There’s way too much hype over VPN Providers, but do not forget, you are routing all your traffic through their servers
As a general advice, if a VPN provider keeps logs of your activity, does not allow you to pay with crypto, and generally spends way too much on youtube ads is probably not an ideal choice.
Do not follow any advice/recommendation blindly, do your own research on which one offers the best service for your own needs.
If someone starts his list with NordVPN you know its complete and utter bullshit
That’s not how the annual Torrentfreak VPN questionnaire works.
It doesn’t work good if they act like all those providers are a considerable choice
They don’t. I suspect you haven’t actually read one of these articles in detail.because it is in no way a recommendation from TorrentFreak. It literally opens with this:
The VPN review business is also flourishing as well. Just do a random search for “best VPN service” or “VPN review” and you’ll see dozens of sites filled with recommendations and preferred picks. Some VPN companies, such as Kape, even own review sites.
At TF we don’t want to make any recommendations. When it comes to privacy and anonymity, an outsider can’t offer any guarantees. Vulnerabilities are always lurking around the corner and even with the most secure VPN, you still have to trust the VPN company with your data.
Instead, we aim to provide an unranked overview of VPN providers, asking them questions we believe are important. Many of these questions relate to privacy and security, and the various companies answer them in their own words.
We hope that this helps users to make an informed choice. However, we stress that users themselves should always make sure that their VPN setup is secure, working correctly, and not leaking. Also, we advise people to properly research the company behind the VPN service.
NordVPN appears first because it is a sponsor, as is clearly stated:
*Note: Private Internet access, ExpressVPN and NordVPN are TorrentFreak sponsors. We reserve the first three spots for them as a courtesy. This article also includes a few affiliate links which help us pay the bills. We never sell positions in our review article or charge providers for a listing.
The same questions are put to every VPN provider on the list. It is unranked - whether they first or last is completely irrelevant.
But they are presenting the answers equal to others. That’s the point. You can’t make an article and ask some scientist and a madman questions and then present the answers next to each other, pretending the madman has equally valid output. They should put disclaimers on each provider with the different problems that occur with the certain provider. Like they were caught logging, they were breached, they are under bad jurisdictions etc
Like they were caught logging, they were breached, they are under bad jurisdictions etc
TorrentFreak already puts these questions directly to the providers. Again, do everyone a favour and actually read this article you are so intent on criticising. You seem to have absolutely zero understanding of it. It’s almost as if you skipped directly to NordVPN, saw it was listed first and made up this entire fake story in your head.
I did and I know they put the questions to the provider, but what is it worth if they have been caught lying but still answer “no we don’t log” I believe they should highlight that fact.
Something that people need to realize: If you want a VPN for PRIVACY, Mullvad (edit: also maybe IVPN) is the only good option on this list. They make it very easy for you to maintain complete anonymity, they don’t even WANT your email address, you can use crypto, or you can literally mail them an envelope of cash with a note inside containing your unique ID and they’ll load up your account with that value. It’s ridiculous how seriously they take this stuff. And if you’re really concerned about privacy, you should also be taking extra steps like using a hardened OS and browser, and using disposable virtual machines. But I suspect that most of us here aren’t that concerned with actual privacy.
If you want a VPN for PIRACY, any of these options are probably fine as long as they don’t block or slow torrent traffic. Just use the fastest one here that you can afford. The only thing you’re really doing in this case is blocking your torrent traffic from your ISP. Remember, if you give them a credit card and your email address, then that’s not private! It’s just for piracy. It’s important to look at your priorities and pick a VPN accordingly.
IVPN and Mullvad are probably the only two that give a shit about privacy. Neither require email or credit cards, and accept cash.
Upvote for the mention of IVPN. Only viable alternative to Mullvad.
I personally don’t care if a vpn requires email as I can create an alias / burner email to use.
I like how IVPN does it, as you have a choice to use a random id or username and password.
Nice, didn’t know IVPN was as private as Mullvad. I’ll edit my comment.
It’s just for piracy
Does that mean when you’re opting for the latter the payment method doesn’t matter as much?
In my opinion, no. I live in the US where people don’t actually get prosecuted for piracy anymore, so I’m really not that concerned. I just want to stop getting letters from my ISP and having them (temporarily) cut my internet off until I watch their “educational” video. If they step up enforcement here, I might become more paranoid and lean more in the privacy direction.
