[Feature Request] Listen on local SOCKS5 instead of setting up a VPNService

[Ian-Polito]

I currently use the Android app Netguard to restrict some applications from accessing the internet and to block ads. It uses the VPN service to do this, so I can't use both Netguard and the Mullvad app, however Netguard implements SOCKS5 to forward to an app that provides VPN. This is how one could use both Netguard and Orbot (Tor) where you specify 127.0.0.1:9050 in Netguard to forward traffic via SOCKS5. I did not find any information about how to do this if this is already possible at https://mullvad.net/en/help/socks5-proxy/

It would be nice for the Mullvad application to implement a similar way to receive forwarded traffic like this via SOCKS5 so users can take advantage of both of these applications.

[faern]

Thanks for the suggestion. It sounds like a cool feature. But it would involve a pretty major refactor of our app, since the VPNService stuff is fairly central to how it works. Apart from setting up the tunnel itself, the VPNService controls which apps are excluded from the tunnel (split tunneling) and also which DNS is in use. Both of these things are pretty important for keeping the user secure and the app working as intended.

I think this is a too large change compared to the value it provides currently.

One could also argue that we should be the single VPN service on the device and allow forwarding our traffic to a SOCKS5 socket and that Netguard should be the one listening on SOCKS5 and do the filtering after our app.