Which VPN do you use and why?
Currently using IVPN, but considering switching and I want to see what this subreddit community thinks.
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Currently using IVPN, but considering switching and I want to see what this subreddit community thinks.
log in to comment.
proton, supports split tunneling, based in europe and they have a strict no-logs policy
So now proton is ok and Mullvad is bad? I thought proton was ostracized for the same reasons?
proton had one incident sponsoring a far-right influencer, which was probably caused by a rogue employee. they’ve also done some cringe praising of the republican party because they’re apparently against big tech abuses (lol)
that’s about it really. bad but not the worst thing in the world since they say that sponsorship was a mistake and it wont happen again. the political statements are cringe but it was just about free market blah blah so i personally don’t care since there isn’t really a better option
mullvad’s ceo on the other hand directly donated 5 million sek to örebropartiet, a fascist party in sweden. that’s very bad
Disclaimer: Don’t take my response; this post, or other replies seriously.
Everyone has their own feelings. The truth is we probably don’t code, understand, and can actually look at the technologies behind vpns. We are just users. That’s not a bad thing at all (but) here’s the truth.
Our opinions on privacy tools has changed. First proton was weird and mullvad good, now its mullvad is bad and proton is good. That’s not consistent and we just have to be honest because there’s many people with different beliefs and experiences privacy recommendations will never be consistent.
Let’s actually crack open both controversies. Protons was a company the other an individual. The result to the public the same now each company can’t be trusted. Vpns are a trust me bro industry and if you can’t trust them for whatever reason then just do not use those vpns.
The answer is simple hard to swallow and honestly straight forward. Stop using commercial VPN providers and start using proxies or tor. Vpns and their tunnels where originally developed for private server access not a general tool for app and internet browsing. They’re pretty good since the tunnel itself can be hidden or obscured. However the end result is a trust within a company.
So stop trusting people and opinions even mine.
my concern is about avoiding big tech collecting my data, so a vpn with a strict no-logs policy is good enough for me.
tor and proxies are just too much of a pain in the ass and not necessary for my use case, so i’m sticking with proton
Same here
AirVPN with privacy focus and port forwarding
There are literally dozens of us!!!
In all seriousness tho, I like the fact that Eddie supports amnezia wireguard.
Heck yeah! I’ve been using them for about a year now. I’m happily going to pay for another year.
Airvpn actually looks really good even though I’ve never heard of them. Cheap, has all the features I need and they have existed for a long time.
I switched from Mullvad to IVPN after the Mullvad troubles. IVPN seems good to so far, does everything I need and hasn’t been proven untrustworthy/politically dodgy yet.
what troubles?
One of the founders bankrolled a far right party, allowing them to field candidates and they say that “Sweden is for the swedes” and want to forcibly deport anyone who is not. Kinda like that small mustache guy in the 40s in Germany.
korben.info/…/mullvad-cofounder-funding-far-right…
I need to bookmark my comment from a while back as an explainer lol
lemmy.zip/comment/27764221
AirVPN. I switched from proton a while ago because it was a pain to do port forwarding. AirVPN lets me have multiple ports forwarding with ease. And they take xmr as payment!
What was a part of it was a pain, exactly? I use port forwarding and have no issues.
There wasn’t a clear/easy way to do it on a headless server. Maybe they’ve improved the service since
Don’t know how you do it but I just downloaded the config file from Proton and deploy stacks of the app I want to use port forwarding on + gluetun (which uses the conf file I mentioned). I don’t really see why a server being headless would complicate the process.
Proton, because its fast and reliable in my experience so i never felt the need to switch, plus i agree with their policies.
Wondering why you are considering leaving ivpn?
They appear to be 1 of only 2 trustworthy vpns now that mullvad left the building
airvpn being the other
what about Mullvad?
Co-founder donated to a fringe party supporting remigration
oh ok, right.
lemmy.zip/post/68295409
lemmy.zip/post/67067247
What’s wrong with proton?
Been there, left that, they have no redeeming qualities.
The issue is I don’t care about the founders political ideology (Unless he is some Sieg Hieling Nazi and not just some stupid alt-right millionaire)
if the political orientation of the cofounder is important (and I personally believe that it can be) than equally, if not more, important is the jurisdiction of the services. I’d avoid both UK and Switzerland for a VPN.
If I may ask, why avoid Switzerland? Is there some shady stuff they’ve been doing recently?
no, I just think the misconception that Switzerland is some kind of privacy paradise is very common and any possible malicious entity, from corporations to governments, can too easily take advantage of this.
Huh, that makes sense… Is that why Proton has been using it as a flex so much?
definitely, but to be fair the same goes for most similar swiss companies that I know.
