I’ve used proton for a year or two now and it is fine. Great for use on my phone when I want to use public/airport wifi and it sort of kind of works with gluetun (the rotating port is annoying but it still is a forwarded port).
But I’ve increasingly been annoyed with Proton as a company and am looking to migrate my email/domain to fastmail in the very near future. I COULD continue to just pay for the vpn (60 USD a year is pretty reasonable) but also feel like this is a good opportunity to “shop around”
Checked the wiki and other FAQs (which all basically crib from said wiki) and they all basically boil down to proton or mullivad… except that mullivad apparently stopped allowing port forwarding which is a bit of an issue for any torrents and the like.
So are there any other good options?
Thanks
Why is NordVPN not mentioned ? I’m using it and happy so far. Should I switch to something else ?
Too much advertising, it just feels off.
No Port forwarding
I just want to mention that the forwarded port provided by the VPN must match the one configured in the torrent client. Buying a VPN which offers port forwarding is not enough.
Yeah it changes. I’m used to doing that in QBT
I think a safe assumption is that anyone that runs over half of their budget in ads can’t be trusted.
I have no opinion of them, but I’m curious why advertising would imply untrustworthiness. Are you saying they’re too eager or something? Spending money on ads is also consistent with a company that’s making money by charging for a service — I’d be more suspicious of free VPNs.
The number of leads youtube/podcast advertising generates is not that impressive, the number of leads that become buyers is even less impressive. When a company spends too much on this type of advertising for a product that is not “premium”(meaning overpriced shit), it casts a shadow of doubt on where they get their revenue.
My experience with products that lean so heavily into the sponsors is that they’re usually mediocre in terms of your overall choices. Basically, the ads kind of give me bad vibes. I admit, it’s not a rational judgment, but I won’t go out of my way to find out if NordVPN is actually good when there are alternatives.
If many people feel the same way, it may be evidence that sponsors are an outdated method of advertising.
It is more than a bit of a fallacy, but the general idea is that any product worth using will distinguish itself. Whereas the products that spend vast amounts of money on advertisement “can’t stand on their own”.
Like I said, it is a fallacy that insists companies should pull themselves up by their bootstraps and ignores the reality of the landscape these days.
THAT said: nordvpn goes REALLY hard on the advertisements and is still one of the more popular/few remaining big sponsors for podcasts and influencers. And THAT gives me pause because it has generally been shown that those are horrible venues for “getting a product out there” and mostly exist to take advantage of parasocial relationships. And, based on the linus media group leaks and corroboration from various twitch streamers, the big outfits are asking for a LOT of money per sponsorship spot.
And considering there is no way to really vet a VPN and you are inherently trusting them to do what they say they do (or do the good version of what they don’t even bother to talk about)…
You’d probably be surprised that the companies that spend the most money on advertising are the biggest and most successful companies on the planet.
if you care about privacy , yes, you should
Why ? Asking seriously because they got multiple certifications about their no-logs policy done by independent third parties.
Nord is Lithuanian.
What’s the relation with NordVPN ? Are other VPN providers I.e mullivad better ?
I’m guessing his/her point involves the location of its incorporation. Any company in the “five eyes” zone can be forced to release details about its users to any member state. One must evaluate whether NordVPN keeps anything more than a few hours - days tops - to decide if it is “safe enough”. I was worried enough about this particular point that I chose a VPN that is not in any way beholden to five eyes or the fourteen eyes, which is a similar agreement.
Proton caught heat because of its release of information to the local law enforcement recently. While Switzerland is not part of the five eyes, it does have its own laws requiring a reveal in certain circumstances. I forgot the details, but I think they had an IP address that had not yet been wiped from cache, and that was enough to pinpoint the hackers being sought.
In truth, there’s no sure way to be sure. One still must trust the organization is both honest and competent enough to properly wipe any residual information. No matter who it is, some amount of information has to be in cache for some time in order to be able to deliver the service, and there also needs something tracking the workings of the system to ensure it isn’t overloaded or to find opportunities to improve it.
What’s wrong with NordVPN?
Mostly misleading ads
Mullvad, IVPN and Nym for clearnet browsing. PIA, AirVPN and Windscribe for torrenting. Windscribe and PIA are probably good for either but this is my classification, take it as you will
I would not put Nym in the same category as Mullvad and IVPN. It is a new and immature product. I have not heard that they have passed any sort of audit, their claims about non-log policy have not been tested yet.
Their infrastructure is decentralized only in name. In fact, they have the same problem as session, the cost of maintaining a server discourages decentralization so much that no one does that. As a result it nullifies any advantages their mixnet might offer, as chances are all your hops are between the servers of the same owner.
Yes, Nym is new. Their mixnet has a lot of similarities with TOR.
What do you mean by “cost of maintaining a server”? I don’t think resource requirements are any different from TOR relays or exits.
It is possible in theory but I assumed they weren’t lying when they said over 800 nodes exist in their network.
