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Ryan
Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱI used Mullvad for a long time, but hearing about one of the two CEOs actively supporting and financing swedish Nazis, I'm looking to put my money elsewhere. That's the second one after Private Internet Access (who supported Gab).
I had AirVPN and Surfshark being recomnended, how do people here feel? What do you use?
Commenting so I remember to check this thread later. My Mullvad expires in 5 days.
Can always count on Lemmy to raise awareness on where to not spend money!
I think people say that AirVPN is pretty goated
ivpn and airvpn are my short list, but ivpn is not looking great for the southern hemisphere due to a lack of servers down here.. Northern hemisphere they would be my top choice. I have contacted them a couple of times, and they have responded the same day, were helpful, and appear genuine.
I really like Proton. It's fast, it's good.
AirVpn is awesome
Curious about the software? at least on linux, the gui is very, very dated and it doesn't even have split tunnelling I would rather stick to a gui app. I haven't looked at their android app yet.
Go to torrentfreak.com They solicit info from various VPN companies, plus report on them when they make the news.
they are sponsored by proton so...
Been using PIA for over a decade now. I started with them by paying with a random gift card I had laying around (Walmart maybe?) and have been paying with crypto ever since. They've never asked for any personal details (used a burner email address) and the service has been solid the entire time. Clients on Windows and Linux both work great and are open source with pretty decent documentation. In short, sometimes I want to reliably remain anonymous online and it has worked out well for me.
I know that a lot of people here hate on PIA but I haven't seen any justification. So if anyone here knows why I shouldn't be using the service, I'd love to hear about it; I'd be happy to switch to something else if it works at least as well.
Owned by kape (israel), who own many of the dodgy marketing vpn's.
Based in the USA (the opposite of privacy)
https://embed.kumu.io/9ced55e897e74fd807be51990b26b415#vpn-company-relationships/private-internet-access
No personal experience with them myself
PIA is owned by Israel. https://hackread.com/private-internet-access-pia-vpn-sold-israel-privacy-concerns/
EDIT: Updated link to be source article instead of shiddit post
Thanks for the answer; I certainly don't want to send any money to Israel, if possible. Does anyone have any recommendations for alternatives? I just have two requirements: I need the connection uptime to be rock solid. I also need to be able to register and pay completely anonymously. I'm not that concerned about bandwidth.
You can pay with Monero for IVPN.
Same, no issues in I don't know how many years.
Mostly it's a US based company and has to comply with US laws/surveillance
Does that matter if they have none of my data? I mean, they could log unencrypted traffic but for web browsing you should be forcing https wherever possible, so traffic logs would be mostly irrelevant. No doubt, they can see what you torrent but I can't imagine it matters that much if they have no data about you. They could certainly build a fingerprint based on torrents and unencrypted traffic but I feel like it may be too weak to be relevant. Maybe people worry about using the official clients? But you don't need to use them either, you can just establish a raw OpenVPN tunnel.
It’s an Israeli and US company. If anyone is somehow MITM snooping your TLS traffic, it’s them.
I am not a mullvad user, but I recently found https://njal.la/. Curious if anyone has used it before and their experience
I use them on my nas for torrenting.
- €5 per month.
- Accepts payment in crypto, including monero.
- Can only use your account on one device.
- Only one location, Sweden.
- Assigns dynamic IP address to indivdual user session and each IP address is only assigned to one user at a time.
- Any port(s) can be opened.
Most might consider it expensive give the limitation on devices and location but the freedom to open multiple ports makes it amazing for torrenting.
My nas runs 5 instances of qbittorrent and slskd all with connectable ports opened.
It works reliably for what I use it for. Other than that, I have nothing to report on my experience using them and in this case, no news is good news.
I'm genuinely curious, what does running 5 instances of qbittorrent do that 1 instance doesn't?
That's a valid question and I have 5 different answers. Lol. It all built out over the last 5 years.
I started with one instance and was raw-dogging the net but only using reputable private trackers (ie, teh cabal).
On GGn I was seeding about 20,000 torrents (bulk of this was Linux isos for older retro computers).
Every time ggn has stability issues (every fucking day), it would drag my entire torrent client down with it so I moved all my ggn torrents to their own instance to isolate that problem. That instance still struggled to handle so many torrents on such an unstable tracker so I split ggn across 2 instances.
Then I found some things on public trackers I wanted to download and seed, the full dump of Redtopia being one example. So I created another instance that was routed through a VPN via gluetun to use on public trackers.
