 There are many different browsers out there and I've used basically all of them if you've watched my channel for any amount of time You know that I switch I change browsers a lot And like way more than I definitely should now I've been using the same browser for quite a while now But prior to that I was switching back and forth between different browsers quite often But today what I want to do is actually take a look at a new browser Or I'm gonna I'm gonna quote a new browser from the makers of Malvad now Malvad if you don't know what that is is a VPN Provider now I have my own thoughts on VPN providers I think Malvad's probably the best out of all of them that I found it's the one that I've used for a while but still VPNs do require some trust whether or not they're even worthwhile using is up for debate by a lot of people so We're not going to get into the whole VPN thing all that much in this video But the browser itself which is made by Malvad and in collaboration with the Tor project is Somewhat interesting at least so we're gonna take a look at the Malvad browser today and answer the question Is it worth using and if so, who's it actually for so let's go ahead and jump in But before we do if you leave a like on this video, I'd really appreciate it It really does help the channel So the Malvad browser looks like this now if you're saying Matt that looks an awful lot like Firefox Well, you weren't wrong. That is exactly what this is. This is in fact a fork of Firefox now When I say it's a fork of Firefox I mean that quite literally is that they forked Firefox, but that's not unusual because that's what Tor is as well Tor is actually a fork of Firefox that they've used to develop their own software on top of and To meet their own goals Malvad has basically done the same thing and there's nothing wrong with that I'm actually happy that they've done that because for the vast majority of browsers out there It's a fork of Chromium, which is a Google project and we all know that Google is the devil Well women is red hat the devil. I'm not sure. Maybe we have two devils. They're all devils I don't know what the whole situation when it comes to the devil is but Just needed needless to say that obviously Google is bad and we should not use Google things That's the way they've been told telling me anyways So the fact that they've forked Firefox is a good thing because Mozilla is not bad. I Don't know. I'm very confused who's bad But the point is is that Firefox is open source and that they've forked it and that's what this is now What's the whole point of Malvad browser? Well, the idea here is to be a browser that is as privacy focused as possible without sacrificing functionality so if you've used things like LibreWolf or ice cat or Water fox I think is another one of those browsers. Those are all also forks of Firefox, but they all take privacy So seriously that a lot of times it does impede functionality So it means that there are certain things that just don't work a lot of times DRM stuff doesn't work a lot of times Certain websites won't load simply because they've hardened Firefox or their browser so much that certain things just don't function So Malvad is trying at least from what I've read to kind of thread the needle between those two extremes being able to be Usable but still very privacy focused now. What have they done to actually meet that goal? So first of all, let's talk about the whole tour stuff now. I am not an expert when it comes to tour I've only used it a few times and all that stuff mostly recently So I'm still very much a noob when it comes to tour and I would not even be able to claim that I understand how it works Okay, so I will freely admit that right off the bat, but this browser actually has very little to do with tour anyway So my lack of knowledge is not going to be a bad thing So what do I mean by it doesn't have very much to do with tour? Well, it was developed in a collaboration with tour But it does not actually have anything to do with the tour network Instead what they've done is taken some of the privacy things that tour has done inside of its browser and brought them to Malvad So they've basically just stolen some of the features I'm saying excuse me. I shouldn't usually we're stolen They've borrowed some of the features from the tour browser that don't have anything to do with actual tour stuff So the onion network, none of that stuff is actually here If you are wanting stuff that has to do with tour if you want to use the tour network You're gonna have to use the tour browser So for the most part we can ignore the whole tour aspect of this project Simply because there's not much tour actually here what they've done As I said is taking some of the features from the tour browser to make their their the Malvad browser more privacy focused So what are those things? It does some of the more default security settings that you would do if you were trying to make Firefox itself more private So for example, it doesn't remember history or cookies at the end of the session So every time you close the browser, it's going to delete all your cookies. It's going to delete your history. So Those are like the bare minimum that you would do if you're trying to make your browser more secure Specifically the cookies is important because cookies are like the most obvious thing people that companies and websites use to track you So by deleting them and making your browser fresh every time it starts up It's one less thing that they can track right now. This does prevent a problem So if you're logged into YouTube and you're you like to stay logged into YouTube or whatever if you log out of this browser And come back you then have to log in again now That's not a huge deal You can obviously change that in settings if you want to but that's something that you're going to have to keep in mind You're gonna have to log into your stuff all the time that is a problem that is with a lot of privacy respecting browsers and that's just kind of a Inconvenience that that you have to work through another option that they've given you that isn't something that is available in Firefox Is something called identity reset? I think that's what it's called here And basically what it allows you to do is without having to close the browser on your own It basically allows you to completely Reset the browser so that whatever you were doing beforehand and whatever you're doing afterward Wait, whatever you do afterwards aren't linked in any ways So the idea here is that if you're wanting to prevent yourself being tracked between different Topics or whatever you could do sort of are between different sites So if you're browsing Facebook for stuff and you click on a link or whatever That's going to save a cookie and normally when you browse and you have a cookie on your system that cookie follows you from one website to another It's one of the reasons why if you ever Sign in to Google and then visit like a