First off, sorry if this has been asked a million times in this community already, but the only post I found on this topic when I searched was over two years old.
I’ve been using PIA vpn for the past two years, but my subscription is ending soon and I was thinking about switching providers. I’m a fairly basic vpn user so I’m not overly concerned about advanced features and bells and whistles. I have a limited budget to work with, and I run Fedora os. Does anyone have any recommendations on what vpn I should be using?
I’ve seen Mullvad mentioned frequently, but it’s a touch expensive compared to others. I’ve heard some good things about Proton vpn too, but I know there was a controversy with their CEO not long ago. I’ve also just read something about IVPN and they look good, but I’d like opinions from more sources. I’m open too all other suggestions as well. Thanks for any and all thoughts!
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Mullvad. I don’t even think about alternatives.
That was the case, but now that they no longer support port forwarding thinking about alternatives is a good idea. For me, a VPN without port forwarding is not an option (since I use private trackers).
Mullvad seemed like the perfect choice and I was happy with them until they killed port forwarding, that got me wanting to switch to something else.
I recently bought a year of AirVPN. Their apps aren’t as nice but it works, and port forwarding works with the same port across all their servers.
I use Wiresock Secure Connect on Windows, and the Eddie app or OpenVPN Connect on Android.
Mullvad doesn’t support port forwarding does it?
How important is port forwarding? I’ve never really bothered with it. I’m definitely still in the shallow end of the pool when it comes to using vpns.
The only realistic answer is “it depends”. Torrents require at least one side to have an open port. If your port isn’t open, you’ll only be able to connect to people who have opened theirs. If everyone had open ports, you wouldn’t need to worry about it. But the reality is that many people don’t bother with opening a port, so your connections will be limited.
The issue will be much more apparent on smaller/less popular torrents. With popular torrents and hundreds of seeders, chances are good that some people will have an open port. But your speeds may be limited, because you can only connect to a select few. Even worse, torrents may stall entirely if there are only a few seeders, (and none of them have open ports). It’s super frustrating looking at a torrent with 3 or 4 seeders, but seeing that it has stalled.
There are workarounds like pinholing, but those are bodges that require specific circumstances to work.
Seeding torrents will be next to impossible without it, especially for private trackers. It’s pretty vital for torrenting. Anything else, doesn’t matter.
I used Mullvad for a year and love the service, but they explicitly don’t allow port forwarding, so I recently switched to Proton. Their CEO’s comments last year still feel disgusting and I trust them as a company far less than I trust Mullvad as a result, but the service they offer is stellar regardless.
From what I understand, Mullvad is the top choice for a privacy-focused daily driver VPN, while Proton is the best choice for torrenting while still functioning just fine for daily use.
Their CEO’s comments last year still feel disgusting and I trust them as a company far less than I trust Mullvad as a result, but the service they offer is stellar regardless.
I run a Minecraft server. Couldn’t have done it without port forwarding.
Could do it on a private network with Tailscale. Minecraft server on a port forwarded VPN sounds terrible because your address and port change every time you connect
Talescale is a VPN, “private network” is what P and N stand for. It’s just one with only forwarded ports and no outbound traffic. The question was are forwarded ports important, and yes they are. So important that some users pay for a VPN twice! Once for something like Mullvad with no port forwarding, and once for Talescale for port forwarding. It’s true it has benefits like static IP, but even on my commercial VPN I get the same forwarded IP and port when connecting to the same server, so I don’t want to pay twice.
IIRC it’s good to get faster downloads on BitTorrent, but I’ve never stumbled upon a torrent that was slow anyway.
It’s more of an issue with torrent seeding. You need to be able to accept incoming connections to seed, so you need a VPN/router to allow incoming traffic to a certain port to reach your torrent client.
So, not a problem for leeching, but if you are trying to meet ratio requirements, could be a big problem.
What is it about Mullvad that makes it superior to all other options? I’m open to it, I just need something to justify the higher price.
higher price
$5 is a low price for a service that I trust way more than the others. You should wonder why the alternatives are so cheap.
Check their reddit for all the threads with pictures of cities plastered in Mullvad billboards. Then you know why others are cheaper.
That would be unfortunate to see. Can you maybe link examples so others can judgr for themselves? I use their service and often recommend and confirming your statement is important to me so I can adjust my opinion.
What is wrong with them buying billboards?
https://www.reddit.com/r/mullvadvpn/comments/1l6r7bw/billboard_spotted_in_california/
https://www.reddit.com/r/mullvadvpn/comments/1l1lpnz/mullvad_bus_spotted_in_central_london/
https://www.reddit.com/r/mullvadvpn/comments/1kugm61/found_in_the_wild/
https://www.reddit.com/r/mullvadvpn/comments/1kp8e92/a_good_reminder_of_free_speech_in_uk_is/
https://www.reddit.com/r/mullvadvpn/comments/1knp3jl/ad_on_broadway_nyc/
https://www.reddit.com/r/mullvadvpn/comments/1kefzu3/mullvad_going_mainstream_will_it_stay_safe_or/
I tried airvpn, but found it confusing in some regards. ProtonVPN is easier to use and it has served me well, despite the recent controversy around it. The only real annoyance is that it randomly selects a new port to forward every time you connect, so you have to manually update that in your client. Quantum is a nifty tool that will read your ProtonVPN logs and automatically complete this step for you, if you use qBittorrent.
