What VPN have you switched to after the Mullvad situation. I have looked at nym and ivpn. But don’t know if they are any good.
I use AirVpn as they allow port forwarding and are reasonably priced. They are no logs and allow payment through non-bank methods
AirVPN is great, I am using it right now. Paid with crypto and signed up with an anonymous email address
I use self-hosted on a cloud bought by crypto, but it’s primarily because my relatives living in a country with almost all VPN solutions and protocols blocked, so you always need to figure everything out yourself and try something new.
What cloud service would you recommend? Maybe I’m over thinking I but I was looking into offshore VPS. But don’t know if I really want to go through it all.
I use Proton VPN, but also exist self-hosted VPNs which is better
How does a selfhosted VPN work? I thought the purpose was to offload the connection so the ISP only saw the company IP…which is this case is an IP toed to your location?
Yes, a self-hosted VPN could reveal your IP, so you must hire a VPS server to host your VPN, so the IP you reveal is that of the VPS server located somewhere else, in turn you can configure proxies to mask the same IP of your VPS
Is this then not essentially the same thing, paying for a remote access IP to mask your traffic?
I am not against it or anything I just dont get the difference.
From what I understand, the use case for a self-hosted vpn is pretty different
Yes, u can choose remove logs, and more privacy options :3
You can benefit from both a commercial VPN provider as well as at-home hosted.
My Asus WRT router, which I flashed with Merlin firmware, has a feature called “VPN Director”, I can connect to 5 different VPN clients at a time and forward my devices connections individually through each one.
My Asus router also has the option to host a WireGuard Server which i then forward through one of the VPN clients with the VPN director.
Essentially creating a multi-hop network, the flow goes a little like such;
Device -> WireGuard Tunnel -> Home Network -> WireGuard Tunnel -> Commercial VPN Server
The commercial VPN is my endpoint therefore what the internet sees when I browse however I also benefit from my PiHole which handles my DNS queries an blocklists.
I switched away from Mullvad when they killed port forwarding years ago. I have used AirVPN since and it has always been pretty good!
What do you guys use port forwrding for?
I don’t personally, but generally it’s needed to keep your seed ratio high enough on private torrent trackers.
Also if you don’t have port forwarding you can only connect to those who have. With port forwarding you can connect to every peer, so you get better download rates.
Torrenting
one of the few good things about living in a fuckedup country is that I dont even use a vpn for torrenting.
I’ve been pretty happy with Windscribe. They are headquartered in Canada, but they have also proven they don’t keep logs. https://cybersecuritynews.com/court-dismisses-criminal-charges-against-vpn-executive-affirms-no-log-policy/
If you’re looking for a good comparison, I found the Techlore comparison table helpful: https://vpn.techlore.tech/
They also threatened to leave Canada if Bill C-22 passes, which I take as a good sign that they’re serious.
ivpn is the only one on the list privacy-guides recommends other than mullvad and proton - obviously their recommendations aren’t law but a good starting point for looking into things yourself
I wouldn’t recommend NYM, I tested it for multiple months, it’s quite unreliable and had serious security issues (e.g. updates weren’t available through multiple repositories they publish to).
Mullvad is still the best. For the time being, until the situation clears out, I wouldn’t stop using it.
I disagree. VPNs is all about trust because you can’t verify they don’t log. I don’t trust a company where one of the people that owns 50% have donated 500k euro to a party that is describe as a racists, fascists and nazis.
Sure, you are free to think that way and I’m not saying I disagree with you. I just know that, if I stop using a product or service from a company, just because I don’t agree with someone working there (even if it is someone that founded that company), it is very likely I won’t be able use anything.
If it was the acting CEO or the company posture, I would do the same, but apparently it is not the case. Until then, Mullvad still provide great service.
There’s a clear difference between a CEO supporting this, and then random employees of a company that you disagree with on more trivial subjects…
In this case neither one nor the other is supporting this. The whole debate is about the action of one of the founders (not the CEO, who already said he doesn’t support those views).
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wow, we really are going to extremes
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… and I’m not saying I disagree with you.
What facts? Just because I have a slightly more moderate and less radical stance regarding stopping to use some company services than you, you already started throwing the “fascist supporter” card. That’s usually what extremes do.
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Mullvad has been audited over and over again and found to not be logging.
