I’m thinking about paying for a VPN, I currently don’t use one.
I’d like to use Mullvad but they don’t seem to have regional prices, while Proton does.
I wonder if Proton is still a reliable option, Proton is 60% cheaper in my country, probably because regional pricing (but I didn’t check if it’s really the case).
If anyone has any other suggestion I’d like to hear it.
Proton had a Black Friday sale and that’s the reason it prevailed over Mulvad. Every penny matters when you’re a pensioner.
I would recommend mullvad.
the ceo of proton did idicate support of the trump and the republican party and while they backtracked and apologized and all that, is it out that atleast some in the company think like that and i dont trust them anymore.
and trust is number 1 priority for vpn.
I used to have Mullvad and switched to Proton because I use pretty much their entire suite…
If you don’t need port forwarding, I think Mullvad is superior in everything. Such a great service, highly recommend it.
There’s Port Forwarding with Proton VPN too
In the paid plan
Both options are good. I think for the most part it boils down to wanting a single product or suite of products.
While you certainly can get just one proton service, the idea of having an easy entry point into multiple privacy focused solutions is what they are going for.
The pro argument for that is cheaper overall, simpler to get into and mange, etc. The con argument is an eggs in one basket philosophy isn’t ideal because you can have a single point of failure. This is all subjective to your personal threat model.
Mullvad because it accepts cash payments.
FYI, Proton also accepts cash.
I personally prefer the Mullvad client since, at least on MacOS, it allows you to exclude specific apps from the VPN, while the ProtonVPN client does not! I still use ProtonVPN instead though, since it’s also significantly cheaper for me.
Mullvad is more private but Proton VPN still supports port forwarding.
What about AirVPN? I haven’t chosen any VPNs yet, mostly because I’m still not sure which to go with, but I never see anyone talk about Air, even though I once heard Proton or Air were the best choices.
Proton mail has an alias feature that I rather enjoy. Does anyone know an alternative service for that. I was looking to leave the proton ecosystem. Switching to mullvad is easy enough for vpn but im also looking at email etc.
i too miss the alias service, and i dont really know an alternative aswell.
The issue is kinda, that any alias service is basically just forwarding your mails … so it is really hard to trust anyone with that
and a private domain is not really a solution, for privacy
and like tuta does offer 15 or 30 (but 30 is super expensive) permanent aliases… which is like nice but does fill up super quickly if used like how it is used for proton
Mullvad.
All you are to them is an account number. that’s it. no name, no email, nothing. you can even pay in cash. while mullvad’s GUI is still meh their CLI is top notch and very quick.
Proton’s CEO sucks. I canceled my extremely low-priced, grandfathered subscription and moved elsewhere. I had been a user since basically day one, a subscriber since available, and converted family members and friends to it. Not anymore.
Mullvad has been stellar. Fast, anonymous, easy to use. Zero complaints.
Damn, I couldn’t let go of my extremely-low priced grandfathered subscription. I contemplated about it and getting both mullvad and tuta but it ads up more than what I pay proton.
Also, I believe proton ceo apologized or something like that
The apology kind of felt like a “sorry you’re offended”.
I don’t fault anyone for staying but I definitely don’t champion them anymore. I did move to Tuta as well and it is far from as seamless of an experience - it does everything I need (including domain aliases), but it was much less intuitive to configure. The system is way slower with search (it doesn’t index anything for privacy reasons) and in similar vein the mobile app only syncs something when opened. So you’ll get a notification for a new email but when you open it doesn’t load for 2-8 seconds.
I get it all somewhat because they’re only syncing what’s needed at any point in time and decrypting it or whatever, but it does feel janky.
I read this article and it certainly is something to consider.
It talks about how Andy Yen was just pointing out how under Trump’s first admin, they started to actually attack big tech when dems haven’t done anything. Which is true. He praises Gail Slater and Lina Khan (but Lina Khan was recently fired…sooooo).
They clarified how the andy1011000 (andy88) username probably is more about how Andy’s birthday was in 1988 and 88 is a lucky number in Taiwan, unlikely that he’s a white supremacist.
They also traced the money of Proton’s donations and none of the organizations were republican, and pretty much all of the donations align with the practices of Democrat donors.
Andy has a history of posting online supporting Ukraine, being against xenophobia, against racism, supporting women in tech, supporting refugees receive education in Switzerland.
When the Democrat party had proposals for regulatory efforts, Andy supported them.
https://proton.me/blog/congress-antitrust-report
He even made a tweet and blog post talking about the tech surveillance underneath the Trump administration and how people should fear it.
So it seems to be that Andy is more liberal when donating money and publicly acknowledge whoever is in support of anti-trust and anti-surveillance to me.
If it’s the goal of Proton to seem neutral, then they maybe did it a little too well. They convinced people that Andy is a full on fascist when in reality, he seems better than democrat politicians we have nowadays.
Then why did they take the comments to double and triple and quadruple down after the initial issue?
Unlike Ladybird, which is undeniably shit - I won’t judge someone for using Proton. I realize people’s takeaways from the situation are different. I’ve been fine without it.
Why are you hating on Ladybird when its not even in alpha stage?
Yeah, all the Proton hate we’re seeing are overreactions. But life is easier when you can see everything as black and white when things are actually more nuanced.
From what I gather these are about the IP Logging, deanonymizing user, and having accounts on temporary suspension.
You could search it why on your own or even read the articles you just cited but basically.
