Hi privacy fans :) I’ve been a lurker in this lemmy-community for a while now and a “fan” of privacy for about 4 years now. Since 4 years, I’ve been on and of with VPNs. Sometimes I think I dont need one, sometimes I change my mind and start searching for one. The only one I tested (and used) so far, was Mullvad. But now reading about Surfshark, I was wondering, if there might be a better solution or if Mullvad is already the best solution for VPN. What I dont like about Surfshark is, that it is part of North Security and that it is not open-source (or at least I can find any info about that).

I hope you guy and gals have some suggestions or recommendation :)

Edit: wow… thanks for all of your fast replies. Coming from Reddit, I am used to only shitposting. Thanks for all your input. I will look into all the mentioned VPN hosters, thx 👍

  • Imprint9816@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    291·
    3 months ago

    Mullvad, IVPN, and Proton are the top tier for privacy respecting VPNs.

    Windscribe and AirVPN are also decent options but do not have the audit history to be in the same tier as the other 3.

    Most other VPNs people mention either have a dubious history or no real proof of their claims to be privacy respecting.

    • JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world
      82·
      3 months ago

      Plus one to Proton. They recently moved to a not-for-profit model because they believe it will help them better protect their customers interests

  • kevincox@lemmy.ml
    131·
    3 months ago

    Mullvad is one of the best options if you care about privacy. They take privacy seriously, both on their side and pushing users towards private options. They also support fully anonymous payments. Their price is also incredibly reasonable.

    I’m actually working on a VPN product as well. It is a multi-hop system so that we can’t track you. But it isn’t publicly available yet, so in the meantime I happily recommend Mullvad.

    • andylicious1337@lemmy.worldOP
      5·
      3 months ago

      wow, that look really promising. altough I read, that you are making only your clients open-source. wouldn’t it be better to have also the server-side open-source?

      • kevincox@lemmy.ml
        61·
        3 months ago

        I mean it is always better to have more open source. But the point of the multi-hop system is that you don’t need to trust the server. Even if the server was open source:

        1. You wouldn’t know that we are running an unmodified version.
        2. If you need to trust the server then someone could compel us to tap it or monitor it.

        The open source client is enough to verify this and the security of the whole scheme.

  • Matth78@lemm.ee
    7·
    3 months ago

    IMHO I am not an expert but Mullvad seems the best (from what I read from others) and I would stick with it. I am using it and happy with it. I also appreciate that their monthly price do not change depending on how many months you subscribe and that there is no bullshit discount for the first x months.
    You could also look at Proton VPN if you need port forwarding.

    About SurfShark don’t have much opinion !

      • gomp@lemmy.ml
        3·
        3 months ago

        I have no idea what a DreamMachine is (and wikipedia does not help) so here’s the long answer :)

        If you want a VPN tunnel to your own home, for secure access to your LAN, I’d recommend you look into NetBird and/or TailScale, which at their core are wireguard plus NAT punch-through (you can also run wireguard or openvpn directly, but it may be a pain since you most probably have a dynamic IP and possibly a CGNAT).

        If you want to hide your traffic while connecting through networks you don’t trust (such as the work one or some cafe’s wifi), you can either use NetBird/Tailscale as above and connect though your home (well, assuming you trust your ISP of course) or some third party VPN which connects to their servers (I’d say look into Proton first).

        Keep in mind that VPNs actually do very little for your online privacy (ie. it’s not like google or facebook can’t track or fingerprint you). They do is prevent man-in-the-middle traffic analysis from your ISP (or the admin of whatever LAN you are using), but then the VPN provider can do the exact same things, so… make sure to double-check the privacy guarantees of your VPN provider and compare them with those of your ISP.

        • andylicious1337@lemmy.worldOP
          1·
          3 months ago

          sorry :) A DreamMaschine is the Firewall from Ubiquity :)

          well the thing is, that after reading more into all the option, people gave here, I tougth the same thing. I am basicly only hiding my traffic from my ISP and move the information to another entity 🤷‍♂️ For work this might not make that much sense. All I do there is listen to music and check my back-account so nothing my comoany doesnt already know :D

          and at home (after planing my threat model) a VPN does not really make that much sense, since I already use stuff like PiHole and Unbound for my whole network.

          but thx for your input, it really made things clearer.

  • MNLFNUT8YG@lemmy.world
    3·
    3 months ago

    A VPN is not for privacy. It simply put your front door to another location. There needs to be more done for being “private”. But Mullvad would be a good start.

  • Mazoku@lemmy.ml
    3·
    3 months ago

    Been using Mullvad for years. Love em, glad to see everyone else does too

  • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    2·
    3 months ago

    Hijacking this thread with a related question: I’m stuck on Mullvad, any good ones that let you port forward from linux? I’d like to use slsk more effectively once again.

    • finestnothing@lemmy.world
      4·
      3 months ago

      Protonvpn lets you port forward. I use docker and have a gluetun container that connects to protonvpn, all of my other docker containers for sailing the high seas (arr suite, qbittorrent, sabnzbd, soulseek client, etc) are routed through it and I have port forwarding setup to the ones that need it. For soulseek I use nicotine-plus-docker, all traffic is routed through the gluetun container, the port is forwarded, and a bit shy of 700 gb uploaded since March so I can confirm it works well.

      I don’t think the protonvpn Linux client supports port forwarding yet so only docker things can do it right now afaik, but anything I want permanently through VPN runs in docker anyway