medium blog it actually shows you hey Would you like to sign in with your Google account? This is your Google account like how the hell does medium know that? My Google account is well, that's a cookie right and there are many different obviously examples of a cookie by having the ability to reset your Identity it will erase those cookies without you having to completely Close the browser and launch it right back up So that's one option that they've added now. I'm not exactly sure how useful that would be in everyday use But it is an option there if you need it Okay, so the biggest area where they seem to focus on is fingerprint resistance So by default they've enabled a setting within Firefox called privacy that resists fingerprinting and Basically, what this does is it changes several different features that Will at least in theory prevents your browser from being fingerprinted now if you're not aware what fingerprinting is basically what that is And this is very non-technical surface level explanation But basically the idea here is that websites can take very miniscule non-specific aspects of your browser information, so you know your your operating system the resolution things like that they can take all these little pieces of information and that's going to help them identify exactly who you are and The things that you're interested in so as you go out throughout the web It's not only going to keep putting cookies on your system It's to so that they can track you through cookies we're also going to be able to associate those cookies and your IP address with Specific information like your operating system your resolution and stuff like that and the more information they have the more accurately They can identify you hence the word fingerprinting right the whole idea is that it's kind of like a fingerprint on the web by turning on the setting all that has Tried to make that much more difficult so the the setting basically changes your time zone so that it's UTC and Now what that means is that by putting everybody who uses this browser in the same time zone? It's much harder to separate out individuals inside of that group it removes access to the system fonts which again can be used to identify Basic systems so probably all the fonts that you have on your system are exactly one set of fonts and What I have installed on my system may be unique compared to what you have on stall on your system and by usually browsers have access to all of that information on Malvad they only have access to certain small portions of that information another thing that they've done is they've dictated Window size so if you go to something like verge.com You're gonna see some really weird borders now. I don't know if you really notice them because you don't notice them until You actually see them once you see them you can't stop seeing them So if you see these like borders like they're like gray bars here along the side Basically what they've done is made it so that every single person who visits a website using this browser is using Close to the same resolution so that the pool of resolutions is exactly one, right? And they've taken 200 pixels. I think that's what they said was 200 pixels like might be less than that I can't can't remember. I didn't write it down. I should have written it down but but they basically made it so that there's a border along the sides of the in the bottom so the resolution is as samey as possible and that means that the Websites that are trying to track you don't have access to your exact resolution Which again makes it harder to fingerprint you they've also generalized the OS and app version numbers So that all the browsers look exactly the same even if you're using different versions of it And same thing if you're using like Basically would just say you you're using Linux So everybody who's using Linux is in the exact same pool of data instead of having saying yeah I use open suzer that person uses a boon to and they're in their own separate pools Which makes it easier for them to identify they've also made it so that the webcam and microphone capabilities are masked So if you have a webcam and hey you have a microphone Regular browsers know that those things are connected to your system and then can ask you for permission to use them With malvad browser it won't even know that you have them installed or hooked up Unless you give it permission to do so another thing that is masking is the keyboard layout So they doesn't it can't tell what keyboard layout that you're using the less information They have obviously the harder it is to fingerprint you also they've masked the performance API is game pads and I wrote it down as seasons But I'm pretty sure I meant session so the all that's that extra information regarding your Attached hardware and stuff is completely Anonymized as much as possible So they've done quite a bit of work here to make sure that fingerprinting is is as hard as possible It does not mean that it's impossible to do it just makes it harder to do because they're basically what they're trying to do here It's put as many people in the same pool of data as possible so that my browsing experience Looks exactly the same as someone else's browsing experience to the people who are trying to track us By having us all in the same pool it makes it much harder to spot one person in the crowd Okay, so that's what their basic idea here and to add on to the benefit They've built in malvad so you can use a VPN on top of that Which would then again make it harder for you to be tracked because it won't be using your regular IP address so the way that it does this is by Using the malvad browser extension, which I'd show you but it actually shows my actual IP address So I won't be doing that The extension itself is fairly explanatory. You do have to pay for malvad in order to use it There is no free tier with malvad You could if you wanted to replace the malvad extension with something like proton VPN Which which does have a free tier so you could just kind of pop malvad out and put something else in if you wanted to I do use malvad. I just don't have it hooked up right now But the idea here is that you can have the VPN going on built right into the browser If you don't want to use the VPN system wide Now the last few things that they've done are things that you probably should do in firefox Anyways, they've disabled the normal firefox telemetry. So by default Firefox collects an enormous amount of information about you I don't know if you know this but they actually have built-in telemetry inside of firefox And just like the whole fedora thing that's that's going on right now And the boon to things before people were freaking the hell out about firefox actually collecting your data It did not seem to affect them any because they went and did it anyways And that is definitely opt out it is turned on by default So the malvad guys have turned off all of that telemetry They've also turned