I know there are plenty of software missing from here. This is just a fun infographic I made, no need to take it seriously :)

  • The 8232 Project@lemmy.mlOP
    22·
    24 hours ago

    Proton VPN and Mullvad VPN are both open source, meaning their code can be publicly audited to make sure they’re upholding their standards of privacy and security. Furthermore, Proton VPN offers a free tier. These are the main 2 reasons. NordVPN only protects your privacy against other websites, not NordVPN themselves. Hope this helps! Let me know if you want more details.

    Edit: Mullvad VPN can also be paid for in cash/Monero, and they don’t ask for any personal information to use it (not even a username!)

    • unixcat@lemmy.world
      13·
      22 hours ago

      Being open source doesn’t uphold a lot of standards of privacy and security for VPNs. It’s not useless, but the most common worry about VPNs is traffic logging, and open source apps do nothing to prevent this since it’s server side. ProtonVPN and Mullvad VPN don’t protect from themselves, and they can keep logs. The reason they’re commonly recommended is that they’re more trusted in the privacy community in general. Obscura VPN and Nym VPN do mostly protect from themselves because they’re a two-hop VPN. In the case of Obscura VPN, it’s a first hop through their servers, and a second hop through Mullvad’s. So to associate your traffic with your IP address, Obscura and Mullvad would need to cooperate, which is quite a bit less likely than a single VPN operator logging user traffic.