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.
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I’ve been using nym for a few month now. It generally works and I’m convinced by the project. However, they are still implementing features and there are often small issues (slow connections, no servers found, needs new permissions on Linux after update, etc.)
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?
Torrenting
one of the few good things about living in a fuckedup country is that I dont even use a vpn for torrenting.
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.
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.
yeah i’m switching to ivpn
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
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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.
begs the question of why tuta doesn’t keep accidentally praising trump and his fascists.
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.deleted by creator
are you saying that proton doesn’t have any?
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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.
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Im broke as hell so I’m using pia right now, I very much regret it I will probably switch to nym as soon as my subscription runs out.
What’s to regret?
American based VPN providers are a no no.
Generally dodgy marketing (prioritising sensationalism over truth), also owned by an Israeli company. (yikes)
Kape Technologies.
???
Owned by a company with dubious motivations, based out of a country famous for selling spyware, and who owns multiple VPN’s under different branding which is undeniably an effort to deceive people.
Toxic and potentially risky ownership.
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.
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.
Proton
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I’m a happy IVPN user. Small team, privacy enthusiasts, transparent, great products. Just a heads up, some IVPN subscription tiers offer MailX (email aliases, like SimpleLogin), ModDNS (like Contro-D or NextDNS) and Portmaster (app firewall, and SPN network, inspired on TOR). It’s hard to compete!
Cyber Ghost is also pretty good. One of the best in independent tests. Encrypted traffic, no logs, €1,59/month.
and is part of Kape Technologies an israeli company… Same as PIA, ExpressVPN and some more
Cyber Ghost is a company from Bucharest and Germany, not from Israel
Founded in 2011 in Bucharest, Romania, CyberGhost is the creator of one of the world’s most reliable privacy and security solutions in the world. The company secures and anonymizes the online presence of millions of customers across the globe. CyberGhost defends privacy as a basic human right, being the first in the industry to publish a transparency report while building new user-oriented crypto-technology for the future.
The CyberGhost team is currently formed of over 70 professionals with a strong background in the IT field, based both in Romania and in Germany, the latter being responsible for most of the software development. With both teams united by a common credo for internet anonymity, CyberGhost is a major supporter and promoter of civil rights, a free society and an uncensored internet culture.
I tthink it is not so important which company bought another, if the other remain in control over their policy and headquarters. Kape is a global privacy-first digital security software provider company headquartered in London, United Kingdom.
Cyberghost is wholly owned by kape, formerly crossrider, which was founded by veterans of Israeli unit 8200 (the cyberwarfare one!) and started out as a vendor of data harvesting middleware used by browser extensions.
The wisdom of sending today’s troubled teens to voorhees summer camp is hotly debated
Kape (and thus all of the VPNs they have purchased) is owned by Ted Saggi, an Israeli billionaire.
And yes, they are legally headquartered in London, but how meaningful is that? There’s hundreds of US companies that are headquartered into a handful of buildings in Delaware for legal and tax reasons. Their “development center” is based in Tel Aviv.
Kape bought CyberGhost at some point, and Kape itself is, according to Wikipedia, a “British-Israeli company”.
https://www.kape.com/our-brands/ https://cyberinsider.com/kape-technologies-owns-expressvpn-cyberghost-pia-zenmate-vpn-review-sites/
That they don’t mention it on their website is somewhat worrying.
They have false advertisement, which is illegal in some jurisdictions including Germany, wouldn’t recommend it.
ivpn seems like a good enough replacement privacy-wise
I care more about the results of privacy audits than I care about moral purity tests and bandwagon boycotts.
I am paying for a service. I’m not tithing to a religion.
I get what you’re saying as there are many examples of excessive reactions to relatively minor and subjective ethical infringements. But it’s pretty ignorant to say that unwillingness to sponsor right-wing parties is unjustified.
While I generally agree, you know that right wing political beliefs directly correlate to shady corporate practices. I can no longer trust they aren’t pulling a fast one and cutting corners.
So audit them
I’ve worked IT in finance for over twenty years. I’ve been through many, many, many audits.
I don’t rely on just that.
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.
So you have to trust the vpn provider. And i have a hard time trusting a vpn provider where the person that ownes 50% donates to a party that is pretty close to a Nazi party.
I am paying for a service. I’m not tithing to a religion.
By paying for it you are indirectly funding a party that is pretty close to a Nazi party.
According to Mullvad’s Wikipedia page “Flamman also alleged he later stated it was sad that the party’s remigration policy was necessary”.
And your phone was built by child slave labor. By using it to type that you’re basically a slaveowner.
Or…
We can think like adults. Paying for the best utility is not a virtue signal. End.
Not the guy above and I tend to agree to your opinion. You can avoid this issue buying second hand / refurbished phones only
I’m doing it since 2016.
Personally I’m not using any of them that haven’t been raided and proven not to keep records and as far as I know Mullvad is the only one who fits that bill.
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
