I’ve heard a lot about AirVPN, but it doesn’t have an app on Fdroid or anything. Yes you can download it directly from their site, but that is a little cumbersome.
Another option I’m considering is Windscribe.One major knock against it (and the same thing for AirVPN) is that htere is no tutorial available for installing the wireguard version on openwrt.
I really don’t know enough about these. Windscribe has been sort of tested in court (again that was in Greece, and they don’t have the same might of an authoritarian state as the US or some place), so that’s a plus.
I don’t know, I’m so confused that it sort of makes sense to stick with Mullvad at times.
I’m in the same boat. I’m giving Mozilla VPN a try now that I’m in the last couple of weeks of my Mullvad subscription. They only have subscription options through the Play store or App store, which is not ideal, but I’m willing to compromise a little to support Mozilla.
Mozilla vpn used to be a rebrand of mullvad. Might still be.
“Mozilla VPN is powered by Mullvad. While they use Mullvad servers the software used is mostly their own.”
https://embed.kumu.io/9ced55e897e74fd807be51990b26b415#vpn-company-relationships/mozilla-vpn
Thank you. I didn’t know this. Back to searching again, I guess.
ivpn is worth a look
Completely agree most people have recommended proton and perhaps wind scribe. But something people tend to miss is proton, mullvad & others tend to use rented vps servers. Ivpn claims they own all of their servers hands down. If that is the case and you may need to look into this then go with them.
I believe mullvad owns most of their servers. Ivpn does not claim to own their servers.
Not sure if linking is allowed but if you go to IVPN’s server status page, they have a quick faq at the bottom where they mention they rent from datacenter partners.
I did get that claim wrong (and will update the post) but this is what they specifically say in their site.
No virtual servers
We operate VPN gateways in 41 countries on dedicated bare-metal servers. No shared VPS, no virtual locations. source
What is bare metal, and how are IVPN’s servers set up?
Every IVPN gateway is a bare-metal server: dedicated physical hardware rented from a datacenter partner, not a virtualised instance and not a virtual location. Servers use LUKS full-disk encryption, mandatory access controls, and firewalled IPMI. A small number of pilot gateways also run a RAM-only (diskless) architecture, extending it across the network is an ongoing project.> source (scroll to bottom of page ivpn> web)
This is important because one slight issue with other services are vpses. Some servers run on shared or cheaper resources, so you’ll be paying a premium (per month) for others services. But those providers “servers” are cheap and easy to setup. I may have been wrong on what I have said (but we all are at some point and I’m sorry.)/ I Still think their a pretty good alternative. Ivpn also rotates the wire guard keys per day which mullvad doesn’t yet and they are aware of you can read their post here Mullvad blog
No worries. Just want to make sure people are fully aware. Thanks for linking the info.
IVPN is certainly a good contender. I’d also consider AirVPN purely for port forwarding. I’d swap to IVPN in a heartbeat if they had that feature.
There’s Proton, but given the controversy… yeah (though I did look at what they donate to and it seems to not be right-wing companies).
IVPN is perhaps your best bet.
Proton made one positive comment about some Trump anti censorship policy. Their “controversy” is really overblown.
Mullvad is directly donating to Nazis.
That said Proton doesn’t have the same extreme privacy as Mullvad. But they are much cheaper with promos and also have good app support.
Proton also keeps leaking information to the government that led to protesters getting arrested
Dude, they provided payment information because they were legally required to do so by swiss law. They did not share any actual user data from within the product. It sucks but if you use a roundabout payment method this wouldn’t be an issue.
At the same time, Proton makes paying anonymously difficult. If you want to pay with Monero they don’t officially support it and you have to go through a third party and buy a gift card, which is also not documented on their website, or exchange Monero for Bitcoin and pay with that. Contrast with IVPN/AirVPN/Mullvad which all officially support Monero. Also looking at their payment page, if you do pay with credit card they automatically renew by default, thus storing your credit card information without making that clear. Contrast with IVPN which doesn’t by default and clarifies the privacy drawbacks, and Mullvad which doesn’t do that at all. Sure the activist shouldn’t have used a credit card, but at the same time Proton aggressively markets themselves as a privacy service so they need to act like one instead of encouraging bad privacy practices because subscriptions are profitable.
