Blips on the Radar

Cover Image for Obscura —> Mullvad —> Internet
screenshot from obscura.net. Headline, "Private by Design: Our Two-Party VPN Protocol". 

Body copy left, "Obscura never sees your traffic
Obscura's servers relay your connection to exit servers but can never decrypt your traffic.
Your traffic is always end-to-end encrypted via
WireGuard® to the exit server."

Body copy right, "Exit hops never see who you are
Exit servers (run by Mullvad) connect you to the internet but never see your personal info.
Obscura masks your real IP address when relaying to the exit server."

Pixelated design at top of window holding content. Image of a line drawn to the obscura icon, then to a server icon, then to a globe icon.

Obscura's website header up top with links including "Download for macOS"

I’m experimenting with Obscura VPN.

I’m largely curious about how they’re chaining Obscura —> Mullvad —> Internet.

“Traffic first passes through Obscura’s servers before exiting to the Internet via Mullvad’s WireGuard servers. This two-party architecture ensures that neither Obscura nor Mullvad can see both your identity and your Internet traffic.”
Via: Mullvad has partnered with Obscura VPN

According to Obscura’s FAQ:

Obscura is provably private by design.

Even “no-logs” VPNs see both your identity and your internet activity, meaning you have to blindly trust their pinky-promise for privacy. This is exactly why some privacy-conscious folks will tell you not to use a VPN at all.

Obscura is different – we never see your decrypted internet packets. It’s simply impossible for us to log your internet activity, even if we were compelled to, or if our servers were compromised. You can even verify this yourself.

Obscura’s stealth protocol is much harder to block.

Our unique stealth protocol is designed to blend in with regular internet traffic. It does so by leveraging QUIC – the same technology that powers HTTP/3 – making it far harder for censors or network filters to detect or block.

Not too shabby:

Screenshot of full speed.cloudflare.com website test results. Shows download and upload measurements as well as latency and jitter. Everything looks pretty snappy.

#mullvad·#obscura·#privacy·#security·#vpn