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

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[–] marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.com 32 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 children)

Mullvad, IVPN and ~~Nym~~ (not tested with audits yet, do not trust as much as the other two).

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

[–] sonalder@lemmy.ml 36 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Wait don't they take crypto? Just fake your details

[–] khorovodoved@lemm.ee 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

They also take your IP.

[–] marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Over TOR?

[–] khorovodoved@lemm.ee 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Using VPN over TOR greatly reduces performance. Also, for most cases TOR is enough,. Why would you slap a VPN on top of it?

[–] marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Ah I thought you meant during signup. I thought they were audited and provided proof that they don't log anything? Is that fake?

[–] droolio@feddit.uk 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

They've been audited twice:

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/privacy-audit/

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/security-audit-2024/ (PDF)

[–] DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

PIA user here. It gets the job done

[–] khorovodoved@lemm.ee 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] khorovodoved@lemm.ee 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Does TOR suffer from Sybil attacks? I admit I don't know what that is, I'll have to read about it

[–] khorovodoved@lemm.ee 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Thank you for the explanation. It would suck to put down money just to run a nym relay. I was interested in lokinet too but I wouldn't want to spend more than a small VPS, really