Ivpn: canary, audited, anonymous accounts purchasable with crypto or cash, no performance issues, no logs (allegedly), open source protocols and clients.
I really like their blatant honesty in “Do you really need a VPN?”
Fundamentally, the only use case of a VPN is if you trust them with your traffic more than your ISP. Since I’ve had multiple ISPs that serve up adds instead of 404s and will threaten you for using p2p protocols it’s easy to trust a VPN more. As best I can tell Ivpn is just a couple of security peeps running a VPN service cause they can–could they be corrupted or a honey pot? Yeah, but the anonymous accounts help mitigate that risk, and the reality is that even an anonymous account can be tied back to your IP. So don’t do anything illegal illegal on just a VPN and it’ll prolly be fine.
And they’re not advertised through everyone with a platform.
Considering what my ISP is I think I’d trust any vpn with a FOSS client over them…
Isn’t IVPN based in Gibraltar? 🤷♂️
It is. Which I suppose is a consideration, but being an autonomous territory they don’t have retention legislation yet. As the EU, and GB along with them (and to be honest, the rest of the developed world) tends toward mandating logs and shit that arithmetic may change. They aren’t a part of a surveillance sharing network today, and since I’m personally only using a VPN for p2p stuff this isn’t really a consideration for me personally.
Mullvad for stuff that matters. Which is 24/7 on all devices.
Airvpn for piracy and only for piracy.
Ivpn, windscribe, proton or whoever else isn’t obviously an idf cutout and running a deal for scraping and bypassing geoblocks.
I just today started using the new Tor VPN app. I have been using InviZible from F-Droid in SOCKS proxy mode for almost 2 years now, but not all apps support directing their network traffic through a SOX proxy. And so, some apps I was not able to do over Tor. I think the day will come where we as free people have to abandon the clear net entirely and do everything over Tor and I2P. The clearnet is going to become nothing except for ID upload verification screens.
If I’m at home:
Device > WireGuard Tunnel > ProtonVPN Endpoint
If I’m disconnected from my home network:
Device > WireGuard Tunnel > Home Network > WireGuard Tunnel > ProtonVPN Endpoint
Essentially created my own multi-hop network, works like a charm.
Nice, was thinking about doing this as well. Do you switch manually between apps on your device? Or do you use a wireguard app with multiple profiles?
I have answered this question previously -
lemmy.halstead.host/comment/91222
I use the WireGuard app with 1 profile when I’m not on my home network, my router does the rest.
Kinda surprised no one recommending Nym.
nym.com
Never actually used them, but this is my note about them in my vpn spreadsheet
‘Pricey if doing per month, not if doing for year. Lack of transparency, shit website. Dodgy feel.’
You can add “mixnet often not the right choice and available for free through tor if needed.”
Even compared to companies owned by former idf cybersec unit members nym feels the most like a honeypot. Historically speaking that means it’s probably a bunch of true believers being manipulated by a handler working fifteen minutes a day on them.
Yet an other swiss based facsist company with a touch of crypto bro. No thanks.
Source? Last I knew the founder is anti-fascist and regularly speaks out against things like tech oligarchy. Nothing of what I’ve heard him say or talk about has given me any feeling otherwise.
Crypto Bro -> cointelegraph.com/…/web3-has-a-metadata-problem , bitcoinmagazine.com/…/why-mixnets-are-needed-to-m…
Also they love using LLM trained on our works (devs) : nym.com/blog/bug-bounty-ai-age
About the fascism I understand that few people here (proportionally) seems to not be educated on the topic (I see to many pedolandians or canadians in here maybe) : fascism is not being a bad guys wanting to control everyone, lots of monarchs were that way, this is not fascism. Fascism is the bourgeoisie (the social class owning the properties, even more so the means of productions) taking power over society, the more power they grab the deeper you’re in fascism. That’s why many western people do not understand they live in fascist societies while they can agree that money is the real power, not the decrepit old white man put in front (thus they don’t understand fascism, and I think this is on purpose, from schools to media).
So a senior research scientist at MIT (CEO) and a founder of Swiss crypto brokerage and financial services firm (COO) decided to create a company in… wait for it… Switzerland! Famous country know for it fight against the aggression of the bourgeoisie for the last century and its strong stance against today’s genocides. Definitely not known for being the Nazi’s gold vault and all sorts of awful money laundering. If you understand that fascism come from the people who owns the money what do you think about private banks? Swiss is fascists’ paradise and it always have been.
I can close my eyes on Swedish people establishing in Sweden, or anyone in his European country, even if the actual government is far-right there or not. But this is not really the case here, it’s more like the Y-combinator guys establishing in Delaware or… Cayman Islands! This is 101 people only seeking money at the expense of everyone else. Hence my point of view this is already quiet deep in fascism, even if there are smart enough not to open their mouth about Palestine and keeping themselves into crypto-broing and “privacy” (I could totally see them loving anarcho-capitalism).
