Mullvad, iVPN
Such a gorgeous answer 🤌🤌🤌
I tried IVPN recently but had a ton of trouble getting MLB.tv streams to work. Switched back to ExpressVPN for now.
IVPN and Mullvad are probably the best VPNs if you simply want to transfer full view of all your internet activity from your ISP to one of these 2 companies. If you want to keep your internet movements private from everyone, use Tor browser. Its slower and doesn't do udp, but it is much closer to real privacy than the commercial VPNs. Of course, if you are a high priority target of a large nation state, then Tor might not be enough for you, but for most people it works well for those things you want private. If you just want to watch movies, torrent and stuff like that, regular VPNs are the way to go.
This.
Proton. It replaced PIA for me when it was introduced. Since I was already paying for Proton mail, there was no reason to keep paying for a separate VPN as well.
Reasonable decision. Proton is good for privacy 🙂
Really? Protonmail doesn't have a clean track record. They backtracked their TOS, their onion site forwards to the clearnet, and they outed a French climate activist.
Same story, made the switch and now I use the ecosystem except the password manager. It's a bunch of solid products. Tad Expensive (compared to free like Gmail) but I'm happy.
I've been trying out the password manager these past couple weeks to see how it compares to Bitwarden. Overall I've been impressed. Auto fill actually seems to be superior on Proton as it works on some sites that Bitwarden never would for me. My only real complaint at the moment is that the iOS app will log out of my account at random and it's a hassle to log back in since I don't always have my Proton pw on hand.
I seriously considered switching, but they don’t offer enough storage to make it a better value for me.
They give you extra storage every year on your anniversary.
The answers are always going to be Mullvad, IVPN or Proton VPN. Windscribe is also a possibility.
+1 for windscribe
Such a based answer 😍😘
Mullvad VPN paid with Monero and NextDNS paid version.
Why NextDNS if you already query DNS through Mullvad?
Because I prefer the granular control that I have over my queries when I'm using NextDNS something that I don't have with Mullvad DNS.
Don't use express VPN. They make it very annoying to cancel. I thought I canceled once and it didn't work.
It takes three confirmations inside a hidden menu.
I use Mozilla VPN, which is just Mullvad but more expensive. I want to support Mozilla though and enjoy the integration with my multi account containers so i stick with it
If you were in with Mozilla VPN while it was in beta (for $4.99/month), you can keep that price for life as long as you have an active sub. I got lucky with that one.
I use Moz too. It works pretty well, but I do get a lot of "confirm you are not a bot" messages from Cloudflare, especially when I'm using LibreWolf to anonymize my browser headers (fingerprint).
Proton
Good option for Privacy 🙂
Same, fast cheap and at least one of the absolute best when it comes to privacy.
I pay for proton. I use it on mobile, laptop, and desktop. Its quite seamless and unobtrusive. I like a vpn that allows me to forget im using a VPN
I tried Proton for a month for I'd get A LOT of "confirm you're not a robot" when entering a lot of websites. Was really annoying. Did you ever get around that?
That's almost always caused by one of your nodes' IPs being logged doing sketchy stuff. Try picking a different route.
I often do forget I'm on the VPN and I can't figure out why I can't chromecast music to my speakers.
Private Internet Access
https://torrentfreak.com/private-internet-access-to-be-acquired-by-kape/
Some have pointed at Kape’s history. The company had previously operated under the name Crossrider and was active in the advertising space. Among other things, it installed toolbars with ‘potentially unwanted software.’ While the company has since switched to a focus on cybersecurity, this past has made some people suspicious.
AirVPN
What reasons drove you to land there?
Personally, I switched from Mullvad after they dropped support for port forwarding. I’ve found AirVPN is easier to use on that front as well.
I've been using Proton for half a year, and I'm considering buying the Unlimited plan
Self hosted WireGuard
From a technical standpoint, how does that work? Are you being an exit-point and get to use others exit points or what am I missing here?
And what do you use to hide your traffic from your VPS provider? Or are there privacy focused providers out there?
That is not something I do at the moment but I would be happy to hear how other people do it.
