Honestly, nothing holds up to Mullvad [1]. They don't even take an email address while creating accounts, and you can pay easily with Bitcoin or even with cash mailed to them.
I'm not affiliated, just a very happy customer.
Mullvad is also who Mozilla trusts for the Mozilla VPN [2]. You can sign up with that if you'd like Mozilla to get a cut.
Don't use their service but they do really come across as one of most trustworthy out there. Have a Protonvpn account for getting around a geoblock once in a blue moon, personally don't have much use for commercial vpns.
"Honestly, nothing holds up to ... (VPN provider)"
If you're serious you send a machine, that you own, to a colo provider and you register for service with a corporate entity that you created for just that purpose.
Your name exists nowhere and ... regulatory inquiries are directed to your corporate contact email.
Or, if you feel like that's a heavy burden and you don't attach any value to the physical machine (some old 1U, right ?) then you can just sign up under an assumed corporate name with some colo provider that doesn't care that it is, or is not, an actual corporation and you can pay with your non-AMEX credit card[1] using whatever Mickey Mouse name you feel like.
Trust me - it won't take long to find someone who will take your money.[2]
And with Mullvad you can just make a one-time payment of EUR 5.00 if you need to use it for 30 days. No auto-renew crap / commitment to long subscriptions to deal with.
Mullvad is the service that Firefox use, I took that as an endorsement and tested them, it worked well (on Linux, which has a command line controller for a service that is installed) once you've got used to how it's set up. They seem to do anonymising thoroughly. IIRC you can even mail them cash.
Edit: I should say, I used their support email, they responded pretty quickly for a cheap service, offered a beta client and that fixed the issue (I'd actually tried the beta by the time I got the email back, but still).
I totally understand using a VPN service if you're trying to access the internet from another location, e.g. to get past the China firewall or get access to content from a different copyright jurisdiction.
However, I don't fully understand the privacy argument. It would seem to be that instead of handing over your entire DNS query history and unencrypted HTTP history to your own corporate IT department or the Starbucks Wi-Fi router, you're now handing over all that data to Mullvad. Are people okay with that?
I usually create my own VPNs. I realize that involves handing data over to AWS or whoever I use for my servers but I somehow feel slightly better about that than handing it over to some Mullvad dude.
Google tries to impose its VPN on Android too and my first insinct is: do I really want all my traffic going through Google?
It is interesting to me that the Mozilla option is cheaper. (5 USD vs 5 EUR)
Also it bugs me that there are 5 "Try" buttons on the Mozilla site before they even show you the price. To be fair it does show you the price on the credit card page after you log in but still feels a bit scummy to me. Mullvad puts it in your face above the fold.
The thing is, it costs >$5 per month. I pay $2 for NordVPN.
I'm not expecting privacy, I just want a way to occasionally geo-hop to other countries, for streaming video and to test if a problem is related to my IP/location or not. And occasionally to have some minimal level of protection in a coffee shop.
You can't use any commercial VPN service and expect privacy. Those are only good for bypassing geographical restrictions. If you want privacy, buy a VDS and host your own VPN server. It'll cost about the same, and you can use it for other things at no additional cost.
Does Mullvad allow me to connect using wireguard without pasting my private key into their website? Their website says the private key never leaves my browser and is only used to generate the configuration file, but all I really want to do is give them a public key and I suppose let them know which server I'll be connecting to. I can put together the config file by hand myself, thanks, I shouldn't need to ever copy the private key into my clipboard, let alone paste it into a browser.
How do they take bitcoin? I’ve seen various invoicing systems that completely break in Tor+JS and in all noJS environments.
If they shoehorned bitpay in, its probably not tapping into the utility of having bitcoin payment options.
I like paying invoices with Monero over Tor, while the merchant receives bitcoin that a third party pushed to them. I’ve been doing that for at least half a decade.
But if I can’t access their invoice they just lose a customer.
>The secret to not dealing with crapty company practices is to avoid ones that advertise literally everywhere 24/7 nonstop around every single corner you look.
my goto explanation for this is the crappiest companies out there have highest profit margin simply because they have a whole host of bad practices available to pick from. that basically means they have most resources to burn on marketing & promotion.. egro most highly advertised stuff is what one should avoid the most.
By now these VPN providers are like toothpaste, diapers or soft drinks: completely undifferentiated between competitors, and so only able to maintain their market share by spending loads on marketing. Of course the company with most egregious dark patterns and aggressive churn dampening wins.
Thankfully a tube of toothpaste doesn't allow implementing dark patterns like this... yet.
The amount of astroturfing in the reddit thread is just awful.
VPN hosters market in the most aggressive ways possible, probably due to the fact that its usually impossible to verify a VPN hoster's claims (without a breach), so assuming they did most of the VPN stuff right, any new users they lured in are gonna stick, at least for a while.
