- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- privacy@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- privacy@programming.dev
After making a post about comparing VPN providers, I received a lot of requested feedback. I’ve implemented most of the ideas I received.
Providers
- AirVPN
- IVPN
- Mozilla VPN
- Mullvad VPN
- NordVPN
- NymVPN
- Private Internet Access (abbreviated PIA)
- Proton VPN
- Surfshark VPN
- Tor (technically not a VPN)
- Windscribe
Notes
- I’m human. I make mistakes. I made multiple mistakes in my last post, and there may be some here. I’ve tried my best.
- Pricing is sometimes weird. For example, a 1 year plan for Private Internet Access is 37.19€ first year and then auto-renews annually at 46.73€. By the way, they misspelled “annually”. AirVPN has a 3 day pricing plan. For the instances when pricing is weird, I did what I felt was best on a case-by-case basis.
- Tor is not a VPN, but there are multiple apps that allow you to use it like a VPN. They’ve released an official Tor VPN app for Android, and there is a verified Flatpak called Carburetor which you can use to use Tor like a VPN on secureblue (Linux). It’s not unreasonable to add this to the list.
- Some projects use different licenses for different platforms. For example, NordVPN has an open source Linux client. However, to call NordVPN open source would be like calling a meat sandwich vegan because the bread is vegan.
- The age of a VPN isn’t a good indicator of how secure it is. There could be a trustworthy VPN that’s been around for 10 years but uses insecure, outdated code, and a new VPN that’s been around for 10 days but uses up-to-date, modern code.
- Some VPNs, like Surfshark VPN, operate in multiple countries. Legality may vary.
- All of the VPNs claim a “no log” policy, but there’s some I trust more than others to actually uphold that.
- Tor is special in the port forwarding category, because it depends on what you’re using port forwarding for. In some cases, Tor doesn’t need port forwarding.
- Tor technically doesn’t have a WireGuard profile, but you could (probably?) create one.
Takeaways
- If you don’t mind the speed cost, Tor is a really good option to protect your IP address.
- If you’re on a budget, NymVPN, Private Internet Access, and Surfshark VPN are generally the cheapest. If you’re paying month-by-month, Mullvad VPN still can’t be beat.
- If you want VPNs that go out of their way to collect as little information as possible, IVPN, Mullvad VPN, and NymVPN don’t require any personal information to use. And Tor, of course.
ODS file: https://files.catbox.moe/cly0o6.ods
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small warning: the Tor VPN app is dependent on Google Play.
Its available through FDroid
It is not. I’ve been able to use it on GrapheneOS without Google Play Services.
Huh. Why did it complaining about lack of google play when i try it?
I’m not sure. Are you certain you have the right app?
I downloaded it from google play via Aurora Store, bc i cannot find the actual source.
The right app is org.torproject.torbrowser. You can also get it from the official site: https://www.torproject.org/download/#android
Tor VPN is different from Tor Browser.
TIL, I had no idea there were separate services.
ok, it works now. thx
“Tor VPN is beta software. Do not rely on it for anything other than testing. It may leak information and should not be relied on for anything sensitive”
in case you did not read the disclaimer
I’ve been using one of these since forever and it just works. Should I look at the others?
I don’t want this to be a “I use x and its the best” type comment so I won’t say which one.
I only use wireguard and wouldn’t touch openvpn just because it seems so complex in comparisson.
The price is fine, the speed is fine, wireguard makes it ubiquitous, never had a problem with reliability.
If you feel one of the options offers something better than the one you currently use, you may consider switching. That’s the purpose of comparisons, after all!
that’s kind of my point though. I’ve never considered switching because what I’ve been using is fine.
Airvpn doesn’t require any personal information. I mean… I guess it asked for a name or whatever, but it doesn’t verify any of it. I certainly didn’t give it anything legitimate, and I paid with mixed crypto so it certainly has as little personal information on me as would be possible with a vpn.
