Vipassana is insight meditation, not mindfulness and not really appropriate for beginners. The closest equivalent to mindfulness would be concentration, or samadhi.
One of the core practices of insight meditation (Vipassana) is to be mindful of your inner thoughts, like through "noting", and observe them through the lenses of the 3 characteristics. You use one-pointedness concentration (Samadhi) to tune into these thoughts. You can also do Samadhi without Vipassana, as many yogis have, but you cannot do Vipassana without a baseline concentration ability.
Some people use mindfulness meditation and Vipassana interchangeably, but it is not entirely accurate, yeah. Mindfulness is only one exercise of the broader insight meditation (Vipassana).
Funny how nobody addresses the main point, only that my 1-sentence executive summary is not accurate :-)
Main point is: if you start doing mindfulness exercises, you will eventually get into insight territory, and without a cushion of compassion this can mess you up.