I’ve been using ovpn.com for a few years. Port forwarding works perfectly for slskd and transmission/gluetun.
Surfshark, cheap and fast.
Removed by mod
The Proton CEO thing was vastly overblown. He is a privacy advocate and expressed support for Trump’s appointment for head of antitrust, as well as criticism of corporate Democrats who stand for big business which was misrepresented as a love of the Republican Party. The only mistake he made was to publish those statements using the official Proton account, which he later apologised for.
Some people, especially the American left, love to virtue signal and predictably they tried to cancel Proton as a result of this pretty minor and irrelevant social media drama. There were some good write-ups at the time which exposed how counterfactual the “pRoToN lOvEs mAgA” arguments were, but I guess feel free to skip over Proton if it really concerns you. It is objectively one of the best choices if you value both privacy and functionality (Proton still has support for port forwarding), which I think are far more relevant areas to be looking at when choosing a VPN for piracy.
Okay but his criticism makes no sense when the FTC under biden actually started taking antitrust seriously and has since lost its teeth again under trump.
And the Proton CEO tweet about Trump looking out for the little guys is such an insane MAGA echo chamber take. It throws the credibility of the entire post into question. Not to mention that it’s a Medium article. Too many red flags that it undermines OP’s point pretty quick.
@emogu @OccasionallyFeralya sorry, this comes from my ignorance, not to polarize or anything like that but, why Medium is a red flag?
Nothing against Medium inherently but it’s basically a glorified blogging platform. Anyone can get on there and write anything. The red flag comes from someone citing a Medium article as evidence that a privacy CEO can be trusted. I’d hope there would be more substantial sources, say, from a vetted publication by an established writer for example. The fact that someone’s Medium blog was their go-to source is a red flag on their argument for me.
This is such a bizarre take when your own position is based on one or two screenshots of social media posts and the reddit hivemind’s reaction to them. You are asking for someone to disprove/debunk your social media pile-on, which had almost zero substance to it, with some kind of in-depth, long-term New York Times investigation which deep down you know will never happen because this shit isn’t relevant in the real world. That way you can just instantly dismiss the evidence that actually does exist to the contrary, done by regular people and published on their blogs, without ever having to read it or engage with the counter-argument.
I have the time to read the Medium article but I don’t have the time to vet it and so I have no idea if I can trust it. I don’t know the author and they published it on a platform that has no rigor or guideline for factual reporting. Asking for a better vetted/verified source than a public blog isn’t a pile-on, it’s just thorough info gathering. Since that was the only published evidence listed in the argument, it was safe to assume that it was the best that could be found and as such a bit of a red flag.
We don’t need an NYT article on this niche subject, I agree that’ll never happen. But there are online publications and trusted sources that do travel in these circles. If none of them are saying anything about the topic I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be critical of the way it’s been presented and to expect more sources to help it hold water. I’d love for it to be true, as I’ve used Proton in the past and it’s the only one that ticks all my boxes. But I need more than a medium article to convince me to trust a company with my privacy.
So are just going to ignore the bit where your own argument/opinion is based on even less evidence and scrutiny?
EDIT: Also, what does any of this have to do with Proton’s privacy policy? If your argument has any relevance, it’s in relation to a moral objection to the CEO’s political statements. Proton AG is a Swiss company, none of this actually matters in reality.
It’s not a red flag. It’s just an easy out for that person because they can run the “lol bLoG aRtIcLe” line to instantly dismiss any evidence that exists to the contrary without ever having to read or engage with it. Their entire argument is still just based on a couple of brief tweets and they have never backed their read of them up with anything, yet somehow when other people also develop a counter-argument based on a much larger and wider source of public material and collate it on a blogging site it’s a “rEd fLaG”.
It makes a lot of sense if you actually take the time to read his explanation of the context behind his position.
During the Biden administration, the Democrats lead by Schumer (whose family members are lobbyists for big tech) refused to bring antitrust bills Proton campaigned in support of to a vote. Additionally, the only invited senator to show up to a 2024 antitrust meeting was a Republican - Vance. Those are just two examples he cites of Democrats failing in this area and Republicans stepping up in their place.
The crazy thing is that Yen’s argument, that the Democrats have been captured by the corporate donor class, would be supported in any other context by people on reddit and particularly Lemmy. It’s the same thing you guys constantly complain about everywhere else (i.e. Sanders), yet in this one specific instance you ignore all of that and pretend that the Democrats are the good guys who can do no wrong because the idea that they could be as bad as, or worse than, the Republicans in this very specific area triggers you so hard.
Democrats are bad. Republicans are worse.
