My subrsiption with surfshark is ending soon and I was wondering if there was something better around the same price. There are a lot of ads about many VPNs but a lot of them don’t look so “safe and private” as they want you to think so it’s hard to really figure it out. I don’t want to spend too much since I don’t use them very often but I kinda like the “change catalog of netflix” thing and to be safe while doing some “”“”“”“shady”“”“”" stuff
I use the free tier of Proton VPN primarily for travel. Probably the only free VPN I trust, but there is a paid version for faster speeds and more features.
I use Proton. May be a bit overkill for what you’re looking for if you want just a VPN - Proton includes email, a calendar, and cloud storage - all encrypted. Their VPN client supports port forwarding and split tunneling. They categorize their servers to show which are best for torrenting and/or streaming. Some of their servers also serve as end points for the TOR network.
MullvadVPN is great. It’s a no-bullshit VPN.
I believe it does have an issue surrounding their disabling port forwarding, which becomes problematic if you try to torrent, or so I understood.
They are A+ on privacy and transparency, that being said.
They have recently removed support for port forwarding. That won’t stop a user being able to torrent but it will stop seeding and will affect discoverability and speed somewhat.
Has no negative impact on their privacy features
Thanks for the correction and adding more information! I’ve considered using it, hence my quick search and vague information about it.
Not being able to seed is a bit of a deal-breaker for me, but that’ll depend from one person to the other.
Been using the proton ecosystem for a while. I trust their policies as much as anyone can and have been using their VPN for about two years, Always on for my PC and phone.
With VPNS i usually vouch for two services: Mullvad and Proton.
Mullvad is a no-bullshit VPN as described before, it just works and it’s cheap as hell. It’ll let you do your netflix hopping, but for any skullduggery I believe they’re killing their port forwarding, so I wouldn’t really recommend it for that front. You’d be better off subscribing to a usenet index for that and then using mullvad on the side instead of ARRing.
Proton is amazing but only truly worth it if you’re using the suite-- Emails, drive, VPN, the whole 9 yards. It’s a bit costly but no one does it like them. They also have a solid free tier for the VPN if you’d like to try them. And they do port forwarding (as of this comment).
Haven’t tried expressVPN but I’ve heard lots of good things about their audits. I’d feel comfortable with them but I can’t give any pointers.
TL:DR: Mullvad for simplicity and price, Proton for features & using their Suite, something like Express for something that just does VPN and nothing else.
I steer clear of Nord & Surfshark for personal reasons. VPNS that do too much sponsor marketing outside of network/privacy communities strike me as suspicious IMO.
ExpressVPN has been audited many times, and their servers are entirely based on RAM disks that get wiped as soon as your session ends. So I’d say they are a good choice, if you’re willing to pay.
In terms of privacy, Mullvad VPN is the one that considered the most private by the community.
A. WireGuard.
B. Cross-platform.
C. No need for Email to register.
D. Let you pay with cash.
E. Don’t have affiliated videos amd commercials.
F. Support port-forwarding.G. Had no scandals over the past decade.
Stolen from Reddit - link to archive.org - to make sure that Reddit won’t make money out of it :3
E: unfortunately F is no longer true :/
F. is no longer true. They recently removed support for this after lots of people abused the feature.
Used to use Mullvad but since their port forwarding fiasco I need to switch.
(I get that they had people abusing that system, but as a privacy based service they should expect the same pitfalls as every other privacy based service, like Tor, Matrix, etc. All you can really do is keep whacking the mole, or shut it down for everyone incl. the people using it for it’s intended purpose too whom you had advertised port forwarding to, who wouldn’t have bought your service if it didn’t have port forwarding to begin with.)
So now I’m looking at IVPN or Proton. Does anyone have experience with IVPN or know how trustworthy they are? I’m wary on Proton after Protonmail gave that French activist’s IP to their Feds, and they have a free tier which usually on a VPN means they sell your data, but afaik they are the only two that’ll let me PF and I have a need, a need to seed.
IIRC free tier on ProtonVPN blocks whatever peer to peer traffic they can detect.
I wouldn’t worry about privacy within the contents of the VPN though, as a lot of their services do require money so they should have quite a lot of funding through the paying users (like me.)
They do what they can to promote as much privacy as possible, but email really doesn’t lend itself well to that just in general. I would always suggest accessing any clearnet site through a VPN or Tor if you do sensitive work online.
I bet it does, I’ll be paying whoever I go with anyway, but the just the existence of the free tier has me wary due to how every single other free VPN works. It may be that this one subsidizes the free tier with the paid or treats it as a loss leader, but “free VPN” is always sketchy without knowing that for sure, which I do not.
Regardless of monetary incentive or lack thereof, privacy remains a concern. If I were not concerned about privacy, why even use a VPN? Unfortunately, torrenting harms the Tor network, so it is not really a good alternative either.
Email isn’t private, sure, but that doesn’t mean that your email provider needs to snitch on you to the Feds either. I’m not wary of proton because “email isn’t private,” I’m wary of proton because “they directly complied with law enforcement’s request to turn in an activist.” Not that I want that in an email provider itself but I have a VPN. However, if they’re also my VPN provider then they have my real IP. Rn, proton only has me from Mullvad and farther back from Nord, they don’t know my IP to turn me in, but if I buy their VPN service, that changes, then they know everything.
Honestly I might just look into hosting myself a VPN on a VPS.
Mullvad is really good.