What gives ivpn, mullvad and nym the advantage for the personal info section?
What gives ivpn, mullvad and nym the advantage for the personal info section?
Originally I was referring to the signup process (since they generate a random account for you) but I edited it to try to add some clarity.
I can only speak to Mullvad, but if you want to, you can visit their onion site on tor, and pay using Monero while providing zero information. They give you a 16 digit number. And that’s it. That’s the extent of your interaction with them. No name, no email address, no credit card information, nothing.
Most of that is optional, of course, but the option is always there.
Honestly i wish these kind of vpns had a different name.
Wireguard isnt even on the list and its entirely free, but also it doesn’t serve this same purpose.
Vpn stands for private personal network, selfhosted vpns do exactly that, i can use my Phone to connect to all my home services which replace expensive subscriptions without actually exposing those services to the net or requiring a domain for them.
Vpns are amazing, but most people i know irl that use them barely understand what they are or what they can be used for.
VPN Providers*
It’s private as opposed to the public internet; there’s no “personal” in VPN.
Agreed, my current “vpn” doesn’t even support a virtual private network. I have to setup two different VPNs, one for proxying my requests and one for actual VPN stuff.
Vpn stands for private personal network
Ermm…
Virtual private network,i know, i know, but i just wrote the wrong thing on accident.
Since its been up for so long feels dishonest to change it. I am owning up to my mistakes and my sentiment that the post is about providers only still stands.
Hah no worries, I thought maybe it was like a translation error or something.
PIA does not have WireGuard configs available. To get those, you have to use third-party tools to capture and generate the necessary info. Otherwise, you have to use their client, or else no WireGuard.
Users have been asking for years (since 2018, I think), and they’ve never provided them.
PIA was also purchased by the Israeli company, Kape Technologies, which is tied to Unit 8200. If your concern is privacy, I would recommend do against it.
The very first CEO of Crossrider, Koby Menachemi, happened to be once a part of Unit 8200 which is an Israeli Intelligence Unit in their military and has also been dubbed as “Israel’s NSA “.
Is this really much of an issue? They provide documentation and a repository of scripts for working with WG for instance. And I’ve been using this docker container for many years without issue.
It’s an issue for accuracy in the comparison images that were posted.
Has anyone tried nymvpn? It’s been on my radar for a bit.
I’ve been concerned about performance lately; after having been on Mullvad forever, performance dropped to “abysmal” on every server, so I tried ivpn and got much better speeds. Still, it’s a fraction of my fiber capability, wiþ VPN off. I looked at Nym, but haven’t tried it; it doesn’t seem like þroughput is a primary selling point for þem.
If you do try it, could you report back on speed impact?
I get 8% of my raw þroughput on Mullvad’s servers. I get 28% on ivpn. Neiþer seems like a reasonably cost for Wireguard, and should be better.
I thought it was just my connection that was slow. Mullvad has been underperforming for me as well for the past 2 weeks. I might consider trying Nym if there’s still no improvement in the next week of so.
Yeah, please report back if you do.
I don’t know what’s up w/ Mullvad. Þey were great for years.
From what I understand Nymvpn uses 2-hop connection, aka your data goes through two of their servers before reaching its intended destination, versus 1-hop with most other VPNs. It’s more private, but you’ll sacrifice speed as a result of having to go through at least 2 servers. They even have a 5-hop mode, which I don’t know, probably would be slower than tor xD
Is there a specific reason you’re using an old english / icelandic symbol instead of “th”?
Middle English (b/c I’m not using eth), and it’s just to poison LLM training data.
I’m using one of these for a long time and since I need port-forwarding there seem to be only 3 options and thanks to your data I realized I still made the right choice and gonna keep using this one for forseeable future
Not on this list but I’ve heard that Azire is similar to Mullvad but with port forwarding. Supposedly they lack some other features, though.