And lastly I created one more instance to handle my porn stash.
So that's how I amassed 5 separate torrent clients on the same machine and more recently I moved to a different ISP who uses CGNAT and have decided that I am happy with cgnat and use a VPN that allows opening of ports to handle all my torrent clients.
there was an article today about the entire mullvad company being blindsided by this and a lot of people being upset. with any luck the guy will leave or get thrown out.
also i think they're technically nazbols.
This is likely true, but in the hacker news thread about this, the non Nazi cofounder was pretty defensive about what a great guy he was, and that there was just no way that him being a Nazi could ever effect Mullvad itself:
Here's one example, but these linked thread has more excuses hes made:
kfreds 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]
I'm sorry to hear that. For what it's worth I think there's nuance in his decision that most people don't see. Of course that doesn't mean I think it was the right decision to make.
Here's something worth considering: why would someone whose ideal is open borders, who has been an animal rights activist, and someone who has led Mullvad for 17 years (with the track record it has), choose to donate to this party? If you like what Daniel and I have done together over the past 17 years, and now vehemently oppose his choice to make this donation, doesn't that make you just a little bit curious?
It made me curious. It didn't change my ultimate stance, but it did temper my emotions about it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=kfreds
That level of denial feels custom made for them to give him a pass and keep him onboard.
Time will tell, his response was what prompted me to request and receive my refund though. Either bad wording, or a bad attitude towards this.
when you've known someone personally for that long you're bound to get defensive, i think. and the question is worth considering; why?
have they released an official statement about it?
not that i can find.
Isn't he the founder?
Cofounder, and 50% owner. For him to get kicked out would take a lot.
he could be a rational human about it and see that it's bad for the brand. considering he was willing to work with a guy that actively dislikes what he did he may have a few braincells left.
That kinda seems unlikely to me. I'm certain that he's aware that supporting ethnic cleansing (albeit not overtly violent) is not compatible with having customers.
He has most likely purchased himself control of, or at least a position within a right wing party. There is no coming back from that. For Mullvads sake he needs to move on, and soon.
they don't tend to see it like that from my experience. but yeah the chance is slim.
I think "would take a lot" might be understating it.
It's likely he'd have to be bought out by the other guy with an attractive offer.
Or the other owner (Fredrik Strömberg) splits off and sets up his own vpn... Strömvad, or Mullberg, or MullStröm
co-. the other founder is pretty pissed.
This is the only reason for why I haven't demanded a refund of my remaining balance yet. I'm holding out for a dismissal or something.
I requested and received my refund with the aim to prompt this.
Sitting on your hands suggests that you do not care about it. If they do not lose enough customers, why would anything change?
Demanding a refund could add to the pressure though, you could always renew after he (hopefully) goes. I can't get a refund since mine has just run out but I'm not making any long-term decisions until the dust has settled.
I totally agree! It's just that I have two routers setup with them, running 24/7, and I have configured mom's devices with my account and I don't have the time to reconfigure all this with something else at the moment. 😩
I'm giving it a week or two to see if anything happens while also researching alternatives
Is there other option?
There are many options. It's important to do some research on these options. It's also important to know why you want to choose a certain provider. Check their Terms of Service and Privacy Policy at the very least. For now, I'm looking into IVPN.
There are very few decent options, ivpn seems decent though
also i think they're technically nazbols.
what's a nazbol?
Nazbols want to unify socialist economic planning with imperialism. They were purged by Stalin and the Bolsheviks for wanting to engage in imperialism, and also saw popularity in Germany. Essentially a far-right ideology that stands against socialist internationalism.
National Bolsheviks, in essence merging nazism with communism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bolshevism
National Bolsheviks, in essence merging nazism with communism.
Nazism+
what an awful idea
That's why the bolsheviks purged them.
Like this?
Yes! Alternatively you can just put an Z there too, same meaning.
A Nazi, basically.
It stands for "national bolshevism," so tankies minus the leftism, which... yeah.
national bolsheviks. basically ultranationalist tankies.
Closer to Nazis than communists.
Link to the article?
from the same paper that did the original reporting. swedish and paywalled unfortunately, but the first few paragraphs are readable.
Extracted with firefox reader mode and machine translated:
Internal crisis at Mullvad: “Drags down the company” Jacob Lundberg 4–5 minutes
Last week, Flamman was able to reveal that tech profile Daniel Berntsson is the main financier of the Örebro Party, which is running for parliament with demands for “large-scale remigration”.
