There’s way too much hype over VPN Providers, but do not forget, you are routing all your traffic through their servers
As a general advice, if a VPN provider keeps logs of your activity, does not allow you to pay with crypto, and generally spends way too much on youtube ads is probably not an ideal choice.
Do not follow any advice/recommendation blindly, do your own research on which one offers the best service for your own needs.
Something that people need to realize: If you want a VPN for PRIVACY, Mullvad (edit: also maybe IVPN) is the only good option on this list. They make it very easy for you to maintain complete anonymity, they don’t even WANT your email address, you can use crypto, or you can literally mail them an envelope of cash with a note inside containing your unique ID and they’ll load up your account with that value. It’s ridiculous how seriously they take this stuff. And if you’re really concerned about privacy, you should also be taking extra steps like using a hardened OS and browser, and using disposable virtual machines. But I suspect that most of us here aren’t that concerned with actual privacy.
If you want a VPN for PIRACY, any of these options are probably fine as long as they don’t block or slow torrent traffic. Just use the fastest one here that you can afford. The only thing you’re really doing in this case is blocking your torrent traffic from your ISP. Remember, if you give them a credit card and your email address, then that’s not private! It’s just for piracy. It’s important to look at your priorities and pick a VPN accordingly.
Well said, thank you. I use VPNs for piracy and when I’m on networks I trust less than my VPN provider. If you want privacy or even hide from the government, then your requirements are much, much higher.
This is why I love mullvad. No signing in with username and password, no account information, just keep track of your account number and sign in with that.
If someone starts his list with NordVPN you know its complete and utter bullshit
That’s not how the annual Torrentfreak VPN questionnaire works.
It doesn’t work good if they act like all those providers are a considerable choice
They don’t. I suspect you haven’t actually read one of these articles in detail.because it is in no way a recommendation from TorrentFreak. It literally opens with this:
The VPN review business is also flourishing as well. Just do a random search for “best VPN service” or “VPN review” and you’ll see dozens of sites filled with recommendations and preferred picks. Some VPN companies, such as Kape, even own review sites.
At TF we don’t want to make any recommendations. When it comes to privacy and anonymity, an outsider can’t offer any guarantees. Vulnerabilities are always lurking around the corner and even with the most secure VPN, you still have to trust the VPN company with your data.
Instead, we aim to provide an unranked overview of VPN providers, asking them questions we believe are important. Many of these questions relate to privacy and security, and the various companies answer them in their own words.
We hope that this helps users to make an informed choice. However, we stress that users themselves should always make sure that their VPN setup is secure, working correctly, and not leaking. Also, we advise people to properly research the company behind the VPN service.
NordVPN appears first because it is a sponsor, as is clearly stated:
*Note: Private Internet access, ExpressVPN and NordVPN are TorrentFreak sponsors. We reserve the first three spots for them as a courtesy. This article also includes a few affiliate links which help us pay the bills. We never sell positions in our review article or charge providers for a listing.
The same questions are put to every VPN provider on the list. It is unranked - whether they first or last is completely irrelevant.
But they are presenting the answers equal to others. That’s the point. You can’t make an article and ask some scientist and a madman questions and then present the answers next to each other, pretending the madman has equally valid output. They should put disclaimers on each provider with the different problems that occur with the certain provider. Like they were caught logging, they were breached, they are under bad jurisdictions etc
Like they were caught logging, they were breached, they are under bad jurisdictions etc
TorrentFreak already puts these questions directly to the providers. Again, do everyone a favour and actually read this article you are so intent on criticising. You seem to have absolutely zero understanding of it. It’s almost as if you skipped directly to NordVPN, saw it was listed first and made up this entire fake story in your head.
I did and I know they put the questions to the provider, but what is it worth if they have been caught lying but still answer “no we don’t log” I believe they should highlight that fact.
I use Mullvad. They have you buy time upfront at a fixed price, have lots of payment options, and at one point were subpoenaed and proved to the Swedish government they don’t store any user data and therefore have nothing to turn over. They have a nice app too, I like them.
They’re disabling port forwarding due to some bad actors… That’s why we can’t have nice things.
For those who don’t know, port forwarding is mainly used for torrent seeders, aka the people who upload files to other people.
That’s a shame. I hope it causes more services to be cool with their IP addresses, but it’s unfortunate for toerrenting and running local forwarded servers.
I also use mullvad. They’re the best I’ve used and offer tons of servers across the globe
Indeed, apparently there are some American-based VPN companies that piggyback off their servers, so I figured why not use the service directly. Their apps are also full of features, so I really think the €5 a month price is worth it.