Yeah maybe I should’ve put Nym as “of interest” rather than giving off the impression that it’s at the same level of reputation as Mullvad and IVPN
They do require to invest a certain amount of crypto to connect your node to blockchain. This in theory is done to prevent Sybil attacks.
Does TOR suffer from Sybil attacks? I admit I don’t know what that is, I’ll have to read about it
TOR by design is vulnerable to Sybil attacks. In fact, there have been attempts to exploit this vulnerability “in the field”. It is not clear how successful they were. There are some measures taken to prevent such attacks, but none of them guarantee safety. I2p and other p2p networks also suffer from the same problem.
In fact there is only one known way to mitigate Sybil (and alike) attacks. It is to expand the cost of operating in the network so much, that it would not be financially viable to perform it. There are two major way to achieve that: proof-of-work and proof-of-stake.
PoW is what majority of cryptocurrencies do. To operate in the network you need to perform significant calculations. The more calculations you perform the “stronger” your position is. For that you have to invest huge amount of money in hardware and energy to “outperform” other actors. That is what mining basically is.
PoS requires you instead to invest a crypto (or whatever, does not actually matter). The more crypto you invest “the bigger your ‘bank’ account is”, the “stronger” your position is as well. This is what nym and lokinet (technology behind session messenger) do.
PIA user here. It that’s the job done
I agree on this with the exception of PIA.
- Marketing is BS like most VPN
- Company is based in the USA
- They do analytics
- You cannot register “anonymously”
It’s not the worst VPN you could choose but there is better options.
Wait don’t they take crypto? Just fake your details
They also take your IP.
Over TOR?
Using VPN over TOR greatly reduces performance. Also, for most cases TOR is enough,. Why would you slap a VPN on top of it?
Ah I thought you meant during signup. I thought they were audited and provided proof that they don’t log anything? Is that fake?
They’ve been audited twice:
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/privacy-audit/
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/security-audit-2024/ (PDF)
If they were audited, I have not heard of that. In such case I am sorry for misinformation.
However their nature would require to audit every single node to prove a non-log policy. That is not possible for obvious reasons. Their idea is that you do not need to no if they have logs as this logs would be relatively useless. But that would only work if no one controls a huge chunk of their mixnet simultaneously.
Like every VPN company that operate their own entry nodes…
Great for use on my phone when I want to use public/airport wifi
If you just want the tunnel encryption you can try hosting a VPN on your own home network. It’s what I do since I don’t need to spoof my location.
You are asking in the piracy community so I’m assuming you’re also using it to torrent (which a home VPN won’t help with) but you didn’t specifiy so I’m not sure
I’d say the proven good ones are Proton, Mullvad, and IVPN.
Windscribe has really improved a lot and is worth considering. Still probably worth waiting for Freshscribe infrastructure before considering over the 3 I mentioned above.
Nym and Obscura are up and comers worth looking at. Nym is a decentralized VPN and Obscura has partnered with Mullvad to offer a true double hop (ie one in where both hops are not owned by the same entity).
Cryptostorm. Supports port forwarding, and you can buy access tokens through third parties using crypto. You do not register an account or provide them with any information to use the service, other than the token.
But honestly, Proton is the best route to go.
ProtonVPN has been a known data miner for years now. Cryptostorm’s admins do know what they’re doing. If you want an audit see mullvad or ipredator
Not a VPN, but you may also want to look into I2P.
https://proprivacy.com/privacy-service/guides/i2p-guide
https://youtube.com/watch?v=FNp0TRDG0BQ
Basically, a p2p protocol for the entire internet.
Its considerably more complicated to set up than most modern VPNs, where nowaday’s its usually as simple as install an app with a GUI, verify some settings and you’re good to go, and i2p is also quite slow…
… but its totally free, and you can torrent over it, and as far as I know, if you’ve set it up properly, it is basically undetectable by ISPs, due to how it uses ‘garlic’ routing: basically, a whole bunch of users net requests are encrypted, anonymized, and then smashed into a big packet… so an ISP would have to untangle all of that for every packet, and afaik, none of them have figured out how.
I2P would obviously be horrible for watching streaming content though, snail speed.
Just throwing in another voice for PIA. Their corporate owners may be questionable, but I’ve been with them since before they sold out and have never heard a peep from my ISP for seeding terabytes of torrents. They don’t keep logs, and they are audited to prove it regularly.
EDIT: They also have port forwarding, but not for every exit server.
PIA is such a weird one. They’re massive and know what they’re doing but ownership and jurisdiction have always been questionable. I have long suspected they cooperate with GHCQ but only on legitimate national security cases not piracy.
If you want port forwarding the choice is between AirVPN, ProtonVPN and Njalla. Iirc PIA also supports port forwarding, but their ownerships reputation is no good.
Mullvad, IVPN and many other services don’t support port forwarding.
Why do we care about their ownership if it’s proven that they don’t log and let you forward ports?
Given there’re alternatives I’d rather choose an independent service instead.
