7 ms·

Since there is so much criticism here of NordVPN (in general, not for open-sourcing), what are the VPNs that people like?

CalRobert 4y ago
Mozilla/Mullvad seem to be liked well enough. It's what I use, but I am doing it for geolocation issues and occasional scraping, so I am less concerned about logging/security.
switch007 4y ago
Mullvad
panick21_ 4y ago
Mullvad is mostly liked by everybody. Including me.
- bilekas 4y ago
  Mullvad is a great example of how all VPN companies who promote privacy should behave, if only for the signup process itself. Zero personal information required.
gjsman-1000 4y ago
Take a look at Mullvad for a VPN done right. Completely anonymous usernames, randomly generated, accepts cryptocurrency or cards purchased anonymously at a physical store with cash. One concerning issue is the Swedish jurisdiction. The nordic countries are better at privacy, but Sweden is a 14-eyes nation. But I can't say it's better or worse than NordVPN's... Panama.
- capableweb 4y ago
  Or if you wanna pay by cash, just send it to them in an envelope. No need to buy a card first then using that, when you can pay by the alternative that gives you the most privacy.
- antihero 4y ago
  As long as people still realise that regardless of whether they pay with cash in an envelope or directions to the end of a rainbow, if they connect with their own IP to mullvad’s servers and there’s some compromise of these promises (court order, etc), it’s trivial to be owned.
acatton 4y ago
I am not related to them, I'm just a user of it. But Mullvad.net is the only decent VPN. (They're the one Mozilla chose to provide their VPN infrastructure) They've been audited https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2022/6/22/vpn-server-audit-found-no-information-leakage-or-logging-of-customer-data/ https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2022/6/22/vpn-server-audit-found... I have no financial incentive to vouch for them. But what do you care, I'm just a random guy on the internet.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  Never forget though, Auditing is only proof that it was secure at the moment of the audit. That applies to all VPNs and services.
  - acatton 4y ago
    That's true. Good point.
  - jakear 4y ago
    Rather, auditing is only proof that the parts the auditors looked at were secure against what the the auditors knew to look for, at the moment of the audit.
  - latchkey 4y ago
    Auditing might not even cover the entire codebase. For example, this is the writeup of the DeFi Euler hack yesterday by one of the sites listed auditors, who didn't actually audit the code that caused the bug... https://medium.com/@omniscia.io/euler-finance-incident-post-mortem-1ce077c28454 https://medium.com/@omniscia.io/euler-finance-incident-post-...
- maxloh 4y ago
  How about ProtonVPN?
  - ashirviskas 4y ago
    Same company (no matter how hard they try to hide it), so unless it has better pricing or features, if you don't trust Nord, there's no reason you should trust Proton. Though I do trust both, as Tesonet is based from here (Lithuania) and from my experiences with people who worked there, they have full trust in them and continue to use their services years after leaving the company.
CommitSyn 4y ago
Perfect Privacy. VPN chaining, setting so your IP address always changes to be the one closest to the server, no logs (audited), stored in ramdisk, unlimited connections and bandwidth because they don't even know who's connecting. Cons: it can be slow and have issues with disconnects sometimes.
- hannob 4y ago
  Perfect privacy was at least in the past run by austrian neonazis: https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2012-09/neonazi-website-admin-robert-m/komplettansicht https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2012-09/neona...
  - bjoli 4y ago
    They do have reasons to stay private though, you must give them that.
  - CommitSyn 4y ago
    I didn't know that, but it almost makes me trust their service more. While I don't share their views, I do think technologically capable extremists are probably who I'd most want behind a service that I use as a layer for anonymity and privacy from everyone including government agencies.
DeathArrow 4y ago
One that is not from my country or the political alliance my country is in.
dreen 4y ago
I set up my own VPN with https://github.com/trailofbits/algo https://github.com/trailofbits/algo Hosted on DigitalOcean and the setup was completely automatic, it deletes its own access after its done. Note you're still beholden to ToS of your host, but tbh they don't seem to care no matter what I do with it. I know it from here.
Nadya 4y ago
None of them. No really read that again: None. Of. Them. https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29 https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29 Especially not after Kape Technology bought up review sites and VPNs and updated reviews to shill the ones they own. Kape Technologies was formerly known as Crossrider before it was acquired by Teddy Sagi, an Israeli billionaire that has spent time in jail for insider trading. Crossrider itself never had that great a reputation itself, what with their primary product being a development platform through which they were frequently used by third parties to invade ad platforms to serve up malware. They are now the owners of ExpressVPN, PIA, CyberGhost, and Zenmate. https://restoreprivacy.com/kape-technologies-owns-expressvpn-cyberghost-pia-zenmate-vpn-review-sites/ https://restoreprivacy.com/kape-technologies-owns-expressvpn... And then j2 global owns a bunch of others. https://www.techradar.com/news/pc-mag-owner-j2-global-buys-sixth-vpn-provider https://www.techradar.com/news/pc-mag-owner-j2-global-buys-s... I'm 99% sure every VPN on the market is a honeypot or data broker at this point.
dirtyaura 4y ago
Freedome VPN by F-Secure
seized 4y ago
Mullvad is excellent. No email required, all sorts of payment options including cash in an envelope. Can even get gift cards now.
jacooper 4y ago
ProtonVPN
reqqqles 4y ago
I use AzireVPN because they were one of the first providers to support the WireGuard protocol. https://www.azirevpn.com/ https://www.azirevpn.com/
metadaemon 4y ago
+1 for Mullvad, I usually only buy time when I'm traveling to secure my traffic in airports/hotels/etc
dhaavi 4y ago
If you're up to trying something new, we've built a technology to replace consumer privacy VPNs: https://safing.io/spn/ https://safing.io/spn/ Technical summary of the SPN (Safing Privacy Network): - A Privacy Network aimed at use cases "between" VPN and Tor. - Uses onion encryption over multiple hops just like Tor. - Routes are chosen to cover most distance within the network to increase privacy. - Exits are chosen near the destination server. This automatically geo-unblocks in many cases. - Exclude apps and domains/entities from using SPN. - Change routing algorithm and focus per app. - Nodes are hosted by Safing (company behind Portmaster) and the community. - Speeds are pretty decent (>100MBit/s).
- LoganDark 4y ago
  Just so everyone knows: only Safing hosts exit nodes. Only relays (the intermediate hops) can come from the community.
  - dhaavi 4y ago
    Thanks for providing additional information to readers. However, this is not entirely correct. Let me clarify: - Community nodes are used to diversify server ownership and strengthen the privacy of connections. - Community nodes may technically act as entry, middle and/or exit nodes. - Community nodes will never be used for unencrypted connections, only for encrypted connections. We are thinking about a concept of trusted partners, which will also be allowed to handle unencrypted connections - but this is currently not the case. - We publish advisories [0], which are automatically applied by all clients. This gives us the ability to quickly react to changing situations. Currently, community nodes _are_ being selected as exit nodes, but not as entry nodes. I hope this cleared things up. I am happy to go into more detail. [0] https://github.com/safing/intel-data/blob/master/spn/main-intel.yaml#L180-L182 https://github.com/safing/intel-data/blob/master/spn/main-in...
lucideer 4y ago
A tonne of people here recommending Mullvad, which is great - they're great - but they don't offer the main selling point of most VPNs, so I feel this question needs qualification: What are you looking for a VPN for. As much as the ads misrepresent the security & privacy aspects of NordVPN, &c., the vast majority of people use VPNs to watch region-restricted media. Mullvad does not support this. So ... who's the best provider for watching region-restricted media? NordVPN honestly seems like a very competitive option here