Also bonus : what social media do they choose? OH NO! Linkedin and Twitter, I wouldn’t have guessed. If you want maximum cringe check the avatar -> www.linkedin.com/in/alexis-roussel-01993143/
Fascism is palingenetic ultranationalism: en.wikipedia.org/…/Palingenetic_ultranationalism this is Roger Griffin’s influential minimalist definition of fascism, and it’s probably the most succinct formulation available in the comparative fascism literature.
“Fascism is bourgeoisie taking power” is very reductive as a definition, and it doesn’t hold up to scholarly work on the issue.
Proton currently but probably switching to Windscribe soon due to increasingly invasive advertising.
Curious about this. Like you’re using their apps and they have ads or something?
As in, I have a proton unlimited subscription and keep getting in-app advertisements for proton Duo as if I’m a free user or something?
Weird. I haven’t seen any of that since becoming paid…
I mostly see it in pass and mail
Yes, they are putting more and more upsell ads into their products. Recently I opened Proton Pass and there was an add taking up the entire little extension bubble.
Yes, they are ads about the ongoing deals and promos. It seems like you get those ads once a season or so. These aren’t the intrusive personalized ads like from Google, mind you. They are “local” product ads to increase sales and support for Proton products. They can be annoying, but also they’re not permanent.
I mean, windscribe made that one ad w/ hitler in it…
I still use PIA, but only for a couple of things running in containers. I use wireguard as my private vpn for my own services
Do you have any thoughts on the Kape buyout? usernotices.com/…/who-is-the-new-owner-of-pia
Because of who Kape is, and their ties to Israeli military, I personally consider them a threat actor instead of a valid VPN choice for my needs.
blog.boycat.io/…/expressvpn-israeli-ownership-1b-…
My plan is to jump ship when my plan expires in a couple of months. I only have indexers going though it these days as 99% of my “data sourcing” is done via Usenet over SSL and the VPN isn’t technically required in that case.
I use them as well, simply because they had a screaming deal for 3 years of service, it seems plenty fast and stable, and my threat model is pretty much just keeping my torrenting private.
Any reason you are looking to leave ivpn? I’m using Mullvad until my time runs out and then switching due to the fascism thing. I was looking at ivpn as one of a few possible options, so I’m curious of people’s experiences.
IVPN is smaller than mullvad so mullvad has more support in the form of more 3rd party packages. With the fascism thing I feel like just because the owner is problematic doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use the service, otherwise by far the majority of large and medium sized services would be unusable.
Problem is that I now know for sure that by giving him money, that money is going to organizations that promote fascism. So, while I can’t control where people spend their money, incan control how much of my money goes into their bank accounts. Same reason I would refuse to pay for anything Harry Potter. I know the money I would spend will go to royalties that JK Rowling will then give to organizations that spread misinformation about trans people or outright tell people that attacking women who even look too masculine, like Imane Khelif, is not only OK, but virtuous.
But since I already gave them my money, I’m not going to abandon what I paid for. In fact, if I did that, I’d be effectively giving them more money as they’d have less traffic to route that was already paid for.
mullvad offered and provided no questions asked refunds due to the co-owner being a fascist.
I am only giving them ~$5 a month, and I know every dollar counts, but a few 100k donations won’t cause the rise of fascism, it will be poor societal conditions and charismatic leaders telling the populace that those issues are caused by minorities.
Yeah, but if everyone says that then it adds up. Just like when so many people don’t vote because their singular vote doesn’t really count, but when a lot of people say that, it adds up. And it’s not like there aren’t alternatives that likely don’t fund fascism, so why use one that I know for sure does, even if indirectly. I can’t punish him, but I can take my few cents a month away from fascism and spend it on a more reputable company that doesn’t keep around a known fascist.
I am not voting for that party after all, and choosing the best software for privacy is worth giving a few dollars to a fascist IMO. Yes, I checked that parties policies, and I disagree with (nearly) all their social policies (Racism AND Secularism!? Gross!), so don’t accuse me of sympathizing with them.
If you don’t see the value in defending fascism, especially in an age where elections are often won by the party with the most money since they can control the media coverage, then I can’t help you. I can’t teach you to empathize with the people who they will murder if in power. I’m one of them, but guessing you’re not.
I think it is better to give money because you don’t care or support it than trying to invent some loop holes to try to convince yourself it is fine even if your ideology is against it.
Its the more respectable approach, since the other feels like denial and lying to oneself.
