by government agencies to de-anomize users.

argante https://blog.torproject.org/malicious-relays-health-tor-network/
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2021/12/was-threat-actor-kax17-de-anonymizing-the-tor-network

There is no such claim in any of your sources. They are blog posts from 2021 that describe events in the past, not the present. The Malwarebytes article speculates briefly that the nodes were set up by state actors, but we can't be sure of that.

argante 22-23% is the general estimate that can be found

Found where? Who is doing the estimating, and how are they estimating that number? Forgive me, but it's quite a bold claim to be throwing around. It's fair to claim it if it's backed up by evidence. You seem sure about it so I would expect at least some tangible evidence to be presented.

      argante 5 1/2 year old complaints about Brave. Are they still issues today? As far as I can tell, Brave doesn't act as a miner, at least without user permission.

      And TOR's "entire anonymity" does not only rely on disabling JavaScript. If that were the case, all anyone would have to do is disabled JavaScript on any browser they use. You are not being very intellectually honest.

          guser39 It's a privacy focused browser. I think it is absolutely an alternative for people who want less Google, given that it has strong privacy protections in place, not just to protect from Google but any tracking company. Don't let the word "chromium" fool you into thinking it's somehow Google sponsored spyware. You're shooting yourself in the foot.

          Every company has questionable management and design choices.

            router99

            I think they're best to be ignored. Nothing this person says will be substantiated with evidence, they're all about being bombastic. It's people like this that give privacy a bad name.

              From the official GOS account on Mastodon:

              The only other browser [besides Vanadium] we can currently recommend is Brave. It preserves most of the security of mobile Chromium while adding more state partitioning, anti-fingerprinting and the most advanced content filtering engine. Vanadium is more secure but needs to catch up in those areas.

              https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/111966180001152300

              There are lots of reasons that some folks might dislike Brave.
              Private company, runs an ad network, crypto, AI.
              But there's no perfect browser out there. Brave is one of the least bad choices, per the GOS account:

              If you rule out Brave then there's no mobile browser alternative to Chrome or Edge we can recommend due to lack of basic security.

              https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/113948398641752397

              Also, about Firefox and variants:

              Firefox doesn't have a basic content sandbox on Android, let alone site isolation, and it has a lot of other security deficiencies.

              The browsers referring to themselves as hardened Firefox variants only harden privacy, not security, and in fact most bring more security issues.

              This applies to the Tor Browser too.

              https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/111969790767423663

              I tend to do a lot of browsing on vanadium, for security and privacy reasons. I don't think firefox is a secure browser. I stopped using it many years ago. When I do browse on my laptop, I use Brave. I hope to get the p10 fold, and that will decrease my laptop use even further.

              argante

              Mullvad is in Sweden, and their VPN is also a scam

              Can you explain why you say their VPN is a scam or better yet, any sources?

                  https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/firefox-deletes-promise-to-never-sell-personal-data-asks-users-not-to-panic/

                  Mozilla may also receive location-related keywords from your search (such as when you search for "Boston") and share this with our partners to provide recommended and sponsored content. Where this occurs, Mozilla cannot associate the keyword search with an individual user once the search suggestion has been served and partners are never able to associate search suggestions with an individual user. You can remove this functionality at any time by turning off Sponsored Suggestions—more information on how to do this is available in the relevant Firefox Support page.

                  lol

                  96397605 maybe because of this ?

                  https://www.techradar.com/computing/cyber-security/we-will-not-walk-back-signal-would-rather-leave-the-uk-and-sweden-than-remove-encryption-protections

                  Sweden want to impose encryption backdoor. If passed, the legislation could also be a problem for Sweden based VPNs such as Mullvad.

                  In the worst case, they could force mullvad to log user activity. However, they will probably move to a new country like Swiss rather than shutdown or stay in Sweden (speculation)

                      argante all sources are by just one person. Not saying they're not trustworthy, but this is still just one source.

                        grayway2
                        He claimed that the VPN is a scam. That is what we are asking for him to substantiate.

                          argante Still nothing there about 22-23% of Tor nodes being set up by government agencies. You're again providing links to old content that doesn't prove your claim. If you're unable to provide a relevant source and then quote the specific relevant parts from that source to support your claims, then my kindest interpretation of the way you're arguing in this thread is that you simply have no idea what you're talking about.

                          argante What's more, about 22-23% of Tor nodes are set up by government agencies to de-anomize users.

                                fid02

                                It's not in any way about supporting the claim made here by argante "about 22-23% of Tor nodes being set up by government agencies", (and i don't want to deep-dive as i find the Tor node-discussion is slightly off topic to the OPs question) but the article I stumbled across is more recent than the ones cited here in the discussion and may still be of interest to some:

                                https://www.ndr.de/fernsehen/sendungen/panorama/aktuell/Investigations-in-the-so-called-darknet-Law-enforcement-agencies-undermine-Tor-anonymisation,toreng100.html

                                      Murcielago

                                      Citing the article with one addition in brackets by me:

                                      Research by Panorama and STRG_F has now revealed that they (LEO) have apparently recently expanded their strategy to overcome Tor. This requires surveilling individual Tor nodes, sometimes for years.

                                        argante KYC. It will be the same if you use a VPN with a service that can be linked to you (gmail).

                                        Mullvad does not have a KYC requirement and offers plenty of pay options to avoid tying one's identity to an account.

                                        I can understand if VPNs in general may not satisfy a particular threat model given these legitimate concerns, or that they may not offer a good enough value proposition for some. However, none of this suggests that Mullvad is somehow fraudulent. They have an outstanding reputation among VPN providers for good reason.

                                            elih

                                            Mullvad does not have a KYC requirement and offers plenty of pay options to avoid tying one's identity to an account.

                                            That's true. You'll even pay less if you use Monero. By KYC I mean that if you use a bank account to make a payment, it's hard to talk about anonymity. The same goes for if you log in through a VPN to your gmail.

                                            Mullvad (...) have an outstanding reputation among VPN providers for good reason.

                                            This is also true. I have pointed out something that is rarely mentioned, that data centers, fingerprints, CDNs and Cloudflare completely undermine what VPN providers claim. Mullvad can therefore assure that it does not save any logs, but Cloudflare in M247 or DataPacket, where Mullvad has its servers, can already save and analyze such logs. Why does Mullvad not admit to this risk and only say that they provide wonderful privacy and anonymity?

                                                argante U make a good point, i had this question spooking in my head recently. I do trust Mullvad as an entity, but for their vpn servers in other countries, like in europe, i assume they rent servers from M247. Can Mullvad guarantee for example that a server in France rented from M247 doesn't 'monitor' in any way? (For lack of a better term). If not, how would that work exactly?

                                                    r134a

                                                    Can Mullvad guarantee for example that a server in France rented from M247 doesn't 'monitor' in any way?

                                                    They can’t guarantee that, and they have full knowledge that the network is being monitored because that’s the data center policy they have to agree to. The problem is that VPN providers are a valuable target for such monitoring.

                                                    If not, how would that work exactly?

                                                    Watch this and pay attention to 6:05 where he says the VPN does not keep logs:

                                                    https://youtu.be/9_b8Z2kAFyY?t=282