I find myself in need of a new VPN service. Since this market is so incredibly crowded and difficult to really trust (SO much shady advertising and seemingly no real, actually tested significantly reveiws), I’d be interested to hear anyone that has a particularly good reason to recommend one and briefly why.
2 Likes
Mullvad
/thread
10 Likes
Personally, I use ProtonVPN.
Mullvad and iVPN seems also like a good product. I recommended above three those because they are:
- independently audited
- has open source clients
- 30+ countries available
- has mobile device clients
3 Likes
Mullvad +1
2 Likes
Mullvad. Side note, they now sell scratch off top-up cards on Amazon so no worries about giving them your name, billing address, and a CC number.
5 Likes
I use Tailscale with my Home router set as an exit node when I’m travelling to other countries. And I’m using my Home DNS, through Tailscale all the time.
Both my home and my cellular ISP are barely competent enough to sometimes keep the service running. I’m not using their DNS, and as long as they’re forwarding my packets I’m happy to not have to pay or use yet another service.
(edit: I use Tor for “stuff I don’t want anyone to know about”. I’m not doing anything super shady, illegal or antagonistic against any individual person, but there’s just stuff I don’t want my ISP or random websites logs to “accidentally” record or link with my person should something change in the future and in case there’s ever any kind of lawsuit against me or unwanted attention for whatever b.s. reason … I’ve separate Chromebook machines for this work, sitting on a separate network that never go straight to internet and I never login to anything personal from them).
1 Like
I also use ProntonVPN. I like it because I get a VPN and a semi private email service for one price.
2 Likes
I use mullvad; the client is great on IOS, Android, GrapheOS, Linux and Windows.
They might be sketchy
They might not be secure
I use them to change who can sell my browsing data away from my ISP.
I have a Proton account with the VPN, and their CLI tool now seems to be a good enough alternative, I may switch, not sure.
Mozilla/firefox VPN uses Mullvad on the back end.
I think I max out at bursts of approx 700MB/s on a 1Gb/s line thru Mullvad?
(I hope the have steam caching…)
1 Like
Use VPN’s to
- Get around filters
- Get past geo-restrictions
- Hide your shameful, but legal, internet activity from your ISP or public networks.
The whole “hide from hackers” advertising thing is misleading. It’s not entirely false, but IIRC most consumer-level hacks ultimately happen because of effective social engineering. A VPN won’t stop you from giving away your info over the phone or a form, and it also won’t help you when T-Mobile gets hacked and your personal info is exposed.
My favorite is Mullvad for the simple pricing, payment privacy, and compatibility. I’m not a fan of how a lot of mainstream VPN’s make you commit to a 3-year contract to get decent pricing. Mullvad is like always $5/mo.
Currently I’m using NordVPN just because it gets around a filter that I need to get around, where Mullvad and PIA don’t. I appreciate Mullvad, but gotta use what works 
. If I were only using it for person use, I’d just do Mullvad.
1 Like
VPN also does not stop malware /injected code reaching out
2 Likes
Only if you have DNS filtering feature set
1 Like
please elaborate?
ProtonVPN has their own implementation of domain blocking like PiHole/AdGuardHome and you could set ProtonVPN to just block malware, block malware and trackers, or block nothing:
1 Like
Okay, cool.
Like an anti virus, that can block the viruses that they know about.
Better than no filtering.
Also, quicker and easier for them to update their lists, than for us who use local DNS caches.
Several direct DNS providers offer filtered results, and the Mullvad client also defaults to their own filtering.
which is nice…
I have not tried the Proton app, but it does look like it has the useful switches…
1 Like
On a public network a VPN is useful to protect against hackers but on a trusted network it’s not going to do much.
mullvad is the only one i would put my dollar behind.
however i recently have found the nym project. as of now ive just been using their socks5 mixnet proxy but they are releasing a vpn soon. the new Tor perhaps?
but yeah mullvad is legit just use the swedish wireguard servers run by mullvad for max paranoia alleviation.
proton did some shady stuff regarding their webmail (iirc) idk if i would trust their vpn service unless all u care about is hiding activity from ISP or tunneling through public wifi.
MullVad and ProtonVPN are both pretty solid choices. You can also do Mozilla’s VPN which is just MullVad with their own skin/tech running on it and you get access to some of Mozilla’s other products if you’re interested in them. They are being audited as well. I’ve used it now and then and it’s been pretty much on par with MullVad. Get Mozilla VPN — Mozilla (US)
I used MullVad for a while and it seems to be pretty good probably best choice as of now. But I currently just use my own WireGuard server at home that I use so I can access my SMB share and use my Pi-hole.
Thanks all, never heard of mullvad before, will definitely check that out. Been using proton for a couple months testing it out, and not liking it. Connection is not very stable. Using paid, not free, but frankly free seems just as “good” just can’t pick server location. Which is a shame because I tend to trust them more than others, from all indications they are a principled privacy focused company, not just in it to make easy money. Of course how can you really know.
I’m well aware VPN is not a magic bullet, I just like it as a general privacy layer and I’ll take any minor security benefits that come with that.
2 Likes
I am sorry you can not find a stable connection with ProtonVPNz. I ofcourse do not have any problem with ProtonVPN.
I can recommend AirVPN which goes along well with the open-source ethos, is safely headquartered in San Marino and offers a reasonable price-value. Having used it extensively while living in China, I’m already on my second 5-year-contract and never look back to the usual (more commercial) suspects (ExpressVPN, etc.).
AirVPN runs with different protocols, including OpenVPN and Wireguard. It also offers Tor support.