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mullvad / mullvad-browser

Privacy-focused browser for Linux, macOS and Windows. Made in collaboration between @torproject and @mullvad
https://mullvad.net/browser
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mullvad.net in browser services (DNS, updater, etc.) is blocked in some regions #245

Open mmrabbani opened 2 months ago

mmrabbani commented 2 months ago

Hi Mullvad browser should be complete and useful browser, even without using VPN for all privacy lovers. Domains of all VPN providers all blocked in some countries like China, Russia, and Iran. So, if you use services from mullvad.net in browser, the browser is not going to work at all without VPN. I recommend getting another domain (for example mullvad-browser.com) and put these services on it. I detected these services till now.

  1. Mullvad DNS server is not working when mullvad.net is blocked. Because default secure DNS setting is set to "max protection", user cannot browse any website in default setting.
  2. The browser cannot check for update. So It cannot update itself. There may be other services that I don't know.
ruihildt commented 1 month ago

@mmrabbani Do you happen to know technically how accessing mullvad.net is blocked?

This could for example happen through the ISP DNS resolver, or the IP itself could be blocked, etc. Based on the type of blocking, the solution to it might be using another domain, but maybe that would not be enough.

mmrabbani commented 1 month ago

There are many forms of censorship. In most cases of censorship, DNS requests would be blocked. Even if there would be no DNS request (for example client uses local DNS server or DNS over https), SNI packets would be dropped and therefore the service cannot be used. Because of wide use of CDN systems and frequent changes is IP of servers, IP blocking is used in rare cases.

I checked mullvad.net in my country now. Domain is blocked, but the IP is accessible.

ruihildt commented 1 month ago

FYI, this is tracked upstream in https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/mullvad-browser/-/issues/293

ruihildt commented 1 month ago

Probably relevant: https://www.reddit.com/r/mullvadvpn/comments/1d30d5a/mullvad_dns_doesnt_work_in_russia/