Only VPN I would trust is Mullvad
Proton was accused to give access to mails to authorities : https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58476983
NordVPN and others are usually linked to your email + credit card stuff and you blindly need to trust them
Not only have they provided the data, but they were even called "really easy to work with" by the feds
Do you have a source for this? Thanks
Private internet access. It's super cheap too
I don't. Your ISP can hardly see anything you do online. Almost all websites are encrypted with HTTPS and if you are concerned about them seeing what domains you visit you can just change your dns server to quad9 or something else privacy respecting. A more valid usecase for VPN is preventing websites from tracking you IP address, downloading "Linux ISO's" or bypassing geographical blocks and for that I used mullvad but I am looking for something else now that they blocked port forwarding.
If you torrent copyrighted material in Germany, you definitely want a VPN. Private law firms "representing copyright holders" regularly request information about consumers based on source IPs/protocol/ports from ISPs with a court's rubber stamp, then send out demand letters for hundreds of euros, with a risk of thousands if you choose to fight it.
Sometimes they follow up if you ignore it, sometimes not. It is horribly oppressive.
tl;dr germans who torrent from a consumer internet service should use a vpn
Even DNS traffic and IP address and packet metadata is extremely valuable to ISPs like Comcast and AT&T. They use it to control what you can and can't do -- for example, throttling your access to streaming video services that compete with their own streaming products or partners' products. They spent millions to overturn Net Neutrality regulations so they can use what they know about your traffic to monetize you (steer you to their products).
Yup. An ISP could potentially gain some information based on the IPs you're hitting and the number/frequency of packets sent and received, but that would take serious logging and analysis on their part. It's much easier to collect data through DNS requests.
@cow DPI would probably be easier.
Long time AirVPN user here - never had any issues.
ProtonVPN. The VPN works great. I'd use some of their other services but they're pretty restrictive unless you're on more expensive plans than I'm on.
I see surprisingly few mentions of WindScribe in this thread. I've had nothing but good experience with them and I always read their promo emails in full (they send very few of them, and their marketing team is hilarious)
I recently switched to windscribe from NordVPN since my initial 3 year plan was coming to an end with nord. I really liked that you can customize a plan. I only need a few specific servers to choose from so I picked those and just pay $4 monthly instead of having to buy 3 years at a time to get a good price. Makes it easier to switch if I choose to but the speeds have been incredible compared to Nord. I do wish they would update their linux client to have feature-parity with the rest of the clients (linux doesn't seem to have split-tunneling as an option).
Support team is amazing too, got billed 13 times a while ago and they quickly refunded it + gave me an extra 3 years for free.
I use a combination of self hosted wireguard servers at family and friends. They connect together with Tailscale. One of the endpoints connect to the Internet through Mullvad. This makes it easy for every single device I own to connect to either Mullvad or any of a number of possible regular ISPs.
Are all of said family and friends IT savy , or you installed them at each site yourself? Interesting
Family not so much. Friends most definitely. It's awesome but takes some trust to lend ones IP out. But having almost 10 different IP addressess to choose from really helps at times. One of them lives abroad too.
None atm. DNS over HTTPS cos im poor using mullvad's DNS server instead of VPN . Makes it bit more difficult for my ISP
Windscribe. Prices are great, unlimited bandwidth, and 1Gbps servers for no additional cost. They have a free tier as well. They’re very privacy focused. Been a customer of theirs for probably like 5-6 years now.
Excuse me for my lack of understanding, but why are there so many people looking to hide their traffic from their ISP with a VPN? Isn't HTTPS enough? Are you afraid of ISPs resorting to DPI or MiM to spy on their users? Is customer protection so weak in the US that ISPs are free to spy on their customers using aforementioned techniques?
Edit: I just realized that I left out people leaving under authoritarian regimes, for whom VPNs are unfortunately required to evade their government.
To me, the problem is you are instead giving over all of your info to the VPN company, and still be tracked by other means such as fingerprinting of devices, cookies/site data or browsing patterns. Is some random VPN company more trustworthy than my ISP and who’s to say they aren’t sharing the information? Plus, the could also be subpoenaed/NSLed if that’s the concern.
