Currently using IVPN, but considering switching and I want to see what this subreddit community thinks.
You must log in or register to comment.
I don’t. I would just be shifting trust from my ISP to some VPN provider for worse ping. I trust only I2P and Tor networks, so either it’s sensitive enough to go over darknet or I treat it as public.
Nym VPN because it seemed like the best but I’m sure someone will tell me there’s something wrong with it 😂
Wondering why you are considering leaving ivpn?
They appear to be 1 of only 2 trustworthy vpns now that mullvad left the building
airvpn being the other
What’s wrong with proton?
if the political orientation of the cofounder is important (and I personally believe that it can be) than equally, if not more, important is the jurisdiction of the services. I’d avoid both UK and Switzerland for a VPN.
If I may ask, why avoid Switzerland? Is there some shady stuff they’ve been doing recently?
no, I just think the misconception that Switzerland is some kind of privacy paradise is very common and any possible malicious entity, from corporations to governments, can too easily take advantage of this.
Huh, that makes sense… Is that why Proton has been using it as a flex so much?
what about Mullvad?
Co-founder donated to a fringe party supporting remigration
oh ok, right.
Well, currently using mullvad because I paid cash and have months left.
However I tried ivpn with their one week option (two bucks!) At their basic plan.
I find speeds better on mullvad, but they’re otherwise comparable. I like both apps fine on android. If I was already on ivpn, I would not switch to mullvad for the minor speed uptick, since prices are comparable and switching multiple devices can be a very tiny annoyance.
In the past, I’ve used airvpn and proton for extended times (over six months). Proton is over priced, speeds were only marginally better than their free options, and iirc they were a pain about linux setup (I could be mixing them up with someone else though).
Airvpn worked great as a vpn. Port forwarding was an absolute cunt to get working for me. I suspect user error to be the biggest factor. Their android app sucks, and setting it up via other methods is preferred. But, at the time, they also lacked the built in ad/tracker blocking that I’ve enjoyed with mullvad and ivpn.
I did use nord briefly at one point. Worked fine, but at the time I was in need of port forwarding, and they had stopped offering that.
The only reason I’m maybe switching away from mullvad is the dubious political alignment of one of its owners. It really does work well for me, and is consistently faster than others I’ve tried, even with multi hop on. Even there, I’m not fully sure that the exact choice made by their part owner is exactly as bad as the common reaction is, so while I am likely switching away, I still can’t really state that it’s horrible to use the service.
The party he donated to has one big issue that’s a hell no for me, but it might not be there for everyone, and other aspects of the party slate are less objectionable, or even agreeable. In other words, I’m not mad at anyone that shrugs the donation off. It ain’t my business to judge people over such a narrow subject.
THAT being said, ivpn really is essentially the same service in terms of functionality. They even have servers that are in the same data centers. There’s several in the US in specific that are 100% in the same center once you go looking at the lists of exits. And I know there can’t be that many exact matches in cities across the world that aren’t from the same location. Since VPNs rent either virtual or hardware space in data centers to provide exits, if a given company doesn’t break from that, you won’t see a major difference between them.
I’m surprised that you had trouble port forwarding on airvpn. My understanding is mullvad doesn’t allow port forwarding, and Proton allows it but it’s extremely finicky and you have to constantly poll for it with some script (or maybe if you use their official client then you don’t need that, but I didn’t). Port forwarding was, why I went with airvpn.
I bought several years of Mullvad time before finding out it’s ran by a fascist. I use it exclusively for pirate related activities.
(I push several TB through it daily, so at least I’m costing Mullvad much bandwidth)
If I’m at home:
Device > WireGuard Tunnel > ProtonVPN Endpoint
If I’m disconnected from my home network:
Device > WireGuard Tunnel > Home Network > WireGuard Tunnel > ProtonVPN Endpoint
Essentially created my own multi-hop network, works like a charm.
Nice, was thinking about doing this as well. Do you switch manually between apps on your device? Or do you use a wireguard app with multiple profiles?
I just today started using the new Tor VPN app. I have been using InviZible from F-Droid in SOCKS proxy mode for almost 2 years now, but not all apps support directing their network traffic through a SOX proxy. And so, some apps I was not able to do over Tor. I think the day will come where we as free people have to abandon the clear net entirely and do everything over Tor and I2P. The clearnet is going to become nothing except for ID upload verification screens.
I don’t, I use DNS over HTTPS. That’s far more fitting for my threat model right now.
Hi, can you explain why/what the benefits are for that? I’ve read a little about DNS over HTTPs but I guess just don’t get it .
DNS over HTTPS encrypts your DNS queries, which means at most your ISP can see what sites you visit and not what you’re doing on those sites.
