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There are only three good ones, in no particular order:
- IVPN
- Mullvad
- Proton
Any other VPN used is a mistake.
Centralization and monoculture is a mistake.
I’ve used AirVPN for over a year now. No complaints. Mullvad stopped port forwarding so had to swap. Recently moved email to proton so might move VPN over soon too.
There’s a reason why I didn’t mention Air instead of those three I named:
- All three I named are the following:
- Free Software (libreware, despite being SaaS)
- Outside 5-Eyes and 9-Eyes
- AES-256
- Audited
So which one of these criterias are not met by AirVPN?
It isn’t Free Software from what I took a look at.
What isn’t free software…?
I think you should make it clear if you are talking about VPN services or client-side apps here. If they provide normal standard protocols like Wireguard and OpenVPN, they can be used without having to install any provider-specific apps.
Regardless of provider it’s generally preferred to use third-party software to connect. VPN providers that don’t even have their own apps don’t qualify as good for you either?
Demanding the whole stack be FLOSS is a bit silly in this context. None of the ones you mentioned open-source most of their backend systems either AFAIK.
I think you should do your homework better before you speak so widely and absolutely dismissively with such claim of authority. It is not helpful.
- All three I named are the following:
I think it’s good idea to not put all your eggs in one basket, so having a different vpn provider from your email would be safer. Up to you though.
This is something else that crossed my mind. Not like the $20 a year or whatever is going to break my bank paying separately…
AzireVPN is the best in my opinion
I’ve never heard about it. I just took a look, and it’s from the Malwarebytes guys. My issue with it is that it’s proprietary, save for a lone BASH script that happened to be under GPL-2.0, which allows for tivoization.
They’re Swedish, but the company was bought by Malwarebytes later on
What piece of software are you talking about ?
Azire in particular.
What piece of software are you talking about ?
Azire in particular.
Azire what? They’re a Wireguard VPN provider with a web portal.
I guess same confusion as here: https://discuss.tchncs.de/comment/23696262
You give the impression that you are talking about the VPNs when you are actually talking about smartphone apps…?
It’s also worth noting that Proton is the only one with port forwarding.
Make sure to opt-out of analytics and telemetry with Proton. Mullvad and iVPN are solid though.
I’ve always been a little chicken to dig deeper myself since I don’t own any crypto or anything of the sort nor am I willing to link my bank details to it, but anybody know anything about Cryptostorm VPN? I only know about it from stumbling across it on one of those Hidden Wiki type onion sites.
I also found another one I’m probably a little wary of, called Njalla VPN, from some supposedly privacy focused domain name registrar, Njalla, supposedly out of Costa Rica according to their onion site.
I doubt either are all that private, but I have no way to confirm or deny that.
In case it swings your judgement either way, Njalla is run by one of the three Piratebay founders.
As someone who is new to VPNs for privacy - Could I combine let’s say Mullvad with a VPN-based ad blocker on Android, e.g. RethinkDNS or AdAway?
Mullvad has an option in the settings to enable their own DNS filters.
One thing to keep in mind as new is that “VPN” is a technical term with pretty clear meaning among the technical people but it has a very fuzzy meaning in marketing and branding. Referring here to “VPN apps” that may just be a local DNS relay (ie: it will only tunnel and filter your DNS requests; all your actual traffic still goes through your normal connection as clear as always). Oftentimes, it’s what we would call a proxy. Android has not at all helped here.
In either case, yes, you can usually chain things. What if any benefits you get from that depends on both technical specifics (which protocols) and your circumstances and threat model.
For example, if we consider only Wireguard (one of the VPN protocols Mullvad offers).
No VPN/proxy: Your ISP sees everything
1 proxy: ISP sees that you are connecting to proxy but not what servers you’re actually talking to. VPN provider now sees everything instead.
2 proxies: Proxy A sees your encrypted traffic to Proxy B. Proxy B sees all your traffic but doesn’t know where you are.
3 proxies: Congratulations, you have manually built a shitty onion circuit (Tor works like this)
Mullvad has their own “multi-hop” feature which chains two Mullvad nodes but i have to question using that strictly for privacy reasons, considering it’s by the same provider and the ports make it predictable from the ISP.
Mullvad VPN works well on Android and has some DNS based ad blockers & content filters in the VPN app (though off by default iirc). Mullvad browser is not ported to Android.
That said, it’s important to understand that VPNs don’t provide privacy in any absolute sense. They can (maybe) obscure data about your browsing habits from your ISP. But they won’t stop all the other, more effective tracking exists nearly everywhere else on the web.
You can combine VPN and DNS-based ad blocking, usually. Mullvad has it’s own dns server with ad filter. However you can use any other.
I don’t think Android supports two different VPNs.
Proton includes an ad blocker built in
A buddy of mine loves PIA. I’ve only started looking around but any reason why I wouldn’t use PIA?
Acquired by a shady company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Internet_Access
Yep, Kape… an Israeli malware distributor.
Damnit, I’ve always loved PIA. Crap.
PIA is Israeli now (Kape Technologies, a malware distributor).