Because HTTPS protects only things you do on the site. ISP still knows which sites you connect to. Which YouTube video you are watching to. etc. F.E. in Russia ISP's have to keep logs of users interactions for half of year and give it to government when they need them.
ISP still knows which sites you connect to.
Yes, because they know the IPs your packets go to, but if there are multiple websites behind a single IP they won't know which one (unless you use your ISP DNS server, which you should probably not)
Which YouTube video you are watching to. etc.
No, because the URL is contained within the HTTP packets which are encrypted with SSL (the S in HTTPS), so unless the ISP does MiM, they cannot know which URL you are visiting.
Because my ISP stopped my internet access last time they were contacted by a copyright holder whose thing I torrented.
Astrill, only VPN with a good track record in China where I happen to live.
Most others crap out after a few weeks or months, and never bother to fix their protocols.
Huh, interesting that VPNs work in China. I thought the GFW aggressively throttled encrypted connections?
Nah they identify the protocol handshake and block it altogether, so you need to find a VPN with a proprietary protocol that keeps updating.
It's probably a modified openvpn with some package obfuscation, but works surprisingly well.
Selfhosted DigitalOcean VPS with SOCKS 5 SSH tunnelling for masking my home IP when web browsing and OVH VPS with OpenVPN server for masking my home IP for my local seedbox server. I don't really need commercial VPNs since I only really need basic functionality to mask my IP and I don't really need a shared service to do that.
YMMV, of course.
Did you care about traces that you left behind and can be linked directly to you? Is a nice setup but if you pay DigitalOcean VPS with PayPal for example or credit card all your efforts to hide your real IP that is linked to you is useless. I don't know if this is a major concern to you, of course.
Yeah, I'm aware it's dedicated and not shared, and there's billing info etc. It's just so that websites, particularly forums etc cannot have my home IP just like that. It's an additional layer of protection.
I trust my ISP more than a random VPN provider. I use HTTPS for everything anyways.
I don’t see nord on this list. Can someone tell me why the others listed are better?
I also use Nord. I think it's fine, but self-hosted and open would be better (since you for SURE know what data is passing through and what is happening with it). With Nord it's like a "trust me bro" black box.
That said, I trust Nord enough for my needs. I don't do anything too secretive on the VPN and frankly I think the 80/20 is in favor of just using Nord over self-hosting (I don't really have time for that).
Thanks for the answer. I just use it for torrenting and it’s convenient
Got Express right before they sold. Going to swap very soon! Mainly looking at proton for the swap
Proton doesn't have a good privacy record a few reasons including this
Why do you trust some random VPN provider in a different country more than your local ISP?
Because my ISP is in a country where they can legally sell my data. My VPN is not.
And my VPN provider doesn't know who I am.
Because ISP's are nearly always garbage connected directly with government. So hell no, Mullvad, IVPN, Proton are way ahead local ISP's.
I use adguard VPN. I got 5 years for really cheap and it integrates well with adguard DNS blocking on my phone.
I used to have Mullvad but it recently disabled portforwarding-support. Now I ditched it in favor of Proton since I already had a Proton subscription running. I am still looking out for a VPN that supports portforwarding though, in a way that a non-tech-savvy person like myself can run it on Linux. No idea where and how to do that now.
Can you tell me why someone would need port forwarding with a VPN? Genuinely don't know.
Running some sort of server, I'd assume.
Increased access to p2p networks
Heard that AirVPN has better port forwarding support which could be an option.
Didn't know them yet, I'll look into it, thanks for the tip
ProtonVPN, but I've been thinking of switching to Mullvad or maybe PIA(because of price).
Hide.me is what I use. Had the best score when comparing features I cared about at the time.
my own wireguard server. i use it to watch one of those iptv "all included" services as well as stream from torrents and hosters. for anonymity i usually use, proxychains, tor or a mix of both.
VyprVPN. I'm late to the party, but I've spoken to the founder a couple of occasions, he seemed like a guy that really just wants to provide no nonsense VPN. Its not the best or fastest service, and I don't need VPN for everything, but for whatever I need, it's cheap and it's privacy friendly.
