So I’m running mullvad VPN on the iPhone and was curious, if necessarily. Mostly I just wanted to
not let provider know what I do browsing
hide my IP from websites and trackers
have some dns filtering, tho I also run adguard pro (with dns disabled)
was curious if I could save up some battery life with using other means, such as private relay, vpn set up on a router, custom dns instead of relying on vpn’s and not using vpn altogether for my casual browsing consisting mostly of libreddit and logged in twitter from a webapp. Ty
I wouldn’t use a VPN on an iPhone since they are known to have leaked for many years.
not let provider know what I do browsing
Do you mean your ISP or your VPN? Your VPN provider will see all of your traffic so you must trust them. Do you trust Mullvad more than your ISP? Even if you did, VPNs are vulnerable to traffic analysis in which an ISP can determine the websites you visit even with the encryption.
A VPN will hide your IP address but that alone isn’t enough to hide your location. You must also not give any websites permission to access your location.
ty for your advice. So if I wanted to ensure let’s say a stable connection featuring proper kill switch I’d have to set the vpn outside of aniPhone, as in the router level or so. Would just dns filtering make more sense for my close to none threat model? Maybe private relay could do the job without much resources (money and energy wise)
The IP is just one of many informations a website can have, as he also can identify you with browser version/language, OS, etc. Btw, if you have your browser in your language, for instance in french, and you have an IP which is from Netherlands, lol, you will just stand out more.
I’m not sure if it is what you ask, but please just use the DNS filtering included with your VPN provider. That way, you reduce the number of entitites to trust.
Using a VPN on a router (afaik) is completely useless, bc you stick with the same IP, and you defeat the purpose of a VPN imho.
Ty, I’d say I feel much more comfortable trusting mullvad than my ISP. Also find my IP more precious than any other fingerprint I leave using specific settings and extensions. But DNS is from mullvad so all good. It’s kinda relieving the VPN on a router level is not s way so I’m “stuck” with an app. Tho maybe the private relay or just DNS itself could be enough while saving me some battery life. Then I could use the vpn slot for lockdown privacy app too.
The thing is, if you're signing into websites and stuff with the VPN on your other devices than the IP thing doesn't really matter. Also libreddit is proxied anyway (with no ads), and you could use nitter if you want a less bloated twitter also with no ads (can't post though)
Depends of your threat model and your country. In mine, it's ok if my ISP know which website I go, so I can use 3rd party DNS to unblock website, some other will have to use a VPN an other will have to use Tor network.
I see, while it’s true I don’t need to, I’d prefer to hide my IP even from my ISP and sites where I log into. But even if I do the rest of my browsing from the same IP, other people use it too so is it really a problem? Would just DNS maybe with a “lockdown privacy” app be more useful than trying to hide my IP which is the ultimate fingerprint pointing to me?
I think that some good information has already been provided to the OP in this thread, so I’ll just leave a few more links to our own resources, as well as a third-party resource by the people being IVPN (which is one of our recommended VPN providers).
The VPN providers we recommend, as well as the criteria we use to determine which ones we should recommend:
ty for your advice. So if I wanted to ensure let’s say a stable connection featuring proper kill switch I’d have to set the vpn outside of aniPhone, as in the router level or so. Would just dns filtering make more sense for my close to none threat model? Maybe private relay could do the job without much resources (money and energy wise)
– takama