The news was presented to employees late on Friday evening, and according to several sources with insight, the information has led to an internal rebellion at the IT company Mullvad, where Berntsson is the owner and CEO.
Around a quarter of the employees gathered in an internal chat over the weekend, where they aired criticism of both the donation and the company's handling of the disclosure.
“I was shocked and sad, and at first surprised,” writes an employee to Flamman.
Another person says that it is both a “deep disappointment” and an “insult” to the company’s employees with a foreign background.
Berntsson himself commented on the news to employees during a meeting on Monday, where employees were allowed to ask questions. Sources to Flamman described the atmosphere before the meeting as tense.
To Flamman, Berntsson justified the donation with “resistance to corruption and dysfunction, creativity and the will to actually solve problems.” Regarding the party’s demand for “comprehensive remigration,” he said that it is needed in view of “today’s miserable situation.”
Several sources tell Flamman that Berntsson has emphasized at recent staff meetings that there are dividing lines among employees in their views on immigration.
“It was like a puzzle piece fell into place,” says an employee, after the revelation about the donation.
Another source says that he has not seen anyone among the staff express support for the donation. At the same time, the chat group for critical discussion still only brings together a minority of the staff.
However, another source believes that the critical group is probably larger.
“I suspect that not everyone dares to show what they think and feel,” he writes to Flamman.
The employees are critical of the donation for several reasons, including that many of the employees themselves are immigrants and “take this very personally.”
Several employees also point out that the Örebro Party’s attitude towards surveillance is at odds with Mullvad’s, as they have advocated increasing the number of surveillance cameras and enabling secret wiretapping in the hunt for criminals.
“Many of the staff believe that this disqualifies Daniel as the leader of a company like Mullvad,” the source writes.
The person also says that many have applied to Mullvad for ethical reasons, that the management's handling of the issue "definitely damaged trust" among the staff, and that several employees "in light of the donation are considering quitting". One person says that they will "look around for alternatives".
"My trust in the leadership is at rock bottom", says a third person.
The source also says that they see no other way forward than for Daniel Berntsson to step down as CEO. However, another employee sees it as unlikely that Berntsson, who owns 50 percent of the company, will step down on his own. At the meeting, he is also said to have rejected the idea.
"My guess is that he will stay just as before. If you look at how the official response is worded, it is about Mullvad standing for freedom of opinion. They are trying to emphasize that it is something he did as a private person, and that it is therefore not so bad."
However, the person remains critical:
"It's one thing to have opinions that don't match mine, but to make such a gigantic donation without realizing that he is bringing down both himself, Mullvad as a company and all employees at the same time. It makes me doubt his ability as CEO and manager."
Flamman has sought out Daniel Berntsson.
I had SurfShark years ago but really do not recommend them. Constant problems with all traffic just stopping and then I had to call someone up to cancel my subscription as there was no option online.
Switched to AirVPN which I don't see talked about much but it's great. The Android app is looking a little dated (the icon in the app drawer is in a tiny circle because they have added support for adaptive icons still) but functionally I can't complain.
I've been using Surfshark for over 8 years and don't have any trouble like you mentioned. Then again, I have an ISP (Freedom Internet) I trust more than my VPN (even though i've not read anything bad about them) and use Surfshark only for region checks and torrenting on my NAS. I love the apps (for great on all platforms), speed and lots of exit points to choose from.
+1 for AirVPN. I'm a little worried of what happens if it becomes more mainstream (see what happened to mullvad and their port forwarding features), but they're rock solid and still support port forwarding for p2p. They also do good black friday sales every year, you can get a steal on the 3yr package around that time.
I just dont get why anyone would willingly tunnel all their traffic to some party they dont know the inner workings of.
Escape censorship
I get that, not an issue where I love but I do sympathize and understand where it affects others.
Because it's only one point you don't have to trust instead of every point along the way
That's kind of like saying you want only amazon to deliver your packages instead of amazon, FedEx, ups, etc.
In other words, a honeypot. Putting all your eggs in one basket.
It's true that the point of failure in a VPN is the provider, which is why trusting the company is important.
It's also true that you definitely can't trust your ISP and government so in the worst case scenario you just wasted $70.
Exactly. And seeing is believing, I'm not trusting some for profit corp with all my traffic data lol.