I've been trying running a VPN on my phone as a matter of course lately (Proton). I'm assuming it not only keeps your ISP from knowing where you're going but, more importantly, advertisers and trackers as well.
.
....or do I have that last bit wrong?It can as a side option. I think Proton has something like this. It is done on DNS level. You can use something like NextDNS to achieve this things without VPN.
IVPN initially because it is very privacy focused but now I swapped to Nord because it's basically free if you get cashback offers and it seems to bypass more region restrictions for video streaming etc.
But privacy?))
Oh its not like Nord is bad in fact it ranks very well also on that front too but its not why I swapped I guess. I would highly recommend Nord.
https://thatoneprivacysite.xyz/#detailed-vpn-comparison
For example it ranks better there than PIA does which is very popular.
I cant speak for what nord actually offers but i will never use them cause the marketing they did was very agressive and very missleading. Also leaks.
Yup.
ProtonVPN mostly when I need to VPN. Got a plan with them with email and this works well.
Proton
Protooon, bitches
Long time Mullvad, now AirVPN
Why switched? Prices? Regional restrictions?)
Mullvad stopped port forwarding. AirVPN gave me more ports than I'd ever need. New accounts get 5 ports.
Ah, and it has a very granular ad blocking and malicious sites blocking option.
Express VPN.
Picked it up a few years back and it’s worked well on all my devices. Speeds are really fast.
TrackerControl for my android and then the router configured to use NordVPN for specific devices.
Allows me to not only allow and block telemetry and tracking for specific applications at a device level but also route traffic how I want to.
PIA is the cheapest that supports port forwarding. But it's not to hide from ISP, it's mostly for content unblocking
I used to use Proton, but it stopped working in the country I travel to work in, so I changed to SurfShark as it works as a region unblocker, on recommendation from other people here.
What country does Proton not work in? Their whole thing is that they let you access the internet despite government controlled ISPs.
calyxvpn
None, I only use anti DPI and dnscrypt-proxy since our govt told ISPs to sniff internet connection using DPI
Used to use Proton, now use Torguard.
Why not Proton anymore?)
Because I never got very good speeds from Proton VPN, and the feature parity has never been very consistent especially because I use Linux. I get much better speeds from Torguard and they allow port forwarding, and have an overall much more feature rich Linux client. I still subscribe to and recommend Proton, I just don't use their VPN or password manager.
tinc
@FarLine99 I use Vyper, but I'll be honest, I don't know much about VPNs other than the basics.
windscribe, but i might switch to mullvad
This this some kind of bot trap post?
?)))
Riseup VPN
Kinda low speeds but private and free. Good option!
Vpn unlimited and adguard vpn
What reasons drove you to that decision?)
Ivacy VPN
Got a lifetime deal for 30 bucks.
Fantastic. Lifetime VPN? Too good to be true. But privacy will be bad I assume.
Yes, correct.
I've done a lot of digging, and the only concern I've found is that the company is somehow connected to PureVPN.
I'm not paranoid, so for me this is fine. Take your own threat model into consideration.
Funnily enough, Ivacy knows basically nothing about me, since I bought the offer through a 3rd party site. I have nothing registered on my Ivacy account, aside from my email and password.
I use google one VPN. Its included with the extra storage plan I pay for. I'm curious how it compares to the other services as it's the only one I have used.
lol. Hide your private traffic by routing it all to Google
Such a virtual PRIVATE network 😏
Very private indeed
None. I use HTTPS websites that protect my data.
Wireguard.
vpn's are not what you think. They just more your traffic somewhere else. Honestly just use https only and you'll be fine
ISP says hello, seeing which sites, videos you visit and sharing this info with government. Reputable VPN's exist. Link to reputable resource for comparison.
They don't though unless your not using https for some reason
They do hide your "real" IP address from other peers when using BitTorrent, such that angry letters from copyright holders go to the VPN instead of your ISP. The assumption is that your ISP would be more likely to snitch on you when compared to a reputable VPN.