CalRobert 4y ago

Mozilla/Mullvad seem to be liked well enough. It's what I use, but I am doing it for geolocation issues and occasional scraping, so I am less concerned about logging/security.

switch007 4y ago

Mullvad

panick21_ 4y ago

Mullvad is mostly liked by everybody. Including me.

bilekas 4y ago
Mullvad is a great example of how all VPN companies who promote privacy should behave, if only for the signup process itself. Zero personal information required.

gjsman-1000 4y ago

Take a look at Mullvad for a VPN done right. Completely anonymous usernames, randomly generated, accepts cryptocurrency or cards purchased anonymously at a physical store with cash. One concerning issue is the Swedish jurisdiction. The nordic countries are better at privacy, but Sweden is a 14-eyes nation. But I can't say it's better or worse than NordVPN's... Panama.

capableweb 4y ago
Or if you wanna pay by cash, just send it to them in an envelope. No need to buy a card first then using that, when you can pay by the alternative that gives you the most privacy.
antihero 4y ago
As long as people still realise that regardless of whether they pay with cash in an envelope or directions to the end of a rainbow, if they connect with their own IP to mullvad’s servers and there’s some compromise of these promises (court order, etc), it’s trivial to be owned.

acatton 4y ago

I am not related to them, I'm just a user of it. But Mullvad.net is the only decent VPN. (They're the one Mozilla chose to provide their VPN infrastructure) They've been audited https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2022/6/22/vpn-server-audit-found-no-information-leakage-or-logging-of-customer-data/ https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2022/6/22/vpn-server-audit-found... I have no financial incentive to vouch for them. But what do you care, I'm just a random guy on the internet.

gjsman-1000 4y ago
Never forget though, Auditing is only proof that it was secure at the moment of the audit. That applies to all VPNs and services.
- acatton 4y ago
  That's true. Good point.
- jakear 4y ago
  Rather, auditing is only proof that the parts the auditors looked at were secure against what the the auditors knew to look for, at the moment of the audit.
- latchkey 4y ago
  Auditing might not even cover the entire codebase. For example, this is the writeup of the DeFi Euler hack yesterday by one of the sites listed auditors, who didn't actually audit the code that caused the bug... https://medium.com/@omniscia.io/euler-finance-incident-post-mortem-1ce077c28454 https://medium.com/@omniscia.io/euler-finance-incident-post-...
maxloh 4y ago
How about ProtonVPN?
- ashirviskas 4y ago
  Same company (no matter how hard they try to hide it), so unless it has better pricing or features, if you don't trust Nord, there's no reason you should trust Proton. Though I do trust both, as Tesonet is based from here (Lithuania) and from my experiences with people who worked there, they have full trust in them and continue to use their services years after leaving the company.