Although not entirely false, this post is a bit too defeatist. "Don't use a VPN because they may be lying about not logging connections" is the same as saying "Don't get on an airplane because the pilot may be suicidal".
I'm not going to stop using vpns nor flying on airplanes because of that.
This isn't a persuasive argument for not using a VPN, it's a strongly-worded reminder that using a VPN means you're trusting your VPN provider. That's a big difference.
I personally never liked the whole Nord ecosystem. I tried NordPass and encountered bug after bug and had to stop using it. The software seems kind of thrown together / shoddily made just to make a quick buck. They don't nearly put in as much passion and effort as better offerings like ProtonVPN and Mullvad (no affiliation, just really love their services).
Can confirm. I used to use ProtonVPN and it was worth every penny. I switched to NordVPN to save a few bucks and it was one of the worst decisions I have ever made. NordVPN couldn’t hold a candle to what ProtonVPN offered in terms of reliability, ease of use, transparency and support. ProtonVPN was costlier, but I think it justified its cost.
I've used NordVPN previously and thought they were fine as a VPN service. In fact I went back to use them earlier today before seeing this submission. But yeah, on reflection, they really do go out of their way to scare/screw their customers into auto-renewing with various dark patterns. So maybe next time round I'll check out something less evil.
I use a VPN for geo blocked free-to-air sport(6 nations <3) from my home country so VPNs work well for my needs. Ironically it's not even possible to pay for access to view the sport in a legitimate way since everything is region locked.
This seems the work of some market-oblivious marketing "expert": we want more autorenewals, let's figure out some stick and carrot. Trust doesn't appear to be a consideration.
Has anyone actually been able to reproduce this? This annoyed me enough that I cancelled my NordVPN renewal, and I never got this screen - and all the adblock/anti-malware stuff still works fine.
Honestly, if you are worried about privacy and use a VPN for those reasons, then you should check out the principle of browser fingerprinting [0].
The conclusion is that servers/websites can check so many parameters of your browser that they can produce a (unique) fingerprint based on the settings and drivers on your phone. No VPN or Tor will cover that, only burner phones or pen and paper.
When you use multiple browsers, with 1 (FF) used for general browsing setup to blocks fingerprintin, all cookies, js, etc... will the other (Brave, Opera) browsers leak info to web sites, when using FF ?
What's the argument for VPNs in 2021? Can't ISP just use metadata patterns and DPI/analytics to tell what you're up to anyways? For example if I want to hide by torrenting, it's not like VPN is going to really help that. ISP should be able to figure that out right? Or am I wrong here?
edit: this is a serious question I am not trying to troll anyone here
People use VPN services, as opposed to say why enterprises use site-to-site VPNs, for a variety of reasons:
- Access geo-restricted content on say Netflix
- Privacy - one encrypted pipe to hide what you're doing
- Hide source IP address (perhaps for researching a competitors website etc)
- Protect insecure services (though the services would need to exist on the VPN endpoint or they would be exposed at the VPN->insecure service termination).
- Bypass ISP throttling (yup this works and is always funny as ISPs deny they do this but hey, easy to check!)
And more. So there's plenty of use-cases for a VPN in 2021. But it's worth thinking about how the threat model changes as a result of using one especially if you're not hosting it yourself.
A correct VPN will make it look like you're just sending garbage traffic to/from one destination, the outside looking in traffic pattern is completely different than a torrent directly (which is many to one + one to many)
[+] [-] notRobot|5 years ago|reply
I'm not affiliated, just a very happy customer.
Mullvad is also who Mozilla trusts for the Mozilla VPN [2]. You can sign up with that if you'd like Mozilla to get a cut.
[1]: https://mullvad.net/ [2]: https://vpn.mozilla.org/
[+] [-] BelenusMordred|5 years ago|reply
https://github.com/mullvad
Don't use their service but they do really come across as one of most trustworthy out there. Have a Protonvpn account for getting around a geoblock once in a blue moon, personally don't have much use for commercial vpns.
[+] [-] rsync|5 years ago|reply
If you're serious you send a machine, that you own, to a colo provider and you register for service with a corporate entity that you created for just that purpose.
Your name exists nowhere and ... regulatory inquiries are directed to your corporate contact email.
Or, if you feel like that's a heavy burden and you don't attach any value to the physical machine (some old 1U, right ?) then you can just sign up under an assumed corporate name with some colo provider that doesn't care that it is, or is not, an actual corporation and you can pay with your non-AMEX credit card[1] using whatever Mickey Mouse name you feel like.
Trust me - it won't take long to find someone who will take your money.[2]
[1] Only AMEX validates First Last ...