The biggest problem of Mullvard, when I tried it, is that I cannot access to any streaming services. While atm with proton I have no problem at all
Apparently the reason for that is because malicious actors were port forwarding using Mullvad. They’re now disabling that feature, so it’s possible they will be whitelisted again in the future.
I think not taking crypto currency is ok, on the other parts i agree.
Thing is crypto currency is relatively unstable.
Paying with credit cards etc deanonymizes you
I’m not a fan of using crypto as an investment tool, but since I cant pay with cash via the internet crypto is the next best option.
I don’t understand the downvotes. Crypto is ideal way of paying if you want to stay anonymous. Even Mullvad says that if you pay with Paypal that there’s some data they are required to keep on file.
Crypto isn’t anonymous though from my understanding. Since every transaction gets recorded, you can be identified through your transaction history.
It’s true and not true. If you’re not careful, you can get identified even while using cryptocurrency because the ledgers are all public. If anyone can figure out that you’re tied to a single one of your historical transactions, they can trace everything your “wallet” has ever done. But if you use single-use wallets, crypto shufflers, whatever else the kids have going these days, you can be untraceable. The easiest way to do private crypto is to use Monero, which automatically handles most privacy concerns.
Edit: A small vid on monero: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7sLnmlZ-kU
I’m not immersed in the cryptocurrency world day-to-day so if anything has changed lmk
True with Bitcoin. Not with Monero if I understand correctly.
You can also pay for mullvad by mailing them cash with a note saying which account to apply it to. I did it once just for fun.
Eh your bank just knows you pay for a VPN.
I would like to be able to send a mail with the exact money in cash… But that remains a dream…
Mullvad accepts cash in the mail.
ProtonVPN accepts cash.
Eh your bank just knows you pay for a VPN.
Some of them log your payment credentials, why would you want your VPN provider to have access to your real name and banking details? Even if you are not pirating content, its just creepy allowing them to do that to you.
Unless you have somekind of a weird fetish that you enjoy knowing that when you browse the web you are not alone and being watched lol
If i don’t trust my VPN provider i don’t use it at all…
Personally i use Proton Enterprise (yes i need it all for myself, don’t ask why) so they already know wo i am, the important part is that they don’t give my data to others and don’t store stuff that isn’t necessary. They take crypto, but thats not exactly a necessity for most people, my bank and Proton are the only parts knowing i pay for a Proton account, if my government knows, wich it only could in a serious investigation against me, well, they don’t know what im doing there, they also just know i pay for Proton, wich also provides cloud storage and Email service among others its not illegal or Problematic to have that at all. (also i kinda work for the government so they wouldn’t give a fuck anyway…)
Proton is a solid choice, they have awesome plans to bundle it with their email services afaik.
But when it comes to “trust” I also trust my grocery store service, but I like to have the ability to just pay with cash and not have them log me by name each time I enter their store and what I’m looking at while in there, its creepy and unethical and we should not support those services.
Even if you trust them, the VPN provider is the single most important provider you don’t want to know details about you. That is because they are the ones who will also know about your real IP address.
Proton will take cash payments.
The have voucher codes you can buy. Not quite sure if you will find them anywhere to buy in cash tho. Personally don’t care too much. Using a VPN isn’t illegal where I live.
@CookieJarObserver
If I were to guess, the reason comes down to pseudonymity (or anonymity if it accepts Monero).Yeah i get that, but the only thing that can be found out is that you pay for a VPN, nothing else, and crypto isn’t that much more private compared to credit, debit or paypal.
Mysterium Network
If you want privacy and great speeds better to use a dVPN.
I recently made the switch from Surfshark to Mullvad. No real complaints about the actual VPN service with Surfshark, but the desktop app was constantly advertising their other products and was becoming bloated. Mullvad just does what I want it to do with little fuss.
Pity they removed port forwarding.
I use windscribe wich is rated quiet highly on some privacy blogs. Furthermore, their free plan (with discount code) is quite generous. I got 50gb per month for free. I can’t verify their no log policy, but at least they weren’t involved in a scandal yet, which you can’t say about a most VPN services :(
So how bad is nord vpn seeing as that is all over YouTube?
@rimorso @equalszero well I would say its okay. I enjoyed using it. Others I’ve used and like would be mullvad and protonvpn.
I use mysterium VPN because it has residential IPs, but remember that all your traffic is going through some random person’s network.
Ive been using IPVanish for years without an issue.