Depending on the infrastructure used by the site, your ISP might also not even know what site you’re visiting.
Kinda surprised no one recommending Nym.
Yet an other swiss based facsist company with a touch of crypto bro. No thanks.
Source? Last I knew the founder is anti-fascist and regularly speaks out against things like tech oligarchy. Nothing of what I’ve heard him say or talk about has given me any feeling otherwise.
Crypto Bro -> https://cointelegraph.com/opinion/web3-has-a-metadata-problem , https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/why-mixnets-are-needed-to-make-bitcoin-private
Also they love using LLM trained on our works (devs) : https://nym.com/blog/bug-bounty-ai-age
About the fascism I understand that few people here (proportionally) seems to not be educated on the topic (I see to many pedolandians or canadians in here maybe) : fascism is not being a bad guys wanting to control everyone, lots of monarchs were that way, this is not fascism. Fascism is the bourgeoisie (the social class owning the properties, even more so the means of productions) taking power over society, the more power they grab the deeper you’re in fascism. That’s why many western people do not understand they live in fascist societies while they can agree that money is the real power, not the decrepit old white man put in front (thus they don’t understand fascism, and I think this is on purpose, from schools to media).
So a senior research scientist at MIT (CEO) and a founder of Swiss crypto brokerage and financial services firm (COO) decided to create a company in… wait for it… Switzerland! Famous country know for it fight against the aggression of the bourgeoisie for the last century and its strong stance against today’s genocides. Definitely not known for being the Nazi’s gold vault and all sorts of awful money laundering. If you understand that fascism come from the people who owns the money what do you think about private banks? Swiss is fascists’ paradise and it always have been.
I can close my eyes on Swedish people establishing in Sweden, or anyone in his European country, even if the actual government is far-right there or not. But this is not really the case here, it’s more like the Y-combinator guys establishing in Delaware or… Cayman Islands! This is 101 people only seeking money at the expense of everyone else. Hence my point of view this is already quiet deep in fascism, even if there are smart enough not to open their mouth about Palestine and keeping themselves into crypto-broing and “privacy” (I could totally see them loving anarcho-capitalism).
Also bonus : what social media do they choose? OH NO! Linkedin and Twitter, I wouldn’t have guessed. If you want maximum cringe check the avatar -> https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexis-roussel-01993143/
Fascism is palingenetic ultranationalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palingenetic_ultranationalism this is Roger Griffin’s influential minimalist definition of fascism, and it’s probably the most succinct formulation available in the comparative fascism literature.
“Fascism is bourgeoisie taking power” is very reductive as a definition, and it doesn’t hold up to scholarly work on the issue.
Never actually used them, but this is my note about them in my vpn spreadsheet
‘Pricey if doing per month, not if doing for year. Lack of transparency, shit website. Dodgy feel.’
Mullvad, then switched to IVPN a couple of months ago. Both are recommended in privacyguides. They have solid privacy policies and are regularly audited.
AirVPN with privacy focus and port forwarding
Airvpn actually looks really good even though I’ve never heard of them. Cheap, has all the features I need and they have existed for a long time.
Heck yeah! I’ve been using them for about a year now. I’m happily going to pay for another year.
There are literally dozens of us!!!
In all seriousness tho, I like the fact that Eddie supports amnezia wireguard.
Currently, Mullvad. Waiting for my time to run out then I might give NymVPN a go.
Windscribe. I like their no-nonsense approach.
I switched from Mullvad to IVPN after the Mullvad troubles. IVPN seems good to so far, does everything I need and hasn’t been proven untrustworthy/politically dodgy yet.
Mullvad troubles
what troubles?
One of the founders bankrolled a far right party, allowing them to field candidates and they say that “Sweden is for the swedes” and want to forcibly deport anyone who is not. Kinda like that small mustache guy in the 40s in Germany.
https://korben.info/en/mullvad-cofounder-funding-far-right.html
I need to bookmark my comment from a while back as an explainer lol
I still use PIA, but only for a couple of things running in containers. I use wireguard as my private vpn for my own services
Do you have any thoughts on the Kape buyout? https://usernotices.com/finance-and-business/advertising/who-is-the-new-owner-of-pia
Because of who Kape is, and their ties to Israeli military, I personally consider them a threat actor instead of a valid VPN choice for my needs.
https://blog.boycat.io/posts/expressvpn-israeli-ownership-1b-privacy-risk
My plan is to jump ship when my plan expires in a couple of months. I only have indexers going though it these days as 99% of my “data sourcing” is done via Usenet over SSL and the VPN isn’t technically required in that case.