[2] https://www.lowendtalk.com/
[+] [-] blindm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|5 years ago|reply
Edit: I should say, I used their support email, they responded pretty quickly for a cheap service, offered a beta client and that fixed the issue (I'd actually tried the beta by the time I got the email back, but still).
[+] [-] dheera|5 years ago|reply
However, I don't fully understand the privacy argument. It would seem to be that instead of handing over your entire DNS query history and unencrypted HTTP history to your own corporate IT department or the Starbucks Wi-Fi router, you're now handing over all that data to Mullvad. Are people okay with that?
I usually create my own VPNs. I realize that involves handing data over to AWS or whoever I use for my servers but I somehow feel slightly better about that than handing it over to some Mullvad dude.
Google tries to impose its VPN on Android too and my first insinct is: do I really want all my traffic going through Google?
[+] [-] kevincox|5 years ago|reply
Also it bugs me that there are 5 "Try" buttons on the Mozilla site before they even show you the price. To be fair it does show you the price on the credit card page after you log in but still feels a bit scummy to me. Mullvad puts it in your face above the fold.
[+] [-] Wowfunhappy|5 years ago|reply
I'm not expecting privacy, I just want a way to occasionally geo-hop to other countries, for streaming video and to test if a problem is related to my IP/location or not. And occasionally to have some minimal level of protection in a coffee shop.
[+] [-] grishka|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soulofmischief|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LiberatedLlama|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shrimp_emoji|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vmception|5 years ago|reply
If they shoehorned bitpay in, its probably not tapping into the utility of having bitcoin payment options.
I like paying invoices with Monero over Tor, while the merchant receives bitcoin that a third party pushed to them. I’ve been doing that for at least half a decade.
But if I can’t access their invoice they just lose a customer.
[+] [-] tedunangst|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] symlinkk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hda111|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gopty|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WarOnPrivacy|5 years ago|reply
>The secret to not dealing with crapty company practices is to avoid ones that advertise literally everywhere 24/7 nonstop around every single corner you look.
This is so true it nearly qualifies as physics.
[+] [-] DesiLurker|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lebaux|5 years ago|reply
I am going to (over)use this phrase from now on. Thank you.
[+] [-] fasicle|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LordHeini|5 years ago|reply
The only reason i would use one is to get cheaper steam keys from brasil and for that i can get a free one.
From a security standpoint it is awful because you increase the number of providers you have to trust.
Apart from your ISP and the server you connect to, you got a third party involved for no reason.
And VPNs can not that trustworhty as shown by the leaks of logs and what not.
Maybe someone can enlighten me why these services exist and what usecase they have?
[+] [-] isoprophlex|5 years ago|reply
Thankfully a tube of toothpaste doesn't allow implementing dark patterns like this... yet.
[+] [-] dhdc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dcormier|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitcharmer|5 years ago|reply
I'm not going to stop using vpns nor flying on airplanes because of that.
[+] [-] karaterobot|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] blindm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rochak|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aswerty|5 years ago|reply
I use a VPN for geo blocked free-to-air sport(6 nations <3) from my home country so VPNs work well for my needs. Ironically it's not even possible to pay for access to view the sport in a legitimate way since everything is region locked.
[+] [-] myrandomcomment|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HelloNurse|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kahlonel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] respli|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MikeDelta|5 years ago|reply
The conclusion is that servers/websites can check so many parameters of your browser that they can produce a (unique) fingerprint based on the settings and drivers on your phone. No VPN or Tor will cover that, only burner phones or pen and paper.
[0] https://coveryourtracks.eff.org
[+] [-] jonny_eh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robinhood|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m3kw9|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cedricgle|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IG_Semmelweiss|5 years ago|reply
When you use multiple browsers, with 1 (FF) used for general browsing setup to blocks fingerprintin, all cookies, js, etc... will the other (Brave, Opera) browsers leak info to web sites, when using FF ?
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] miniyarov|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] database_lost|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jorblumesea|5 years ago|reply
edit: this is a serious question I am not trying to troll anyone here
[+] [-] beermonster|5 years ago|reply
- Access geo-restricted content on say Netflix
- Privacy - one encrypted pipe to hide what you're doing
- Hide source IP address (perhaps for researching a competitors website etc)
- Protect insecure services (though the services would need to exist on the VPN endpoint or they would be exposed at the VPN->insecure service termination).
- Bypass ISP throttling (yup this works and is always funny as ISPs deny they do this but hey, easy to check!)
- Avoid censorship even in places like the UK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_and_survei...)
And more. So there's plenty of use-cases for a VPN in 2021. But it's worth thinking about how the threat model changes as a result of using one especially if you're not hosting it yourself.
[+] [-] AlexandrB|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ev1|5 years ago|reply