off all the things that firefox suggests to you So things like suggested extensions things like extent the suggested search engine third party recommendations All that stuff has been turned off any of the services that firefox usually puts on and enables by default that phones home They've turned off They've actually on their blog listed exactly the number of things that do provide connections outside of the browser So they still have browser updates set up browser the the malvad browser extension, which is the vpn par The malvad doh no script ublock origin, which is installed by default. So there's an add blocker up here The certificates for ssl and stuff like that the domains update in another thing for the us The the ublock origin that those are the only things that they have that set are set up to go outside of the browser itself and honestly For me personally The thing that I like most about this is how transparent they are about everything that they've done I really do this and I will link to this blog post here at the That I that I have on screen They've basically laid out every single thing that I've talked about here in terms of what they've Disabled what they've enabled and everything and you know the settings and Connections and stuff that are going out Basically everything is right here in this one blog post and they're very transparent about which I find very nice Right a lot of times like we have no clue what firefox is doing behind the scenes And that idea that malvad is here at least trying to attempt to be a little bit more Transparent is is very nice. Now the question that we then have to ask is who's it for and is it good, right? Is it good? So the the question the answer to who is it for well, I mean, it's kind of for everybody But there is a proviso on that, right? So the benefits to having all the stuff enabled that malvad disables So if you were just to use regular firefox the benefits to using something like regular firefox it are Apparent so you stay signed into everything that you sign into because it does Remember that because it uses cookies, right now You can change that obviously inside of malvad because this is just firefox It has all those settings, but there are certain conveniences that you get by using a non-privacy respecting browser There's there's a reason why Why chrome and firefox and edge and all those are very popular because they work very very well There's also a reason why privacy respecting browsers like malvad browser like waterfox and libre wolf and stuff like that Aren't very popular because they do put in place hardships for people who want to use the internet There are roadblocks there and things that make your internet usage inconvenient at times So people don't like inconvenience So while I say that malvad is for everyone It is more for people who are much more interested in privacy than they are in convenience now Personally, I think that that should be most people, but it's definitely not So if you are someone who really truly cares about your privacy and you want to use a very privacy focused Web browser malvad is a definitely an option for you Now the question you have to then ask is do you trust malvad? And that's a much harder question to answer now personally I think that they're one of the most trustworthy vpn Providers out there that being said I can't really say that there's a reason why trust them more than I trust any other One they do seem to be more open and transparent than the vast majority of the other vpns out there But again, they are company So you kind of have to keep that in mind You are putting placing your trust in someone else When it comes to using something like this or if you choose to use their vpn or whatever So that is just something to keep in mind If you're really interested in protecting your privacy and you want to use a privacy-respecting browser Maybe libre wolf. Maybe water fox might be better options for you because those are truly open source Not to say that this is not truly open source, but they're not those other options are Community backed instead of backed by a company. So if that makes sense So I'm not saying don't use malvad browser from what I see that it's a very good browser And they seem to have very good intentions for it It's just if you choose to you need to keep in mind that it is run by a company And you have to have some trust inside of them in order to be happy using it So the the last question then is is is it better than firefox and the answer that question kind of goes with The previous question in that it can be better than firefox if it is what you're looking for So if you're looking for privacy-respecting browser, it's a better option than firefox because firefox Well, it can do every single thing that malvad can do Every single thing malvad can do firefox can do because they're all those firefox settings You'd have to go and make make those settings. You'd have to you'd have to turn on fingerprinting You'd have to turn all the options that go along with anti fingerprinting You'd have to turn off all of the telemetry and stuff malvad has done that for you So if you're looking for all of those settings to be off if you're looking for a hardland version of firefox malvad Maybe a good option and it may in fact be better than firefox if instead you're not looking for those things You know, you're gonna have to you get more convenience and stuff like that using firefox itself So in that case firefox then would be better So it really does kind of depends on what you're looking for inside of a browser for me personally I would probably trust libre will bet more than malvad But it's still kind of close and I would say that the The integrated vpn the identity reset are both things that are really nice to have So I would definitely say give it a try if you're interested in a privacy-respecting browser I would also say don't put too much weight into the whole tour aspect of it because tour really doesn't have anything to do With malvad browser outside of the collaboration to create it the tour network is not here if you want to use tour You'll have to go use the tour browser. So that is it for this video If you have thoughts on the malvad browser, you can leave those in the comments I can below if you haven't already if you'd leave a like on this video I'd really appreciate it. It really does help the channel You can follow me on mastodon or odyssey those links will be in the video description You can support me on patreon at patreon.com slash linux cast links for paypal And youtube will be in the video description as well if you'd rather support me there Thanks to everybody who does support me on patreon youtube You guys are all absolutely amazing without you the channel This would not be anywhere near where it is right now. So thank you very very much for your support I truly do appreciate you guys are just thank you so very much. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time