Privacy and anonymity are two different things. Proton doesn’t market themselves as anonymous, they market as a privacy service, as you said. And as for the info given to gov’ts, they were legally required to do so. No company, including Mullvad, will break the law for you. Mullvad/IVPN/AirVPN, etc, will all abide by law and give up info if required.
Yet anonymity is one of the main points of VPNs
That’s your personal opinion. It’s fine to view it that way, but you can’t assume that literally every single vpn user thinks the same way.
Not that much
It is for people who want to not get arrested, especially when the alternatives don’t have the same level of neglect that Proton does (and some of them have a proven track record of not leaking information). IVPN and AirVPN at least accept Monero so I’d trust them more
A Mullvad founder and co-owner donating to Nazis is NOT Mullvad directly donating to Nazis.
No, but it is Mullvad customers money going directly to funding an obviously far right party.
The co-owner is very much the major funder of that party.
Honesty is really easy.
OP asked for options, not for this debate to go around in circles again.
What does the word “directly” mean to you?
What does the word ‘honesty’ mean to you?
To me honesty means that someone is truthfull and sincere. And directly means that there isn’t any middle steps in the process, such as money being used to pay employees or manage infrastructure.
Cool, you know what honesty means
It’s just not for you?
proton is privacy greenwashing
How so? i know only about the CEO saying stupid things. But the technical aide?
proton are an ai company, and an email provider. do the math there.
I had a 2 year subscription with them, using their vpn and email. I stopped using them after approx 6 months of product use, customer support, and paying attention to their social media manipulation, and repeated lack of attention to product quality. Throwing away the other 18 months of subscription.
They are a very dodgy company, trying to be the next google, which is ironic considering how many canadian patriots are now heading there due to trump/google.
Their brand is very popular with their zombie fans who struggle to think, but are very quick with upvotes, and downvotes.
You’re pretty vague for a “non-zombie”. What’s the issue with being an email provider? Also, they have an AI chatbot, I’m not sure they’re training any models, and I don’t know of any issue they’ve had with that product. Lastly, define them being a “dodgy” company.
I believe I made it obvious I wanted going to bother dealing with proton fanboys again?
People can make their own minds up by paying attention, or they can just follow the crowd, not my problem.
Not even close to a fanboy. Just someone that calls out a non-existant argument when they see one.
Repeated misleading marketing on both their social medias and websites such as the false “no-log” claim that got someone arrested
Interesting. I’ll read up in that.
Also: check your permissions to prevent possible rights escalations. (And yes, I know that it relies more on the sudoers file but I am sure there is some attack surface there …)
Why would you migrate from Mullvad?
The CEO donated money to a Swedish party that is for remigration/deportation.
One of the owners of Mullvad donated a vast sum of money to a Swedish Nazi political party, accounting for 70% of their funding, which resulted in boosted popularity there.
This is the leader of that political party:
https://www.friatider.se/markus-allard-om-andra-generationens-invandrare-de-ska-ocksa-ut
Örebro Party leader Markus Allard goes to the election on expulsions. He opens to withdraw citizenship and also expel second generation of immigrants – even if they were born in Sweden.
“I’m prepared to cross corpses,” he said.One suggestion that he has is that citizenship and permanent residence permits can be torn up – with reference to “Sweden is the country of Swedes”.
In a section of Yoshi’s Podcast, Allard develops his view on expulsions and explains that he prepared to “go over corpses” to bring home unwanted immigrants. The host notes that there will be no beautiful sight when, for example, immigrant mothers who have been on maternity leave for 15 years are to be deported together with their children. “It’s not going to be pretty to send these people home,” he said. Markus Allard agrees, but says: I think you can handle that optics. Even the children will need to be deported, he explains.