This is why I love mullvad. No signing in with username and password, no account information, just keep track of your account number and sign in with that.
I use Mullvad. They have you buy time upfront at a fixed price, have lots of payment options, and at one point were subpoenaed and proved to the Swedish government they don’t store any user data and therefore have nothing to turn over. They have a nice app too, I like them.
They’re disabling port forwarding due to some bad actors… That’s why we can’t have nice things.
For those who don’t know, port forwarding is mainly used for torrent seeders, aka the people who upload files to other people.
That’s a shame. I hope it causes more services to be cool with their IP addresses, but it’s unfortunate for toerrenting and running local forwarded servers.
I also use mullvad. They’re the best I’ve used and offer tons of servers across the globe
Indeed, apparently there are some American-based VPN companies that piggyback off their servers, so I figured why not use the service directly. Their apps are also full of features, so I really think the €5 a month price is worth it.
The biggest problem of Mullvard, when I tried it, is that I cannot access to any streaming services. While atm with proton I have no problem at all
Apparently the reason for that is because malicious actors were port forwarding using Mullvad. They’re now disabling that feature, so it’s possible they will be whitelisted again in the future.
Anyone used ProtonVPN before? What’s your thought?
Years ago I did it on a Black Friday or Christmas deal. They gave me instructions to test that my IP wasn’t leaking and their support was very helpful in confirming. I think they gave me protonmail for free alongside my subscription at the time?
They were pretty fast and I felt user-friendly.
I hadn’t used them in years so not sure if any of these still hold true though.
Mysterium Network
If you want privacy and great speeds better to use a dVPN.
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You welcome my bud ✌️👍
I’ve been using Proton VPN for years without issue. They don’t keep any logs.
I switched all my stuff to proton and I am very happy with them.
I recently made the switch from Surfshark to Mullvad. No real complaints about the actual VPN service with Surfshark, but the desktop app was constantly advertising their other products and was becoming bloated. Mullvad just does what I want it to do with little fuss.
Pity they removed port forwarding.
I still highly recommend Mullvad, they are generally an awesome company and havent had many issues with them beyond a few random sites blocking them which is to be expected.
Mullvad used to be the no-brainer choice until they stopped supporting port forwarding. I kinda need it for seeding. ProtonVPN seems like a good idea for now.
I switched to Torguard and have gotten MUCH better speeds than I do with Proton and marginally better speeds than Mullvad. I had issues setting up port forwarding, but it was user error and Torguard customer support is next fucking level so I got that taken care of.
Overall, no complaints so far.
They also accept crypto payments, however there is an email requirement.
Been using TorGuard for 2 years. My only complaint is that there was this once they insisted it was a client side issue for one of the servers in my home country. I was so pissed off because it was slow and disconnecting all the time and only on that server.
Switched to Mullvad and loved it until port forwarding was removed… but now I’m back to TorGuard reluctantly. The customer support didn’t want to accept the possibility that their servers were going through some issues… didn’t even bother to check just because the server was online so it had to be client side but ever other server worked perfectly.
I find that weird that so many struggle without port forwarding… my seeding is going just fine without port forwarding.
You’ll be fine in public trackers without port forwarding due to the abundance of participants. In private trackers, it matters much more.
What is the difference exactly? Can’t tell if I’m missing something fundamental or what. In my head there’s no reason you’d run into issues
There’s no technical difference, but there are differences in practice.
First of all, in order to transfer any content, one of the participants need an open port. In case of public trackers, there are usually a lot of users, so someone will probably have a port open that you can connect to. Also, many don’t even realize that they have open ports, since routers can open them on demand by uPnP. For private trackers, since the userpool is much smaller, it matters more.
Also, for public trackers, you don’t really HAVE TO seed and maintain a good ratio. It’s the right thing to do, but is by no means a necessity. For private trackers, on the other hand, your account will be suspended in most cases if your ratio goes too low.
I ask because I am on several private trackers and haven’t had issues downloading or seeding using mullvad. By what you explained, it shouldn’t be working…
I might be wrong, but I think port forwarding is working for already set up ones till 1st July. Or maybe you have a leaking port through uPnP? Again, just possibilities, not sure. Or maybe you’ve just been lucky and encountered people with open ports.
