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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[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 112 points 4 days ago (2 children)

mullvad

[–] quack@lemmy.zip 17 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Good choice for privacy, not so much for piracy. They removed their port forwarding feature a while ago.

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[–] Eyro_Elloyn@lemmy.zip 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Mullvad is so great in a vacuum, but it seems like every other website has you writing out a captcha or blocking you outright exclusively because you're on mullvad.

[–] atthecoast@feddit.nl 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yes! And on top of it, embedded YouTube is also starting to block access

[–] Trihilis@ani.social 11 points 3 days ago

I've decided I'm not using websites that block mullvad anymore. I'm talking about a hard block like reddit does and not a captcha (captcha is fine by me).

If they're doing that much trouble to prevent me from using a VPN they must me doing some pretty shady shit with my data.

I will not move to another VPN because of all VPNs I feel Mullvad respects my privacy most.

[–] matey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 52 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (5 children)

What's going on with Proton the company?

Edit: ah fuck, thanks for the replies. Sigh.

[–] AFC1886VCC@reddthat.com 81 points 4 days ago (17 children)

Their CEO praised Trump/the Republican Party. He got widely criticised for it. Proton released a damage control statement but later deleted it after it made things worse.

People are now moving away from Proton as a result.

[–] Extras5023@lemm.ee 14 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Wow! Add me to that group. I need to cancel my annual family plan.

[–] Gronk@aussie.zone 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I unfortunately bought a subscription before dickhead made his statement. Looks like I'm with them for a year >.<

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[–] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

The CEO doesn't own Proton, for what it's worth. He may have founded it, but he does not have complete and total control over anything that Proton offers, as some here may believe.

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[–] Wildfire0Straggler3@lemm.ee 45 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

The CEO said that Trump chose a great pick and sided with Republicans and there was a firestorm over it, he doubled down on his position through the official Proton channel.

https://archive.ph/2yWGz

[–] FearMeAndDecay@literature.cafe 20 points 4 days ago

Ffs I literally just got proton. Fuuuuuck that

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[–] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 25 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Like basically all tech companies, the leadership are libertarian tech bros. It sucks, but whatever. The problem is also that the CEO (?) has been making public statements to try and cozy up to the trump administration over the past few months

Some of that still falls under the LTB effect (These policies benefit the company so fuck everyone else, etc) and it DOES make sense for a company to try and earn themselves an exception for the upcoming hellscape in a market that will REALLY want VPNs. But it still leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.

Not in an "I MUST LEAVE PROTON NOW" state since I like the products because they tend to be pretty honest about what they will and won't do when the goons come a knocking and that mostly boils down to "cooperate. So do X Y and Z to protect yourself by preventing us from having the information they want"). But that, plus protonmail being kind of a shitshow if you want to keep offline copies of your emails, is motivation to shop around.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 9 points 4 days ago

"libertarian"

[–] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 9 points 4 days ago

I wouldn't exactly call Tim Berners-Lee a "libertarian tech bro".

[–] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 21 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (27 children)

Just FYI, the majority of Proton AG (which includes all Proton services) is owned by a non-profit body called the "Proton Foundation". This are headed by a board of 5 members, including Andy (CEO) and Tim Berners-Lee (the literal father of the internet as we know it).

Proton is fine.

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[–] limer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 4 days ago

Proton recently closed their masterdon account because of the mutual hostility

[–] DARbarian@fedia.io 43 points 4 days ago (2 children)

AirVPN, IVPN, Mullvad, Windscribe

[–] kbal@fedia.io 35 points 4 days ago (1 children)

The requirement for port forwarding narrows that down to AirVPN and Windscribe, which is an unfortunately small set of choices.

[–] AFC1886VCC@reddthat.com 15 points 4 days ago (2 children)

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

[–] kbal@fedia.io 37 points 4 days ago (2 children)

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.

[–] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 10 points 4 days ago (1 children)

And the way that many (most? (all?)) private trackers implement their monitoring kind of requires an open port.

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[–] marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.com 32 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 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 4 days ago (7 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.

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[–] DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

PIA user here. It gets the job done

[–] khorovodoved@lemm.ee 8 points 4 days ago (5 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.

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[–] droolio@feddit.uk 29 points 4 days ago (10 children)

Still using Private Internet Access (PIA).

Honestly, dunno why they've fallen out of fashion due to the FUD about being owned by an unsavoury parent company, but the most important matter to me is if they keep logs, which they don't. One of the few VPN companies tested on this, in court, and in a recent audit. Plus still extremely cheap (if you go for 3yr+3mo).

Port forwarding works with with this docker NAS stack. Doesn't use gluetun, but there's a specialised docker-wireguard-pia container as part of the stack, with a script that handles port changes. Been flawless.

[–] realitista@lemm.ee 11 points 4 days ago

Yeah they are throroughly vetted and work well, competitively priced. I've never seen a reason to switch.

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[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 20 points 3 days ago

Not a VPN, but you may also want to look into I2P.

https://i2pd.website/

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.

[–] land@lemmy.ml 18 points 4 days ago (2 children)

If you mainly do torrenting, AirVPN is a good option. I have recently moved away from ProtonVPN; it’s too expensive.

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[–] zedgeist@lemm.ee 15 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

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.

[–] Eyedust@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I love Mullvad, but if you need P2P its not the best option. If you just need a VPN, though, its amazing. Today I just switched to AirVPN and am running it on Arch through Eddie. Have my qbittorrent set up to only allow connections through Eddie and just forwarded my first port. I'm very happy with it.

I think the only downside is that I could get Mullvad for 5eur a month on a month by month basis. AirVPN is 7eur or 15eur for three months, so I have to lock into the three months to get the same price.

[–] Cgers@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Worth noting that Italy (location of airvpn) hates vpns and is constantly fucking around with them, to the point air doesn't even actually operate in Italy to preserve users privacy. Right now, theres no immediate risk, but it' is worth keeping an eye on the political situation in Italy regarding VPN laws

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[–] upstroke4448@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

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).

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[–] Chewy7324@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 4 days ago (11 children)

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.

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[–] Tiger@sh.itjust.works 8 points 4 days ago (3 children)

I use both Mullvad and Astrill in China. A lot of VPNs don’t work here so it’s a feather in the cap for these that do.

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[–] BenchpressMuyDebil@szmer.info 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

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

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