Njalla. I switched to that after Mullvad was called out. I asked a refund which they got me. I compared some VPNs and no other seemed to fit. I miss some Mullvad stuff but at least they aren’t fascists.
I don’t, I use DNS over HTTPS. That’s far more fitting for my threat model right now.
Hi, can you explain why/what the benefits are for that? I’ve read a little about DNS over HTTPs but I guess just don’t get it .
DNS over HTTPS encrypts your DNS queries, which means at most your ISP can see what sites you visit and not what you’re doing on those sites.
Depending on the infrastructure used by the site, your ISP might also not even know what site you’re visiting.
Private Internet access, they have port forwarding
YSK Private Internet Access was acquired by a sketchy Israeli spy company
I’m aware, but they said the team and their data policies haven’t changed, unless you know another good port forwarding allowed provider I’m probably gonna stick with them
AirVPN and Windscribe are good options with port forwarding that aren’t compromised (AFAIK)
None for the time being, and I don’t know what I should use if I were to need one. I already use Proton for email so it wouldn’t be my first choice to give even more data to one company, even if they still seem good (though their marketing is relatively aggressive, which feels offputting).
Mullvad is what I point people at when they say what you just did.
It’s simple to use, straightforward in pricing and you can’t screw up signing up in a way that surfaces more of your personal information than is necessary. The apps are also actually good if you need to use them which shouldn’t be as big of a deal as it is but speaking from many years of experience with different VPNs, it is.
Well, currently using mullvad because I paid cash and have months left.
However I tried ivpn with their one week option (two bucks!) At their basic plan.
I find speeds better on mullvad, but they’re otherwise comparable. I like both apps fine on android. If I was already on ivpn, I would not switch to mullvad for the minor speed uptick, since prices are comparable and switching multiple devices can be a very tiny annoyance.
In the past, I’ve used airvpn and proton for extended times (over six months). Proton is over priced, speeds were only marginally better than their free options, and iirc they were a pain about linux setup (I could be mixing them up with someone else though).
Airvpn worked great as a vpn. Port forwarding was an absolute cunt to get working for me. I suspect user error to be the biggest factor. Their android app sucks, and setting it up via other methods is preferred. But, at the time, they also lacked the built in ad/tracker blocking that I’ve enjoyed with mullvad and ivpn.
I did use nord briefly at one point. Worked fine, but at the time I was in need of port forwarding, and they had stopped offering that.
The only reason I’m maybe switching away from mullvad is the dubious political alignment of one of its owners. It really does work well for me, and is consistently faster than others I’ve tried, even with multi hop on. Even there, I’m not fully sure that the exact choice made by their part owner is exactly as bad as the common reaction is, so while I am likely switching away, I still can’t really state that it’s horrible to use the service.
The party he donated to has one big issue that’s a hell no for me, but it might not be there for everyone, and other aspects of the party slate are less objectionable, or even agreeable. In other words, I’m not mad at anyone that shrugs the donation off. It ain’t my business to judge people over such a narrow subject.
THAT being said, ivpn really is essentially the same service in terms of functionality. They even have servers that are in the same data centers. There’s several in the US in specific that are 100% in the same center once you go looking at the lists of exits. And I know there can’t be that many exact matches in cities across the world that aren’t from the same location. Since VPNs rent either virtual or hardware space in data centers to provide exits, if a given company doesn’t break from that, you won’t see a major difference between them.
I’m surprised that you had trouble port forwarding on airvpn. My understanding is mullvad doesn’t allow port forwarding, and Proton allows it but it’s extremely finicky and you have to constantly poll for it with some script (or maybe if you use their official client then you don’t need that, but I didn’t). Port forwarding was, why I went with airvpn.
Tbh, when I tried it, I was completely unfamiliar with port forwarding, so it was more of a me thing.
Currently, Mullvad. Waiting for my time to run out then I might give NymVPN a go.
Mullvad, then switched to IVPN a couple of months ago. Both are recommended in privacyguides. They have solid privacy policies and are regularly audited.
Nym VPN because it seemed like the best but I’m sure someone will tell me there’s something wrong with it 😂
Windscribe. I like their no-nonsense approach.
I bought several years of Mullvad time before finding out it’s ran by a fascist. I use it exclusively for pirate related activities.
(I push several TB through it daily, so at least I’m costing Mullvad much bandwidth)
I don’t. I would just be shifting trust from my ISP to some VPN provider for worse ping. I trust only I2P and Tor networks, so either it’s sensitive enough to go over darknet or I treat it as public.
Mullvad, but I need to switch to something that will let me torrent. (If there are any reccs?)
Going to get buycott, they seem pretty good
I’m sure someone will tell me how they’re terrible though