Also some people dont know how to set up VPNs properly, I realize a lot have apps now but site to site seems to be an option on most. If you just clunk your way through without knowing what you're doing, you potentially could be opening your whole network to them.
No you can't trust your ISP either. But this is why things like DNS over HTTPS and other protocols exist to encrypt everything. And if you're going to that length with a VPN provider, you're just throwing money away and no better off
isps in most places are required by law to record sitrs you visit
if you use a vpn they just see you are connecting to the vpn, but the vpn can potentially see sites you visit
so it comes down to deciding: do you trust your isp or the vpn provider. a lot of cases it will be the vpn provider
Depends where you live I guess.
List of vpns not to use
NordVPN
Facebook Onavo
ExpressVPN
Private Internet Access
Everything Kape Technologies
HolaVPN
PureVPN
ZenMate
CyberGhost
Why is airvpn on your list?
https://embed.kumu.io/9ced55e897e74fd807be51990b26b415#vpn-company-relationships
Imagine someone unironically using Facebook's VPN service.
What's wrong with PIA? I thought they have shown that they do not store any data more than once.
their parent company hired someone from Project Raven to be a CIO for ExpressVPN
They're Israeli, and the biggest vulnerability of a VPN is the provider.
I don't want to be mean to you, as it might be just ignorance.
But my dude, why did you decide to use Inaccessible photo instead of using text or at the very least Text +photo?
If I suffer from any condition that affect my vision or my reading /understanding... how am I supposed to read this?
sorry, added the list in plaintext
Thank you a lot🌹.
You included AirVPN in that list even though they aren't mentioned in either of your screenshots.. maybe a typo? I've never heard of them being associated with Kape so am curious why you lumped them into all that.
sorry, typo
What's wrong with Nord?
https://thecybersecguru.com/online-privacy/vpn-controversies-trust-failures/
NordVPN is interesting because it was less about them handing over data to the government, and them just not being transparent about an attack. All the others in that post clearly were in cahoots with big gov.
NordVPN’s defense was technically coherent: because the company doesn’t store activity logs, no user browsing data was exposed. The breach was framed as a vendor problem. The attacker had gotten in through an insecure remote management system that the data center had left open. NordVPN said it hadn’t even known the system existed.
That may all be accurate. But the eighteen months of silence is the actual story.
Yeah, I was expecting it to be much worse to be honest. Obviously they should have said something right away and hopefully they've learned their lesson. Not sure I'd write them off for this one incident from 7-8 years ago but it's probably still good to have that asterisks on their name.
Being in the proton ecosystem I use their VPN, and it's been working great thus far.
proton are right wing. your comment is ironic here.
Same here, haven't had any issues with the free version so far.
Weird to say Proton is the lesser of the two evils, but not by much.
Mullvad donated to a actual right-wing fascist party.
Proton's owner complimented the US government and gave away customer data.
proton is purple google, an ai company, manipulative and dishonest on social media, and proudly right wing.
This article breaks down the Proton controversies. I believe this comment overly abstracts them, but read what actually happened yourself: http://thoughtportal.org/2025/02/26/proton-mail-says-its-politically-neutral-while-praising-republican-party/
Sharing this because I think it's funny, but someone opened an issue on Mullvad's github about the questionable donations of one of the cofounders: https://github.com/mullvad/mullvadvpn-app/issues/10685
It's funny, but it was probably done by proton
I use Proton but I'm also in their ecosystem (ie, I also pay for ProtonMail and get the rest of their suite alongside it)
Wasn’t Proton’s CEO in some hot water a year or so ago, or was that a bunch of hooey? I know it’s impossible to find an ethical CEO, but just curious.
…sure I could look it up, but my phone battery sucks and it helps boost activity.
he is a trump fan, not sure of other ethical issues, at least for the ceo himself.
https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/
https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-trump-a-deeper-analysis-and-surprising-findings-aed4fee4305e
I use Proton. but I find it suss how they are trying to do it all, so I don't use most of their products
proton = poogle (purple google) plus they are an ai company.
He made a couple of supportive tweets about a Trump anti-trust appointment (who was later fired by Trump) and the Republican Party that offended some people, mainly the American left. People seem to forget that he is not American, nor is Proton an American company, so none of this actually means anything. He cannot vote, he and his company do not fund the American right in any way and he is not someone with a huge online presence, so it's unlikely he has much influence.