Before they dropped port forwarding a police raid famously found nothing and confirmed that they were not recording any user information and operating as advertised, that is to say, operating in a way that not only didn’t log, but precluded the possibility of logging.
A raid where they get nothing is like an audit but it’s the real thing.
They dropped port forwarding because, in concert with an Interpol investigation, all the big content delivery networks and lots of websites to boot started blocking their endpoints.
There is not any vpn I’m aware of that has been physically raided by cops with a court warrant in hand and shown to have nothing and also dropped their possibly most popular service, port forwarding, in order to not have to comply with an investigation.
I used ivpn in the past and see it as basically an untested mullvad from ten years ago. Who knows how its people and technology would respond under the same circumstances? Could be good, could be bad.
Audits don’t prove they don’t keep logs when a company do a audit on them Mullvad give them access to what they can audit Mullvad can just delete the logs from the servers when the audit is taking place it don’t prove anything.
But the raid where the cops don’t find anything is a really good sign.
Yeah there’s a lot of questionable stuff in the vpn service security auditing “space”.
That’s why I think it’s important to look at the raid outcome to see how their systems handle a real world situation (interpol tries to get logs and install logging in order to bust an alleged global csam ring using mulvads port forwarding, user privacy and anonymity protections to trade files over windows cifs (yes, network neighborhood, pedos apparently have a reputation for lack of opsec) sharing). The raid was unsuccessful because there were no logs and the police were unable to install logging capabilities.
After that failed operation, Interpol began requesting cdns and hosts block mullvads endpoints by ip. The point of that operation was to either force mullvads compliance with the investigation, to get them to drop port forwarding, or to force them to close down.
Because at the peak even cloudflare was blocking mullvad, it became very hard to use the service when browsing or for pretty much anything that relied on internet like rss or podcasts, shoutcast or even updating your computer.
Mullvad dropped port forwarding after rotating servers for months to attempt to beat the block and giving users lots of warning.
In the months after the block request was lifted, using the service for normal browsing went back to usual.
I remember all these details so clearly because I was a user of mullvad then and it was a relatively high profile and well publicized test of a vpn services’ capability to withstand government pressure.
As it turns out, even having no logs and no ability to add logging into your system doesn’t stop government from telling everyone else to make your system unusable.
It’s also pretty much the best possible outcome someone could expect of a service.
The point of this long ass reply is not to defend a company, although I think a person who was doing so could be forgiven for it in this case, the point is to help you understand what happened to make users of that service put their trust in it and why people like me are saying “maybe consider not ditching mullvad” when you ask what to use instead.
Someone mentioned https://cryptostorm.is/ on another board, but I never heard of them before.
Any experiences here? I know a lot of VPNs like Express VPN or PIA are controlled by Israel/Mossad - so I won’t recommend tbem without a lot of research.
I’m using Cryptostorm for around two years now for seeding and browsing. Some things to know.
- We don’t know who is behind Cryptostorm. It could be a honeypot. I personally think this is unlikely because they basically don’t advertise and their website is way too uninviting for the “casual” criminal user, but who knows.
- PGP-encrypted mail support works well and is (likely) handled by a dev with competence. (Very sure there is no specific “support” person.)
- Server and client code is open source on their GitHub, but they only have an OpenVPN client for Windows. For other systems you need to use the provided WireGuard or OpenVPN configs.
- No PII is required for signup.
- Their blog posts are very good and go into detail about their system and what they are doing.
- IP blocks are somewhat common, and you don’t have streaming servers.
- Speeds are fine (not the best, but good enough) and can vary from server to server.
Generally, I’m quite happy with them. But everyone needs to make sure they are fine with not knowing who exactly is behind the service.
I am also considering either IVPN or Nym. Not sure which is best for best privacy/security. Probably IVPN? Can anyone more knowledgeable help me decide between these two?
I’ve been looking at IVPN as well. Nym seems interesting but seems very new and idk if they offer Wireguard configuration files (I don’t think they’re even WG-based? I could be wrong)
I’m sitting on Mullvad for a week to do research into alternatives. Apparently their support team is handing out full refunds far outside their typical policy because of this shitshow, no questions asked. IVPN so far is looking promising, but I don’t know a damn thing about the company and people behind it.
The recent contact I have had with ivpn suggests the company is genuine, and customer service is good. Unfortunately they do not tick the boxes for me re: linux software, and southern hemisphere servers. Definitely worth considering if in northern hemisphere though, maybe even south for some.
