First off, sorry if this has been asked a million times in this community already, but the only post I found on this topic when I searched was over two years old.
I’ve been using PIA vpn for the past two years, but my subscription is ending soon and I was thinking about switching providers. I’m a fairly basic vpn user so I’m not overly concerned about advanced features and bells and whistles. I have a limited budget to work with, and I run Fedora os. Does anyone have any recommendations on what vpn I should be using?
I’ve seen Mullvad mentioned frequently, but it’s a touch expensive compared to others. I’ve heard some good things about Proton vpn too, but I know there was a controversy with their CEO not long ago. I’ve also just read something about IVPN and they look good, but I’d like opinions from more sources. I’m open too all other suggestions as well. Thanks for any and all thoughts!
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What you should also consider, do you need a VPN. If you just want to avoid region blocking, (any) will do. Just need to check if their IP range is blocked by the provider. For normal https traffic you don’t need one. Enable dns over https in your browser and your traffic is as secure and anonymous as with most commercial VPNs.
VPNs have their use cases but we now have a decade of scareware ads from VPNs that implied our traffic is as insecure as it was in 1980. but it isn’t, you’re paying for a lava insurance. And let me say this, you can still be tracked if you use a VPN. It’s just a bit harder, like marginallyMullvad. I don’t even think about alternatives.
Mullvad doesn’t support port forwarding does it?
I don’t think it does but I don’t care so far.
Mullvad is the correct answer.
What is it about Mullvad that makes it superior to all other options? I’m open to it, I just need something to justify the higher price.
Few good things:
- They don’t have ability to keep logs (even if they wanted)
- Their wireguard speeds can keep up with fiber (800mbps with 1gbps fiber)
- I’ve not seen any connection drops.
Downside: No port forwarding, this I’ve remedied with headscale server and tailscale clients. Port forwarding is needed if u want to access your home network from outside
higher price
$5 is a low price for a service that I trust way more than the others. You should wonder why the alternatives are so cheap.
It’s about $8 CAD / month, which is noticeably more than Air vpn’s ~$5.25 CAD / month (if I signed up for two years). That being said I understand your point, assuming that they have that trust. As someone who isn’t familiar with them though I need to first know why they deserve it more than others. Other people do seem to speak highly of them though and have made some points that are in their favour.
Check their reddit for all the threads with pictures of cities plastered in Mullvad billboards. Then you know why others are cheaper.
That would be unfortunate to see. Can you maybe link examples so others can judgr for themselves? I use their service and often recommend and confirming your statement is important to me so I can adjust my opinion.
What is wrong with them buying billboards?
I dont need part of my money going to advertisment campaigns
No information needs to even be provided to them. No login, you just get a number (16 digits I think?). You can pay with untraceable Monero, and use the VPN anywhere as long as you have that number.
If you want.
Basically, Mullvad has a great track record, seems to legitimately care about privacy rather than just making money.
As for your mention on protonvpn, the founder did say some weird stuff last year, but so far the company itself hasn’t demonstrated any questionable behavior in regards to data, so it’s still considered safe.
You can pay them in cash, for me this is a great feature
The Proton CEO thing was vastly overblown. He is a privacy advocate and expressed support for Trump’s appointment for head of antitrust, as well as criticism of corporate Democrats who stand for big business which was misrepresented as a love of the Republican Party. The only mistake he made was to publish those statements using the official Proton account, which he later apologised for.
Some people, especially the American left, love to virtue signal and predictably they tried to cancel Proton as a result of this pretty minor and irrelevant social media drama. There were some good write-ups at the time which exposed how counterfactual the “pRoToN lOvEs mAgA” arguments were, but I guess feel free to skip over Proton if it really concerns you. It is objectively one of the best choices if you value both privacy and functionality (Proton still has support for port forwarding), which I think are far more relevant areas to be looking at when choosing a VPN for piracy.
Okay but his criticism makes no sense when the FTC under biden actually started taking antitrust seriously and has since lost its teeth again under trump.
And the Proton CEO tweet about Trump looking out for the little guys is such an insane MAGA echo chamber take. It throws the credibility of the entire post into question. Not to mention that it’s a Medium article. Too many red flags that it undermines OP’s point pretty quick.
Surfshark, cheap and fast.