But that’s a personal decision which is why I mentioned PIA with the disclaimer, instead of ignoring them.
I get what you’re saying and I use proton despite the kerfuffle with their CEO, but where privacy is concerned yes I do care about the reputation of the company to an extent. To not care about that all would be very silly. Too much trust involved.
You’re right but if it’s something that sensitive I’d rather use TOR/I2P
I2P is not an option because I’m using a VPN for regular internet traffic. As much as I like the idea of I2P, there’s just no I2P torrent sites with the selection of content I want.
Tor is not an option choice for torrents.
I think PIA is decent for torrenting and Mullvad for privacy
That’s fine. It completely depends on your threat model and your preferences. To this date I haven’t heard anything negative about PIA except their owners, so it’s fair to trust them. I just want to point out that you can have both with other providers.
Generating a random account number is a unique and great feature of Mullvad.
But other providers allow for the same privacy. E.g. AirVPN does not require a valid email address. Any random string works for all required fields (email, username, password). Payment via Monero is available too. Njalla does require a valid email address (it sends a confirmation mail), but any tempmail provider works (which you could access through Tor). They also accept Monero.Impressive, I didn’t know AirVPN accepted XMR. That greatly influences my decision about them vs PIA and others. I wanted a VPN which I could pay for anonymously and could torrent with (open ports)
Use what works for you!
Do you have any experience with Njalla? This would be my first time purchasing a VPN and I couldn’t imagine a better provider on paper.
I just don’t know anything practical about it besides it’s founded by a member of the swedish pirate party.
I’ve never used them but I heard about them in the context of private DNS and VPS hosting. E.g. they act as a middleman to shield domain the shield the client from authorities (at least to some extent — they still have to follow the laws).
Given their focus on privacy I’d trust them for torrenting at least as much as the other options. As a first VPN I’d say it’s great because of their flat 5€/m price. A few years ago I used Mullvad for that purpose — until they removed port forwarding.
I’m with Azire, they have port forwarding and 10 gig servers. Note they were bought recently by malwarebytes, so it is possible things will change in the future. For the time being, things have been great. I moved from OVPN after myself and others started experiencing persistant failures.
I’ve been meaning to try out CryptoStorm. If anyone has experience with them please share.
I’ve used AirVPN for this exact setup and it works great. The port forwarding is static and doesn’t change once setup. I switched to proton because it was convenient, I was already paying for ProtonMail et all, so I dropped the extra VPN subscription when it renewed.
I’ll add another recommendation for Windscribe. I’ve had a lifetime subscription since 2017 and have never had issues. I use it for normal internet usage pretty much daily and the occasional torrenting.
Try Orbot. I use it and works pretty great.
If you plan to torrent with your vpn. Tor isn’t a good idea. If you use it just as A VPN it could be fine ig.
If you use it just as A VPN it could be fine ig.
If I’m not mistaken Orbot passes traffic through the Tor network which will significantly reduce network speeds.
Someone feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
Yes you are right. That is why I said it could be fine. I think most people will find it too slow. And also route all your phone traffic through tor isn’t a great idea neither because most services block Tor IP anyway.
AirVPN, IVPN, Mullvad, Windscribe
The requirement for port forwarding narrows that down to AirVPN and Windscribe, which is an unfortunately small set of choices.
What exactly does port forwarding do and why is it better for torrenting like I’ve heard? I’ve been using Mullvad for a couple of years now but if I could get faster torrent download speeds that would be great
Just adding onto the good answer you already got, but the thing that made this click to me was understanding that if you’re not port forwarding, you’re limited in the connections you can make to other peers. Specifically, you can only connect to peers who are fully available. Whereas if you’re port forwarding, then you can connect both to people who are limited, and to people who are fully available.
I imagine you would get faster download speeds if you were port forwarding, but my impression is that this mainly is a factor for seeding, which matters more if you’re on a private tracker that requires a certain download/upload ratio; it’s way harder to keep that ratio above 1.0 if you’re limited in the peers you can connect to.
Port forwarding lets you connect with other hosts peer-to-peer which a VPN would otherwise block if both sides are behind one. For torrents you’d get more peers (which doesn’t matter if you’re just downloading the latest and most popular stuff) and be able to seed more effectively.
Thanks!
And the way that many (most? (all?)) private trackers implement their monitoring kind of requires an open port.
Not all torrent sites require an open port. E.g. MAM works without an open port. It majorly impacts your ability to seed) but that isn’t a problem because of how much bonus points you get. TL does not either.
One port must be open for a torrent connection to work.
Down: open, Seed: Open = instant connection Down:closed, seed: open = connection takes a second to work Down open: seed closed = down has to wait for seed to renounce to trackers. A few minutes to an hour. Down closed: seed closed = no connection
If you mainly do torrenting, AirVPN is a good option. I have recently moved away from ProtonVPN; it’s too expensive.
Plus it’s run by Swiss Nazis.
Swiss nazis?