I have purchased nym last week.
- I got the 1 year plan which came at a great price (price is really important for me atm)
- its apps arent as robust and good as mullvad, use more resources. But still do able.
- They dont offer config files
- It’s speeds seems pretty promising. Better than mullvad
- It takes it a while to connect. Maybe up to 1m. While mullvad connected immediately.
If mullvad wasn’t expensive for me I’d stick with it.
I heard about Nym a couple of months back and #3 was a deal breaker for me. Too bad it’s still the case today.
i use proton… airvpn looks good but i still haven’t tried it
Similar issues with Proton CEO, he seems to be a Trump fan.
Furthermore, I heard it’s generally bad practice to use a VPN provider from your own jurisdiction, AirVPN mentionend above is located in Italy for example and won’t sell any accounts to Italians for that reason.
the people of this community are proton fanboys and the downvotes prove it. lol
Proton excel at marketing, they are greenwashing for the privacy crowd.
this makes a lot more sense than anything else i’ve heard and especially why they keep accidentally praising trump and his fellow fascists.
The reason air won’t sell accounts to Italians is because Italy has a law against using technology to view or share pirate soccer broadcasts and air doesn’t want to or can’t prevent people from doing that (also they’re positioned in the marketplace perfectly for piracy and just about nothing else).
It’s not because they believe or follow the recommendation that a provider be outside the users country of residence. Which is advice that’s situational.
How to get downvotes: offend the proton zombie fanboys
I wasn’t aware that airvpn refused Italian customers, the company definitely has some interesting policies though: including no servers in israel, or russia, and no servers in australia because of our f*cked up internet privacy laws.
How to get upvotes: appease the proton zombie fanboys
begs the question of why tuta doesn’t keep accidentally praising trump and his fascists.
Going out on a limb here, could it be… ethics?
are you saying that proton doesn’t have any?
proton is greenwashing for those interested in privacy.
I was previously a customer, walked away from a 2 year subscription that still had about 18 months left on it.
I was previously a customer, walked away from a 2 year subscription that still had about 18 months left on it.
i was going to become a customer until it’s ceo voiced support for trump and every single fascist-friendly incident created by proton since then has made me glad that i’ve never given them a penny.
because is not proton the one doing it neither. It was the CEO on his personal account and the “praising” was about a decision in favor of good ethics and regulations (whether it turned out to be inaccurate is not proof of supporting fascist). Sometimes companies have people that are more opinionated, or are more expressive online. Their comments do reflect on the company but that’s not the same as the rest of the employees or the others in leadership agree with the personal comments on any or all. In all Tuta is irrelevant to the conversation. People raised suspicion on Proton supporting the right, people investigated and the evidence points that Proton as a business, have been supporting organizations with liberal or left leaning ideals before and after these so called “scandals”, something that many willfully ignore. You were presented with evidence but continue casting doubt in spite of not having any to support your claims. That’s called black-and-white thinking, ignoring nuance, inability to reconsider your position after careful analysis, or just trolling. No different that other conspiracy theorists.
Trump is the worst President of the history of USA, probably already more corrupt that all other before him combined. I can criticize him and his administration to the end of the world but if I say something or anything positive about him in context, you and the others riding the Cancel-culture-ride are likely to believe I am a secret supporter of him, fascism or some ignorant shit. IMO Conservatives are wrong on most topics but one thing they are correct is the Cancel-Culture absurdity on the left, (which the right also have ironically). People just loove to have an enemy and be enraged.
yeah i’m switching to ivpn
I never got around to changing from PIA when they were purchased years ago. Haven’t found any practical reason to change since, and though I get the backlash over the purchase.
My main use case is keeping my ISP from cutting me off for seeding, and it’s done that reliably.
PIA is part of that group of VPNs all owned by a dubios Israeli entity that keeps gobbling up VPN providers
Just remember that PIA’s owner is kape technologies, which is a British-Israeli company. Their headquarters are in London but development is done in Tel Aviv.
It sounds like you might already be aware but for anybody stumbling by.
That’s why I’m switching when my three years of pre-paid service is over.
I’ve also used them for years without issue.
Proton
Is it the half finished software, the ai, the dodgy social media activity, the crap customer service, or the right wing ownership that attracts you to proton?
ivpn seems like a good enough replacement privacy-wise