More recently a far right influencer in France signed up for Proton's affiliate program and promoted Proton on his channel, which led to some misleading claims about Proton "funding Nazis". Proton immediately removed him from the affiliate program upon being notified of this and apologised for what it claims was an oversight.
Personally I'm very sick of the purity tests and cancel culture on the left and wish people would slow down a bit and really consider whether these "controversies" are actually worth burning it all down for. Proton provides mainstream, easy to use alternatives to big tech and is better existing than not. Its VPN is also one of the few that retains port forwarding, which can be useful for piracy. After the attempts to cancel Proton, the left hard shilled for Mullvad and now it turns out that's objectively worse in terms of its political influencing. Mullvad is another company that does more good in the world than bad, are we going to cancel it too?
you keep referring to "the left" which means you are on "the right" so...
Joined 28 days ago, entire comment history is anti-Proton disinformation and shilling for competitors. Fascinating.
"Why do Americans care if Ford supports Hitler, he's not even German!"
Interesting combination of lies and unironic use of "cancel culture" in the rest of the nonsense btw.
You guys don't even bother pretending to be sane these days. It's just mask off from the first reply with the Hitler comparisons that used to be considered a joke in more normal times.
This dumbass is literally looking at CEOs outright supporting fascism and ethnic cleansing in a privacy sub and asking why people are bringing up the Nazis.
Btw, dumbfuck, Godwin had an interview where he tried to point out to people like you that the "Law" isn't meant to stop people from accurately describing loud and proud fascists.
They made a very naive comment suggesting a authoritarian regime supports privacy
And doubled down then changed their comments as if the way back machine doesn't exist in order to backtrack without having to admit they were wrong.
Technically it is true, it makes easier to spread their propaganda in other countries by using bots.
So some of anti-age verification agenda is generated by russia and china etc. to make easier to create bot accounts.
Same boat, really don't want to keep supporting them, because of the reasons others have mentioned. But I have something like four or five emails, not to mentioned hundreds of relays, it would be really hard to lose if I ditched them as my provider.
Same here, the cost is just way more worth it if you already pay for other Proton services.
Does seem like IVPN is closer to Mullvad in how it works though for people who just want to pay for a VPN separately. No email needed for an account, similar price, open-source clients. Also debubks misinformation used by VPN peddlers to convince people to buy VPNs who don't need one.
here's an interview with IVPN with techlore:
https://odysee.com/@techlore:38/ivpn-breaks-industry-silence-on-logs,:b
It’s like picking an airline. No matter who you choose somebody has a story of how they’re varying degrees of awful.
I’m on Proton. I disliked when that one guy made that social post comment about how Republicans are easier to deal with. I’m not offended enough to roll the dice with another provider only to later discover they’re literal nazis, their founder has Epstein connections or they discriminate against trans people.
(Which is to say, if you want to switch from Mullvad I get it.)
I agree that any provider is going to have something awful about them, but you can't just conclude that supporting this type of thing is fine because everyone is awful.
nice windscribe reference there
I’ve been using Windscribe for 10 years and have been nothing but impressed. Always surprised they don’t get mentioned more in these posts.
I have seen them mentioned here, not in a good way though
My own limited experience with them was crap, and I wouldn't trust them, doesn't mean i am right though.
Looks good.
Not assholes. Wireguard support. Port forwarding et cetera.
They are talking some good shit about this too:
https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/windscribe-trolls-mullvads-political-donation-crisis-with-a-scandal-of-its-own
Windscribe would be most likely to donate to jk rowling apparently...
I've been using airvpn for almost 10 years now, no complaints.
I’ve been a customer for a few years. Noticing some of their Canadian server endpoints are getting blacklisted by cloudflare lately though, which is disappointing when it happens. I just reset the connection and away I go again though usually.
Aother vote for AirVPN. Been with them for years and they have always been solid. Also port forwarding!
I use nym. Works well in my experience, though my Linux experience hasn't been the best. I run a hardened system though, so take that with a grain of salt.
I've heard good things about this service. Haven't tried it myself though.
https://windscribe.com/
I use IVPN
This honestly seem pretty good, they even offer mail aliasing. I think I'm gonna migrate to them once my one year subscription to Mullvad end.
It's Mullvad. This whole thing, in my eyes, overreaction to one asshole being an asshole, and not anywhere near as bad as so many other assholes.
That's my opinion, you're 100% valid in voting with your wallet and I respect everyone that draws the line here.
For me, though, Mullvad is the only one worth their salt if you actually want the best of the best for privacy, and there's no ethical consumption under capitalism so this feels like an exercise in futility.