He further explains that many of the problems relate to second-generation immigrants. They are going out too. Even if they were born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedes. They have not become Swedes. It says Sweden in the passport, but they have not been interested in becoming part of Sweden. There’s a difference. It’s a qualitative difference," Allard said.
I’ve heard a lot about AirVPN, but it doesn’t have an app on Fdroid or anything. Yes you can download it directly from their site, but that is a little cumbersome.
Consider using Obtainium. It might be a little cumbersome to get it set up, but once you do, Obtainium will handle checking for and installing updates whenever they are released.
Install Obtainium from GitHub or F-Droid. Then you can add Eddie (the AirVPN client app) by using the install button on this page:
https://apps.obtainium.imranr.dev/apps?categoryMode=inclusive&category=vpn&sort=popular&q=EddieObtainium is annoying a lot though, its probably not a fault of theirs necessarily but there is so often failure due to locating an installable build from a repo link
What? It fails because it locates an app to install?
Yeah I would try to install from their git as much as possible but it is very inconsistent. Nothing found or no installable build found, so have to hope they are on fdroid.
I’ll give that link a shot. I installed Obtanium for the first time, and tried adding their installation link (maybe not that one, I don’t remember what I tried adding), but I couldn’t get it to wokr.
But maaaan, their android client looks so amateurish. I mean it’s fine as long as it works, but as an ad for your company…this isn’t it.
All the UI/UX for AirVPN looks pretty bad. The website just looks… off, design-wise. But yeah, as long as the VPN works as intended…
Air is my go to piracy vpn. Their app is garbage, use the config file generator instead. Air is my go to piracy VPN because it is a piracy vpn service. I would not use them as a shield from any sort of serious threat.
I use windscribe for stuff that doesn’t matter like bypassing geoblocks. I don’t trust them, their abilities or my ability to limit my own exposure to their malice, compliance or incompetence. It’s a confusing service.
People are suggesting ivpn and I have used it. It’s a downgrade from mullvad in every way but it might be safe. I can’t say because it hasn’t been tested in the same way.
I use mullvad when it actually matters. It’s really hard to screw up and they have the best app of any vpn service I’ve ever used.
There are a lot of people saying why they would want to move away from mullvad, why do you? What devices and operating systems do you use it on? How do you pay?
Wanted to say I will move to ivpn when mullvad runs out, but seems like the whole comment section already agrees on airvpn and ivpn
I’m looking to switch to Windscribe.
Highly recommend AirVPN. The Eddie App is perfectly fine.
Last I looked the eddie app didn’t even have split tunneling?
people on their reddit frequently recommend against using eddie too
Again, it’s fine - not the bees knees. You can exclude local networks from the VPN. If there is another VPN/Wireguard app that does app based split tunnelling or whatever you’re looking for just use that with AirVPN instead of Eddie.
Maybe WGTunnel? Haven’t tried it myself.
airvpn can fix their software if they want my money.
mullvad has good software and the browser extension, which together makes a very usable system. Unfortunately they completely failed ethically.
It shouldn’t be too much to ask for decent software and ethics.
I’ve been using IVPN for a few months and I’m happy with it. Was on mullvad before.
OpenVPN on a VPS from Njalla paid for in Monero
I’m not being silly (other than that I’m a freakin’ tinfoil hat compared to most people)
This is my actual setup.
Depends on your reason for using a VPN. Presumably your Njalla VPS has a static IP address. I like being able to rotate servers if one is being blocked by a given service (ie YouTube).
Seconding electric nan’s comment. There is a valid use case for that model IMO, but it also ties your identity to a different fixed IP. Maybe if you were PERFECT about opsec it wouldn’t tie to your ID, but in practice nobody is going to be. That’s nearly impossible in today’s tracking centric world. So data brokers will learn user X has IP Y, nobody else uses that IP, so other connections from IP Y are probably user X too.