They recently got visited by officers of the country they’re in. The officers didn’t find shit (no logs, no ips, nothing)
I fully believe this is true, however do you have an article or anything about it?
I suspect this is the incident they’re talking about: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/4/20/mullvad-vpn-was-subject-to-a-search-warrant-customer-data-not-compromised/
I use Mozilla VPN, which I believe is just a rebranded Mullvad
never had any issues!
Yeah, I would still be using mullvad if they hadn’t removed port forwarding – it’s too damn bad but I get why they needed it. Switched to Proton but I imagine they’ll run into the same issue down the road and will need to find a more permanent solution.
I use it for 2 years unfortunately from July 1 port forwarding will be removed. Had to switch to another vpn.
I use windscribe wich is rated quiet highly on some privacy blogs. Furthermore, their free plan (with discount code) is quite generous. I got 50gb per month for free. I can’t verify their no log policy, but at least they weren’t involved in a scandal yet, which you can’t say about a most VPN services :(
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“Private Internet Access has verified in court multiple times that we keep no logs.”
If they’ve gone to court on multiple occasions and proven they keep no logs, that’s pretty compelling evidence that they’re telling the truth. I guess you could never be 100% sure though.
Was that before or after they got bought out?
Before I’m pretty sure. They used to be common recommendations for this reason.
Torguard has also proven no logs in court, and I believe they also have never been acquired.
Some companies like Mullvad have no way to even keep logs
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No way to be 100% sure, but they were raided by police recently and supposedly walked away with nothing. Verge article
SomeOrdinaryGamers had a video on it also.
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- Does not contain non-free js in their website
- Do not depend on google services etc.
- Also have made major contributions to FOSS projects
- There is no Swedish law applicable to them to share data with their goverment
- They do NOT even allow you to create an account, you just generate a random account number, fill it up with time(monero & bitcoin & cash payment via mail allowed)
- They also offer OpenVPN with RSA-4096 and WireGuard which uses Curve25519 and ChaCha20-Poly1305
- Also awesome DNS protection
There are other VPN providers that offer similar stuff to mullvad, I can keep going for days.
TL;DR They do not ask you for any info that would deanonymize you & support FOSS projects
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Some companies like Mullvad have no way to even keep logs
They do not ask for information that would deanonymize you would be a better way of putting that
I’m not familiar with them, can you explain how you are certain they don’t keep logs?
TL;DR They do not ask you for any info that would deanonymize you & support FOSS projets
None of that answers my question.
I just shared a link where they answer those questions in much more detail that I can do via Lemmy commet replies. If you have specific questions please share them, if someone wants to help you out they will reply, otherwise just read the article and try different VPN providers out yoruself.
edit: formatting replies edit2: Because you edited your reply you should NEVER trust any company with your personal information. You should just NOT give it to them, I do not trust Mullvad or any other “privacy” related company to store data that would deanonymize me, you are proving my point that you do not read what I’m typing or the article I’ve shared.
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Wasn’t PIA bought out by a company that keeps logs a couple years ago? Interesting it made it on this list.
Yes they were bought by an Israeli spyware company.
I’ve been using PIA for years. I didn’t know about that. If I were to switch to a new company, any recommendations?
It was a whole hoopla but to what I know they still don’t keep logs. I believe one of the times they were asked to appear in court (and gave nothing) was since the purchase.
I switched from PIA to Mullvad w/ Wireguard a few years ago. I use BTC to pay and you don’t need to supply an email or any info. They’ve been great for me.
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I’ve been using PIA for years for my downloading purposes, as well as having a VPN when I travel. No issues at all and completely reliable. Don’t know if I’d trust them to leak state secrets, but not an issue because I don’t have any.
I use mysterium VPN because it has residential IPs, but remember that all your traffic is going through some random person’s network.
Mullvad Mullvad Mullvad
I’ve been using AirVPN for a long time now and can 100% recommend it, they even have port forwarding.
I’ve used them for well over ten years at this point. Highly recommended from me too.
They used to be one of the more commonly recommended services a few years ago, but they seem to have sort-of slipped off most people’s radar. I’m not sure why.
So how bad is nord vpn seeing as that is all over YouTube?