I would rather be a decent person.
To be clear, by your judgment using Mullvad precludes me from being a decent person?
Have we really reached a point in which we have to stick with the "least bad" option? I don't like this.
The lesser evil is what a lot of duopoly voters goes for, the concept isn't new, even though it is of course ridiculous.
It's been this way since choosing who to buy copper from in Mesopotamia, probably longer.
Always has been.
No, we haven't. There are several good alternatives.
Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp. We've been there for a while. People suck.
Bern using Tunnelbear with some success, but mainly to circumvent geoblocking.
PIA is owned by Kape, which appointed someone from Project Raven as a CIO
but hearing about one of the two CEOs actively supporting and financing swedish Nazis,
sources?
i would like to read about this
https://piefed.blahaj.zone/c/privacy@lemmy.ml/p/838706/mullvad-founder-donated-5-million-sek-to-populist-orebro-party
were these people always dipshits or do they become assholes when they make some money?
No idea. Although it does fit the Swedish stereotype: white, middle-class, owns some means of production, male. And, for some reason, also: Holocaust denying, racist, neo Nazi, populist, revisionist, neo liberal. [Insert "not all X are Y" argument here.]
I'm going to use up my remaining balance (<100 days) and then switch to IVPN if this guy hasn't been excommunicated yet by that time.
do 2 racists cancel each other out?
apparently they won't be "excommunicated"
from https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/i-dont-like-that-he-made-this-donation-mullvad-ceo-reacts-to-co-founders-donation-to-controversial-swedish-populist-party
The founders themselves fundamentally disagree on several important issues."
Mullvad said it would "gladly refund" any customers who choose to cancel their subscriptions or switch to another provider due to philosophical disagreements.
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/vpn/
ivpn ia the one i would recommend
Yep, I've been using AirVPN for about 6 months now. No complaints, works great! (Yes they support port forwarding.)
And works with gluetun! https://github.com/qdm12/gluetun-wiki/blob/main/setup/providers/airvpn.md
I'll definitely be renewing when my year is up.
Been using it myself for some years but the up speeds are really ass max I got was 5MB/s up. In speed tests ~300mbit up while my server was in an actual Datacenter with multi gibt connection I switched to proton and got throttled at 1gbit which is a lot better
Oh and someone was hosting a Tor endpoint on one of there vpns which gets the IP Blacklisted and you potentially banned from some trackers. support just closed my complaint without comment.
I’ve been a Mullvad user for probably about a year but I’m considering Nym.
Editing for further context: their board includes Chelsea Manning which bodes well, I like that they use decentralized nodes, and that all of their code is open for review. The $NYM stuff is a little weird, but to me it comes off like an attempt to decentralize currency, which can anonymize in its own way (with an asterisk). Just not sure what that landscape looks like, since a person’s identity can often be figured out by looking at the public ledger. I’m still learning about Nym though.
Interesting, I have never heard of them. Honestly my first glance is I don't like their website. It looks way too investor/shill heavy which worries me about the longevity/future of the platform.
I like the concept of a decentralized system if they can promise reliability and privacy across all nodes I am concerned about how privacy will be retained when a node is established in an external country that has more restrictive government controls.
I heavy dislike the fact it auto renews. That right there is a huge red flag for me because that means whatever payment information I provided, is being stored in a way that it can be linked directly to my account. With Mullvad once the 30 day window is up, they toss the payment token so it's no longer associated/linked with the account, instead relying on you to have to provide a piece of info that they can connect to the account if you have account issues. While they can say that they don't link accounts to activity, I heavily dislike the potential that it could be done in the future, especially since they are very upfront about it being blockchain so that tells me the information is permanent/never removed.
What's the story with them charging much less if you pay with their crypto currency?
Not entirely sure. I think it’s to gain adoption and it helps subsidize node operators.
Way back, I used to use cryptostorm.is They had an interesting way of separating your payment of the service from the actual use of the service. Where you buy tokens, available from third party vendors even, and then you can use those tokens to authenticate to the vpn service.
Not sure how unique that feature is compared to other providers, I haven’t felt the need to run one in a good while. Also don’t know if they’re still legit or not.
If someone else has some insight on them I’d be interested it hearing!
I am also looking for alternatives to Mullvad, and my current leading contender is AirVPN
I was looking at IVPN. I still have some research to do but I haven't found anything sketchy on them so far.
