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.

  • AlecSadler@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    15 days ago

    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.

    • /home/pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      15 days ago

      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

      • AlecSadler@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        14 days ago

        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.

        • /home/pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          14 days ago

          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.

  • Clark@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    11 days ago

    Why don’t you use a decentralized VPN like NymVPN? It’s impossible for the company or anyone to take logs because your traffic is routed over several nodes. It’s like Tor but also adds noise to data and harder to deanonymize

  • Lancer@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    14 days ago

    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.

  • Zoma@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    13 days ago

    I like mullvad i use their dns filtering and their socks5 proxies however it does lack port forwarding so it sucks for torrenting.

  • bl4kers@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    15 days ago

    Moved from Proton to Mullvad to Windscribe

    Proton kept getting worse and is moving towards a walled garden.

    Mullvad seemed great on the private payment front. Their apps are pretty solid. The device limit was too low for me. For 6-10 devices the price doubles.

    Windscribe won me over with their build a plan option. Their apps aren’t the most visually appealing but get the job done.

      • bl4kers@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        15 days ago

        A la carte pricing has gone out the window in favor of bundles. This enables the same subsidization model of business used by Apple, Google, etc. Even when you pay, they display ads and reminders to get you to upgrade to higher tiers. Drive launched in beta only for paid users. Drive now encourages the use of their proprietary document format. They hand out storage bonuses for each year of membership. That’s not a sustainable long-term practice and purposefully creates stickiness. Generally speaking, they don’t have easy export tools, so they’re not very interoperable. Forwarding emails sent to @proton.me or @protonmail.com addresses to a new inbox is not possible unless you’re a paying customer, which makes switching more difficult.

  • pathief@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    14 days ago

    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.

  • Ardens@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    15 days ago

    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.

    • Sarothazrom@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      15 days ago

      Under no circumstance does that mean it is not worth getting one. Particularly dependent on where one lives.

        • Kushan@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          15 days ago

          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.

          • Ardens@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            0
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            14 days ago

            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.

            • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              13 days ago

              A dumb take is, to pay for something you might get nothing from.

              You just described every form of insurance.

              • Ardens@lemmy.ml
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                0
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                13 days ago

                To you, maybe… I’m sorry to hear that your insurances isn’t working for you.

                What I described might be taken as me describing an insurance, that you totally foil, without knowing it, because you didn’t read the policy, and you don’t know what it covers and doesn’t cover.

                • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  13 days ago

                  If everyone always got payouts for the insurance they pay into, the industry literally could not exist.

                  It’s the entire business model.

            • Kushan@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              14 days ago

              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.

              • Ardens@lemmy.ml
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                0
                ·
                14 days ago

                Do take the time to read the comments, so you get the context.

                As I already said, if you don’t know how to keep your usage of the internet private, then you will not be private with a VPN either. VPN doesn’t keep you private. It will help you to attain a little more privacy, but only is you use it right.

                Please don’t tell me what I am focusing on, when I haven’t even said it… Making straw man arguments is low. Lying is low…

                • Kushan@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  0
                  ·
                  13 days ago

                  Please don’t tell me what I am focusing on, when I haven’t even said it

                  I literally quoted you, so don’t try playing the “I never actually said that” card.

                  It’s ironic that you’re now complaining about context and strawmen when you yourself started it with the whole “anyone who wants to know who you are…” argument. This mysterious “anyone” is the ultimate strawman because they’re anonymous and all encompassing. Meanwhile, you have zero idea what anyone wants from their VPN’s so you’re making the broad, sweeping statements while lacking any context yourself.

    • utopiah@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      15 days ago

      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.

      • Ardens@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        15 days ago

        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.

          • Ardens@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            0
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            14 days ago

            I always keep my secrets. :-)

            I have also linked to a couple of articles that touch on what I’m talking about…

            • Eager Eagle@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              14 days ago

              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.

              • Ardens@lemmy.ml
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                0
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                14 days ago

                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. ;-)

  • 1984@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    14 days ago

    I dont use the well known ones, seems to me that those would be the first to have backdoors since people pick them.

    I have a vpn that is never mentioned anywhere. Perfect.