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Mullvad really does have a commitment to privacy.

Some key points:

- Acts as a Google proxy, removes tracking links and caches results

- Only available for Mullvad paid users

- 100 free direct searches a day, unlimited cached searches (further search result pages count towards limit)

- Results cached over all users for 30 days



I'm sorry but besides your first point, what is substantial in the claim that they have a commitment to privacy?

Also why would I trust them over Google?


- The offer many types of payment, some that can be anonymous.

- They have strong commitment to open source and have put their finances into that in addition to releasing code.

- They are doing a lot in terms of transparent infrastructure: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2022/1/12/diskless-infrastructur...

> Also why would I trust them over Google?

For Google your data is the product, for Mullvad you pay for a service.


You can send a carrier pigeon with a tenner and a sticky note holding your account number and they'll take it.


Buying a Mullvad scratch card is probably the most practical anonymous method. Usually the fact that you are using Mullvad at all isn't a secret (your ISPs can see you connecting), so outside of a very overcomplicated scenario where Amazon/$yourlocaltechstore are colluding with Mullvad to track individual scratch cards, it's fine.

Mailing cash in an anonymous envelope has a certain charm, but OTOH I have consistently had terrible experiences with the Swedish postal service and that seems to be a widespread opinion.


You can't trust anyone, but for Mullvad you're a customer not a product.


It all comes down to trust in the end, but over time I've come to trust Mullvad more and more. One particular example that sticks out to me is that they ended subscription based billing, specifically because it required them to hold customer information that they didn't want to have.

https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2022/6/20/were-removing-the-opti...

You can see an example of their lack of data retention from a post about when they were raided - there was nothing to find.

https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/4/20/mullvad-vpn-was-subjec...

Their blog is a good place if you want to get a sense of what they're like as a company.

https://mullvad.net/en/blog/


I don't see anything in their terms of service / privacy policy re Leta. It'd be nice to know if they retain any sort of data at all (there's prominent mention to caching stuff, but just what are they caching?), regardless of whether it is tied to PII.


Problem is that Google search itself has still gone downhill......

This is a cool addition for sure though


Lol. Sure. M247 Ltd limited hosts...


I was wondering already why Sweden, home of the Pirate Bay and Assange lawsuits, does not shut it down. This could be the answer.




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