I use OVPN. They own their own hardware and are basically the same as Mullvad in how you manage the account. Their Linux GUI clients are broken in Wayland but you can use the terminal or save your to the network manager.
That sounds nice. Takes a bit of a commitment looking at their pricing, but i'm willing to, if they deliver a good product.
Is routing everything through Tor a good option?
I'd say just basic browsing and messaging, it's a volunteer project so bandwidth is not their strong suit.
That makes sense, don't wanna bog their whole network with streaming and such.
I've just signed up to ivpn for a month. I appreciate their honesty on their website and the education they also have.
My only challenge is looking at getting through the great firewall.. I'm yet to find any successful VPN's / best practices
Hey bud,
Whereever you are located, they will start blocking VPNs soon. rent a server using crypto and install xray vless realty tlx.
I'm sticking with it. This cancel culture needs some balance. Someone at this company is an idiot. Doesn't make them all idiots. Yet.
Too much knee jerk going on these days.
not just someone, the co-owner, you are choosing to fund the political party.
that is either apathetic, or...
I don't think its cancel culture to not want to indirectly fund fascism. The guy is one of the CEOs so if you subscribe then it goes into his pockets
Anyone spouting the phrase "cancel culture" unironically is making it pretty clear where they stand tbh
Cancel culture or vote with your wallet?
Agreed, in my opinion it is the best VPN provider, with Mozilla (rents infrastructure) and Proton as next best
I use Xeovo since forever, it kinda just works for me
People don't like Surfshark because a while back NordVPN bought them but doesn't explicitly disclose that it's operating two products. The service of either is fine though if all you ever want is to stream or download. Nord's selling point now is that it has many servers and they're fast. Oh and they're operating out of Panama so they don't have to report your traffic to anyone.
But most VPN's aren't doing port forwarding anymore so expect not to be able to upload anything privately. Ones I learned that will still support port forwarding and are accommodating to p2p sharing are Airvpn and Proton (as long as you're actually paying for it). I've only tried AirVPN and the servers were slow but that was years ago. My next subscription with will probably be to Proton.
Since I use it only eventually instead of running 24/7 I like Surfshark. If I'm not mistaken it's under Netherlands jurisdiction, which makes it much more trustworthy than USA VPN providers. It also has good cost benefit and good performance overall.
I never looked into it too deeply though. But as I said, for sporadic use I am definitely satisfied.
Now apparently owned by NordVPN. And based in Panama according to another commenter.
I'm still using mullvad. I don't care enough about political morals at this day in age. I wouldn't be allowed to operate life if I boycotted every service that went against my principles. I do tend to agree with the statement that while it may not be in my interest. What a co-founder does in a company isn't reflected on the company as a whole. If Mullvad was actively donating to structures or was advocating for it I might care more.
Being said, it goes without saying for me that, considering this picked up news trend in the US and is being shared across every news site and seems to have a massive following on X, which is a known bot platform and hive mind. I'm taking the entire thing with a massive grain of salt, as nothing is allowed onto US news without it being to some advantage of the current government structure. Which means that it's more likely this is being pushed as a nothing-burger with the intent to dissuade people from using a service that has no government controls.
I'm not saying he didn't do it because he has openly admitted to it, but I'm just saying I expect that the entire situation is being blown out of proportion if it's gained trending on US news sites
Wait. One of the mullvad founders funding a small Nazi party in Örebro has made national news in the US? The fuck?
I hadn’t even heard of the party until now and I live in the neighbouring county.
Edit: holy shit, they've used the money well. They've grown significantly in the polls, from being a straggler 2022 to being the second largest in recent polls.
Fuck.
Yeah, it's very weird because normally I don't feel like they would care, which is the biggest reason of why I'm taking it with a grain of salt.
It's clear from the response by the company that it's not a trait that they actually are happy with. But I find it weird that it's being pushed so heavily.
There's a lot of money to be made in destroying the reputation of a competitor that actually respects the privacy of its' customers.
Well I didn't ask about a discussion but about alternatives. You do you.
Ah, sorry. I misunderstood then. I took how do people here feel? What do you use? as an invitation that you were willing for discussions. I didn't realize you aren't looking for discussions ^^'
No worries. While i don't agree with your standpoint, my question is about people's feelings and experiences about different vpn providers. Already some good advice here.
All good! And yea this post has shown some pretty decent alternatives, some of which I had never heard of so I been looking at them as well
