I 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?
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)
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!
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.)
nice windscribe reference there
I use IVPN
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?
No, your own words “preclude you from being a decent person”
apathy is evil.
So then yes, right? I’m not trying to be a dick only understand what your stance is for the sake of discussion.
My position is not apathetic, it’s a reluctant acceptance that chasing idealism is a fleeting goal and, in my experience and belief, that energy is much better spent on doing things that will make the world a noticeably better place instead of getting riding the high denying a hundred-millionaire 5 quid a month.
I think paying massive telecoms for internet access is measurably worse for democracy and ethics than a mullvad subscription, but there are some things we have to be okay with for advancing a greater good. Mullvad is the only VPN to my knowledge that’s been proven to resist pressure from every government and has passed the subpoena test multiple times.
I’m not tryna say I’m right and you’re wrong, and I’m not trying to argue in bad faith to get a win; I’d much rather we share ideas and come out with greater understanding. Tone and authenticity are hard to convey in forums so please trust me when I tell you my intent is to do the most good with the least bad.
I believe the only chance we have of him leaving the company is by customer backlash, it is that simple.
I could very easily pretend this is okay, and that this is just his personal choice, I could pretend that the company money (the money I pay them as a customer) was not used as the primary funding for that political party, that would be dishonest of me though.
For mullvad to continue ethically, he needs to not be a part of it. I have no idea what their options are in that respect, but I hope they can prove themselves to be what I believe them to be.
We have a fascist government that has introduced internet restrictions, and is in bed with the usa, israel, and palantir here in Australia. Vpn servers are scarce in the southern hemisphere, and most of those that do exist, are in Australia, and therefore in multiple respects are close to pointless because of our internet access laws. The majority of vpn companies are dodgy trash. Mullvad is the only vpn that ticks all of the boxes for me, I spent most of yesterday (yet again) assessing options, and I still do not have an alternative. It would be so much easier for me to continue using mullvad.
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.
I think people say that AirVPN is pretty goated
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.
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.
Owned by kape (israel), who own many of the dodgy marketing vpn’s.
Based in the USA (the opposite of privacy)
No personal experience with them myself
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.
I stopped using them.years ago when they sponsored gab. Don’t have receipts anymore and i dont know what their policy is these days, but suppoeting fascists has always been a hard “no” for me.
Same, no issues in I don’t know how many years.
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.
They offer standard wireguard and openvpn configs. There is no need for a “Airvpn client” gui.
I prefer a gui, and have little faith in a company that is unwilling, or incapable of providing a decent one. Mullvad has a very good gui on linux, and android, as well as a browser extension. Airvpn has a linux app that looks 20 years old and doesn’t even have split tunnelling, apparently their android app also doesn’t have split tunnelling, so wtf are they actually doing, and where is their roadmap?
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!
but hearing about one of the two CEOs actively supporting and financing swedish Nazis,
sources?
i would like to read about this
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!
Switched! I don’t have the time/willpower to heavily research this, and changing VPNs is easy compared to changing things like eMail or OS.
Especially easy with all these recommendations here.
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 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.
I am not a mullvad user, but I recently found https://njal.la/. Curious if anyone has used it before and their experience