- Apparently the user broke swiss law and “Proton must comply with Swiss law. As soon as a crime is committed, privacy protections can be suspended”. However, if the user used VPN, they could’ve gotten away with this tbh. Emails are encrypted so the only thing they got going for them was the IP address, and that was the weak point.
- For the deanonymized user, their recovery email was an iCloud email. You don’t need to use a recovery email, it’s an option that the user chose.
- Proton received an alert from CERT, saying that these users were linked to a North Korean APT group. But they couldn’t verify (as they can’t read encrypted emails), so they did the safe thing and temporary suspended them until they receiver further confirmation.
It seems everything they did was to comply with the laws and 2 of these situations could’ve been easily avoided by the user. The third case just put their accounts in suspension for some further review.
I like mullvad because I can pay for it with vouchers and have nothing to tie my payment to my account#
I don’t think any other VPN can do that.
Theres also the fact that mullvad was raided by the (Swedish)police and even though they fully complied, the police ended up walking away with nothing because mullvad had nothing to give them.
Proton on the other hand, will at the very least be storing your email, payment info, and possibly other info in your account that mullvad won’t. I also don’t like how they have aligned themselves with conservative politics.
You can also pay with cash in an envelope
I chose Mullvad because they don’t ask for any personal details and you can pay anonymously, which means that their service is privacy protecting by design. You don’t have to rely so much on trust.
Proton seems to be a large and rapidly expanding company which looks like it’s trying to be a more privacy respecting competitor to Google’s many services. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, I prefer companies that value stability over rapid expansion. I also don’t like relying on a potential single point of failure for everything. I have a Proton e-mail account but I don’t use any of their other services because I don’t want everything in the same place.
I use Proton VPN only because I use Proton everything else. If not, I’d probably consider Mullvad. But I’m in the US and regional pricing doesn’t apply.
Same. Use Proton to get the suite of tools for 1 price. Mullvad if you just need a VPN.
It’s kind of sad, that people still believe that VPN is a safe option. Sure, it ads a layer, but anyone who wants to know who you are, can find out by your fingerprints, your accounts, anything you put out there. So if you do anything but light surfing, then you are not anonymous with VPN.
people still believe that VPN is a safe option
What does that sentence even mean without context?
Safe against whom? I’m pretty convinced a VPN is safe against :
- your boss or manager if you somehow browse on your corporate network
- your flatmates or family member if you browse at home and do not necessary trust them or whomever setup the router
- your school
- the manager of the cafe you are using WiFi on
I’m pretty convinced might be safe against larger scale surveillance :
- your ISP if it is not doing deep packet inspection (and that’s pretty much per country basis AFAICT)
I’m pretty convinced might NOT be safe against professional individual surveillance :
- state level professionals using exploits and actually knowing your name, not your nickname
- your VPN provider or the cloud provider you rely on to install the backend side of Wireguard or OpenVPN
So… no I don’t think anyone can make your VPN pointless. Clearly the random person sitting next to me in a cafe can not. Only few people with the technical expertise or power can do that. None of that matters though if you already volunteer your information elsewhere publicly on private platforms like Instagram or YouTube though.
You certainly are “pretty much”… :-)
So, what do you do, since you don’t trust your family? Seems pretty much suspect there… or pretty much paranoid.
You are not safe against any of those you mention. Don’t you know what VPN does, and does not?
You are pretty much NOT safe against large scale surveillance.
Thanks for backing me up, with the last thing you wrote. And then please go read up on what VPN actually does, and does not.
alright then, keep your secrets
I always keep my secrets. :-)
I have also linked to a couple of articles that touch on what I’m talking about…
You were given a list of scenarios above that list where vpns are useful. It seems you’re the one who don’t know what you’re talking about.
I was given a list where someone thought it would be useful… Now go read up on VPN, and you’ll see why that list was a “pretty much” wrong. ;-)
I think you are the one thst does not get what it does.
Under no circumstance does that mean it is not worth getting one. Particularly dependent on where one lives.
It certainly does - if you don’t know how to actually use it in a proper way, because then it becomes totally meaningless to even have VPN… No matter where you live. Please read up on what it does and does not!
https://www.pcmag.com/explainers/7-dangerous-vpn-myths-you-probably-believe
https://www.tomsguide.com/features/are-you-really-invisible-when-you-use-a-vpn
Yes locks on your door are pointless because if someone wants to break into your house they’re going to do it once way or another, especially if you leave the window open
This is a dumb take.
You are right, your take is really dumb. So why do you share it?
A dumb take is, to pay for something you might get nothing from. But hey, you do you… VPN-providers are happy for people like you.
A dumb take is, to pay for something you might get nothing from
And which VPN provider is it you’re getting “nothing” from? There seems to be a budding market for VPN’s out there, lots of people are paying for them and continue to do so, why do you think that is? Because the whole world is stupid and it’s a pointless waste of money? Or because they are actually in fact getting some kind of use from them?
VPN’s have a myriad of uses, you’re focusing on some ambiguous nation-state attacker tracking you down for whatever reason. Meanwhile, quite a lot of users would just like to watch porn without having to submit ID. I’d say they’re getting plenty of use out of their VPN for that.
Facebook got my precise location just using my IP, I decided to create a fake account to use FB market place, they warned me about an “unknown login”, it’s the first time I’ve seen this, usually websites only know approximate location, but this time just by knowing my IP they hit exactly the small town where I live, instead of near towns which is the normal. I suspect they had my IP from other devices allowing location in the same network (same wifi), then they could safely associate that IP with my exact location even tho I didn’t enable any GPS any time.