CommitSyn 4y ago

Perfect Privacy. VPN chaining, setting so your IP address always changes to be the one closest to the server, no logs (audited), stored in ramdisk, unlimited connections and bandwidth because they don't even know who's connecting. Cons: it can be slow and have issues with disconnects sometimes.

hannob 4y ago
Perfect privacy was at least in the past run by austrian neonazis: https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2012-09/neonazi-website-admin-robert-m/komplettansicht https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2012-09/neona...
- bjoli 4y ago
  They do have reasons to stay private though, you must give them that.
- CommitSyn 4y ago
  I didn't know that, but it almost makes me trust their service more. While I don't share their views, I do think technologically capable extremists are probably who I'd most want behind a service that I use as a layer for anonymity and privacy from everyone including government agencies.

DeathArrow 4y ago

One that is not from my country or the political alliance my country is in.

dreen 4y ago

I set up my own VPN with https://github.com/trailofbits/algo https://github.com/trailofbits/algo Hosted on DigitalOcean and the setup was completely automatic, it deletes its own access after its done. Note you're still beholden to ToS of your host, but tbh they don't seem to care no matter what I do with it. I know it from here.

Nadya 4y ago

None of them. No really read that again: None. Of. Them. https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29 https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29 Especially not after Kape Technology bought up review sites and VPNs and updated reviews to shill the ones they own. Kape Technologies was formerly known as Crossrider before it was acquired by Teddy Sagi, an Israeli billionaire that has spent time in jail for insider trading. Crossrider itself never had that great a reputation itself, what with their primary product being a development platform through which they were frequently used by third parties to invade ad platforms to serve up malware. They are now the owners of ExpressVPN, PIA, CyberGhost, and Zenmate. https://restoreprivacy.com/kape-technologies-owns-expressvpn-cyberghost-pia-zenmate-vpn-review-sites/ https://restoreprivacy.com/kape-technologies-owns-expressvpn... And then j2 global owns a bunch of others. https://www.techradar.com/news/pc-mag-owner-j2-global-buys-sixth-vpn-provider https://www.techradar.com/news/pc-mag-owner-j2-global-buys-s... I'm 99% sure every VPN on the market is a honeypot or data broker at this point.

dirtyaura 4y ago

Freedome VPN by F-Secure

seized 4y ago

Mullvad is excellent. No email required, all sorts of payment options including cash in an envelope. Can even get gift cards now.

jacooper 4y ago

ProtonVPN

reqqqles 4y ago

I use AzireVPN because they were one of the first providers to support the WireGuard protocol. https://www.azirevpn.com/ https://www.azirevpn.com/

metadaemon 4y ago

+1 for Mullvad, I usually only buy time when I'm traveling to secure my traffic in airports/hotels/etc

dhaavi 4y ago

If you're up to trying something new, we've built a technology to replace consumer privacy VPNs: https://safing.io/spn/ https://safing.io/spn/ Technical summary of the SPN (Safing Privacy Network): - A Privacy Network aimed at use cases "between" VPN and Tor. - Uses onion encryption over multiple hops just like Tor. - Routes are chosen to cover most distance within the network to increase privacy. - Exits are chosen near the destination server. This automatically geo-unblocks in many cases. - Exclude apps and domains/entities from using SPN. - Change routing algorithm and focus per app. - Nodes are hosted by Safing (company behind Portmaster) and the community. - Speeds are pretty decent (>100MBit/s).

LoganDark 4y ago
Just so everyone knows: only Safing hosts exit nodes. Only relays (the intermediate hops) can come from the community.
- dhaavi 4y ago
  Thanks for providing additional information to readers. However, this is not entirely correct. Let me clarify: - Community nodes are used to diversify server ownership and strengthen the privacy of connections. - Community nodes may technically act as entry, middle and/or exit nodes. - Community nodes will never be used for unencrypted connections, only for encrypted connections. We are thinking about a concept of trusted partners, which will also be allowed to handle unencrypted connections - but this is currently not the case. - We publish advisories [0], which are automatically applied by all clients. This gives us the ability to quickly react to changing situations. Currently, community nodes _are_ being selected as exit nodes, but not as entry nodes. I hope this cleared things up. I am happy to go into more detail. [0] https://github.com/safing/intel-data/blob/master/spn/main-intel.yaml#L180-L182 https://github.com/safing/intel-data/blob/master/spn/main-in...

lucideer 4y ago

A tonne of people here recommending Mullvad, which is great - they're great - but they don't offer the main selling point of most VPNs, so I feel this question needs qualification: What are you looking for a VPN for. As much as the ads misrepresent the security & privacy aspects of NordVPN, &c., the vast majority of people use VPNs to watch region-restricted media. Mullvad does not support this. So ... who's the best provider for watching region-restricted media? NordVPN honestly seems like a very competitive option here