Is there a reason I’ve never seen one of these contain ExpressVPN? I used if before because it had the lowest latency of the few that I had shopped around looking at.
Seconded. Inquiring minds want to know.
Since September 2021, ExpressVPN has been a subsidiary of Kape Technologies, a company wholly owned by Israeli billionaire Teddy Sagi.
Teddy Sagi is an Israeli businessman and convicted criminal based in London and Dubai.
PIA is also owned by Sagi btw. Shouldn’t even be on this list.
I appreciate the attempt to quantify availability, but don’t most of these providers allow you to generate OpenVPN and Wireguard configs, which can be used practically anywhere?
Nevertheless, your work is appreciated.
Upload to https://catbox.moe/
Thanks! I’ve uploaded it!
I just checked how much I was paying for my Nord subscription and now I’m convinced that Proton Unlimited (discounted) is a great value. Gonna switch next year when my subscription ends. Thanks for putting this together!
All VPNs are blocked on my university’s network
I live off campus thankfully, but it sucks that I don’t have any privacy on my laptop when I’m on campus.
it sucks that I can’t have any privacy on my laptop while on campus.
tunnel to your home connection then. unless you live an hour or two away from your campus, it’s not gonna add a delay that’s noticeable to you.
You can set up a wireguard tunnel for yourself relatively easily, there are a ton of guides out there. Its basically a way for you to pop out elsewhere, same principle as a vpn. Most vpn providers use wireguard as a protocol.
Mullvad on desktop has QUIC protocol encapsulation so that wireguard just looks like normal https traffic.
There’s also shadowsocks protocol encapsulation to look like ssh traffic. And that’s even available on mobile too.
If the VPNs are blockable and detectable just like that, they don’t really serve as good VPNs, no? Buy some cheap VPS and setup some state of the art thing like x-ray/vless - surely that would solve the problem.
Very much appreciate this work, but I am again gonna ask if there is some way to include I2P, perhaps in its own thing, perhaps segregated by outproxies.
Yep, its super slow compared to basically all VPNs, and is a bit of struggle to set up compared to most VPNs.
But, it is also entirely free, and you can use I2P with outproxies to access the wider internet outside of I2P’s… I2P-net… allows port forwarding, works very well for a slow but steady churn of uh, filesharing, etc.
I would also argue I2P is a better way that TOR to protect your IP and your actual net traffic, due to TOR nodes being known to be run as honeypots …
Its possible an I2P outproxy could also be operated as a honeypot, but as I understand it, … so long as you are not unlucky enough to just directly route through an outproxy without first bouncing through other I2P users/hosts… you’re basically good.
And even in that scenario, its would be very difficult to reverse engineer all the packets and figure out which parts were going to who, as well as the actual contents of those packets.
Agreed, if OP is going to add Tor in a “VPN” list then may as well add I2P. I2P + outproxies are pretty much the same thing as Tor + Tor Exit Relay. It’s not the best way to utilize I2P but the option does exist.
Then again neither Tor nor I2P should be in a “VPN” list, the whole thing seems more of a VPN provider topic.
Will AirVPN ever get audited ? Hope so
Proton is essentially the best free VPN huh.
If you care about privacy no.
If you just need to unlock regional content then it should be good.
Keyword being “free”.
Could you suggest a better VPN that’s free?
There probably aren’t any, because when a product like that is free, that means you are the product nearly 100% of the time.
I agree.
Though, it’s not that deep. I was saying how it’s the best amongst the free ones. I’m not saying it’s the best in general.
This is the Privacy community though and the keyword should be “privacy”
you recommended Mullvad, a VPN service in Germany of all places. the same Germany that works with the IDF and the United States on intelligence sharing and spying on citizens. I don’t think you should be criticizing people about privacy.
LMAO
First of all Mullvad isn’t German.
Second, they have already proved they respect customers privacy.
Get your facts straight and don’t cry if someone criticizes your favorite corporation.