There’s a benefit to sharing an IP with many other ppl and rotating the IP around. There are drawbacks too ofc.
Why OpenVPN and not something like wg out of interest?
Because I set it up like 5 ywars ago as a pandemic project and that was the top option from my searches
if you’re leaving mullvad for political reasons windscribe isn’t a great alternative
i’ve used IVPN a bit, it’s alright
airvpn can be used with the default wireguard app, or with WG Tunnel if you insist on something from f droid
Is it the fact that they put out (a somewhat tasteless) AI ad?
In the grand scheme of things and with everything else going on, that seems pretty tame.
windscribe is very ai, they also have a controversial history that would be worth looking up if you are considering them (a privacy issue, and right wing leanings from memory)
Handy weird link:
https://embed.kumu.io/9ced55e897e74fd807be51990b26b415#vpn-company-relationships
So someoone else provided that link; and maybe I’m reading it wrong but Windscribe is just linked to a copmany called Control D.
They seem to encrypt DNS filtering and stuff (haven’t looked into it), but that is a good thing right?
What am I missing with this link and why are so many people linking it
I have never seen anyone else link that. I link it because it is one of very few sites that appears to give any decent insight into vpns, plus spiders are hella cool :/
This is another one, but only when you “click on any row to compare up to 4 vpns” and it goes into detail
I interacted with windscribe as a customer, on reddit, and via their ai customer service a while ago. I won’t be going that way again.
So going back to that map: it doesn’t show anything shady or supsicious on Windscribe’s part except for that relationship with Control D. What am I missing there?
Yeah I am familiar with tech lore’s site (it looks a lot worse now to be honest), that’s how I became aware of Windscribe as an option.
But again, if you go through their categories Windscribe comes off as pretty good and comparable to Mullvad.
What am I missing from techlore’s site that says you shouldn’t use Windscribe?
If you have personal anecdotes, please feel free to share, I would appreciate that feedback.
I never suggested that the techlore site I posted had anything to do with windscribe, it was posted (as mentioned) due to it being one of very, very, very few sites about vpn’s that appear to be not completely full of shit
If you want a vpn owned by aiholes, windscribe and proton are 2 obvious choices.
I mean you’re constantly warning against windscribe, and that could very well be justified, but you have yet to explain it.
I’ve asked you several times, and all you’re saying is that windscribe is bad. And providing resources that don’t really point to it.
I know you mentioned AirVPN only having an app on their website, but you can use it with the wireguard client (you just have to make the conf file names short enough and remove special characters to import them). This is how I personally use AirVPN on Android.
That’s how I do it. I use WG Tunnel (on FDroid), make the conf on the website, rename it to something short (‘airvpn’ for example) and import it. I only connect to one server though (Azelfafage), so I have no clue how it behaves with multiple exit nodes…
Hope this helps OP!
I tried adding their client via Obtanium, it didn’t work.
But man, that client looks so outdated. It looks like a kid’s idea of a website.
I don’t use AirVPN’s client, to be clear. I use Wireguard’s android app, and for desktop, I use wireguard as well. There’s no need for their client.
I made my own Gitlab repo for that reason. It automatically fetches the apk when a new version is published on AirVPN website. You can add it to Obtainium, it works. https://gitlab.com/Ofboir/EddieAndroid
I switched to Xeovo, works great so far. Winscribe was a no after this: https://x.com/Windscribe/status/1991176084662964688
Please don’t make us visit twitter. Windscribe makes some transphobic statement in that tweet.
At the time of writing XCancel was offline following X’s cease and desist. Now it’s back again: https://xcancel.com/windscribecom/status/1991176084662964688
Posts a twitter link on a thread about mullvad supporting nazis, gets likes
I miss irony and satire.
iVPN, PrivadoVPN, Windscribe and ProtonVPN are generally considered leaders in the space IIRC.
