I’ve heard a lot about AirVPN, but it doesn’t have an app on Fdroid or anything. Yes you can download it directly from their site, but that is a little cumbersome.
Another option I’m considering is Windscribe.One major knock against it (and the same thing for AirVPN) is that htere is no tutorial available for installing the wireguard version on openwrt.
I really don’t know enough about these. Windscribe has been sort of tested in court (again that was in Greece, and they don’t have the same might of an authoritarian state as the US or some place), so that’s a plus.
I don’t know, I’m so confused that it sort of makes sense to stick with Mullvad at times.
Ivpn, Ovpn, Azire VPN, VP.net are serious alternatives. For more control, build your own VPN (or directly via Njalla, 1984…). For more encryption, full post-quantum VPN might be an option. Most of all, never forget that any VPN is a potential honeypot. VPN are necessary to limit the impact of surveillance capitalism (i’m not an Ads man !), or to watch other countries streaming series. Dont expect beeing anonymous (advanced fingerprinting, and in some cases Hénéssay, do not care about your super VPN). Of course, staying away from free VPN is a sign of good prudence.
Your latter point is something I’ve been considering for a while; VPN really won’t protect me if a 3 letter agency is after me.
It is merely an attempt to obscure myself from ISP and it’s tracking.
So even though I’m not fully sold on Windscribe, that’s why I’m kind of leaning towards it.
What’s Henessay? An online search and the top hits aren’t what I think you’re referring to.
HeNesSAy, Snowden last employer… Basic trick VS Palantir’s web scrapping.
I’m in the same boat. I’m giving Mozilla VPN a try now that I’m in the last couple of weeks of my Mullvad subscription. They only have subscription options through the Play store or App store, which is not ideal, but I’m willing to compromise a little to support Mozilla.
Mozilla vpn used to be a rebrand of mullvad. Might still be.
deleted by creator
Wanted to say I will move to ivpn when mullvad runs out, but seems like the whole comment section already agrees on airvpn and ivpn
I switched to Xeovo, works great so far. Winscribe was a no after this: https://x.com/Windscribe/status/1991176084662964688
Please don’t make us visit twitter. Windscribe makes some transphobic statement in that tweet.
At the time of writing XCancel was offline following X’s cease and desist. Now it’s back again: https://xcancel.com/windscribecom/status/1991176084662964688
airvpn and ivpn appear to be the only ethical ones.
Agreed. These are the only real options at present.
I really want people to tell me about other options, neither airvpn or ivpn seem awesome for the southern hemisphere and linux, for the majority of users they look like the best choices though. It is a dodgy industry.
Looking up vpns is a pain in the butt due to how manipulated 99% of sites about them are, plus the usual fan blah blah
I use ivpn on my Linux computer and found it very easy to use.
There was some weird arse package in it ‘npm’ that failed while trying to install ivpn, looking it up at the time said it was suspect (maybe true or not)
End of the day they did not have servers where I needed them (a southern hemisphere problem)
They were very quick to reply and appeared genuine with their customer supportthough.
ivpn is worth a look
Completely agree most people have recommended proton and perhaps wind scribe. But something people tend to miss is proton, mullvad & others tend to use rented vps servers. Ivpn claims they own all of their servers hands down. If that is the case and you may need to look into this then go with them.
What’s the downside if a VPN provider rents VPS servers instead of owning them?
I believe mullvad owns most of their servers. Ivpn does not claim to own their servers.
Not sure if linking is allowed but if you go to IVPN’s server status page, they have a quick faq at the bottom where they mention they rent from datacenter partners.
I did get that claim wrong (and will update the post) but this is what they specifically say in their site.
No virtual servers
We operate VPN gateways in 41 countries on dedicated bare-metal servers. No shared VPS, no virtual locations. source
What is bare metal, and how are IVPN’s servers set up?
Every IVPN gateway is a bare-metal server: dedicated physical hardware rented from a datacenter partner, not a virtualised instance and not a virtual location. Servers use LUKS full-disk encryption, mandatory access controls, and firewalled IPMI. A small number of pilot gateways also run a RAM-only (diskless) architecture, extending it across the network is an ongoing project.> source (scroll to bottom of page ivpn> web)
This is important because one slight issue with other services are vpses. Some servers run on shared or cheaper resources, so you’ll be paying a premium (per month) for others services. But those providers “servers” are cheap and easy to setup. I may have been wrong on what I have said (but we all are at some point and I’m sorry.)/ I Still think their a pretty good alternative. Ivpn also rotates the wire guard keys per day which mullvad doesn’t yet and they are aware of you can read their post here Mullvad blog
No worries. Just want to make sure people are fully aware. Thanks for linking the info.
IVPN is certainly a good contender. I’d also consider AirVPN purely for port forwarding. I’d swap to IVPN in a heartbeat if they had that feature.
I know you mentioned AirVPN only having an app on their website, but you can use it with the wireguard client (you just have to make the conf file names short enough and remove special characters to import them). This is how I personally use AirVPN on Android.
I tried adding their client via Obtanium, it didn’t work.
But man, that client looks so outdated. It looks like a kid’s idea of a website.
I don’t use AirVPN’s client, to be clear. I use Wireguard’s android app, and for desktop, I use wireguard as well. There’s no need for their client.
That’s how I do it. I use WG Tunnel (on FDroid), make the conf on the website, rename it to something short (‘airvpn’ for example) and import it. I only connect to one server though (Azelfafage), so I have no clue how it behaves with multiple exit nodes…
Hope this helps OP!
I’ve been using IVPN for a few months and I’m happy with it. Was on mullvad before.
I’ve seen IVPN recommended a lot compared to Mullvad but I have no experience with it personally
I’ve heard a lot about AirVPN, but it doesn’t have an app on Fdroid or anything. Yes you can download it directly from their site, but that is a little cumbersome.
Consider using Obtainium. It might be a little cumbersome to get it set up, but once you do, Obtainium will handle checking for and installing updates whenever they are released.
Install Obtainium from GitHub or F-Droid. Then you can add Eddie (the AirVPN client app) by using the install button on this page:
https://apps.obtainium.imranr.dev/apps?categoryMode=inclusive&category=vpn&sort=popular&q=EddieI’ll give that link a shot. I installed Obtanium for the first time, and tried adding their installation link (maybe not that one, I don’t remember what I tried adding), but I couldn’t get it to wokr.
But maaaan, their android client looks so amateurish. I mean it’s fine as long as it works, but as an ad for your company…this isn’t it.
All the UI/UX for AirVPN looks pretty bad. The website just looks… off, design-wise. But yeah, as long as the VPN works as intended…
Obtainium is annoying a lot though, its probably not a fault of theirs necessarily but there is so often failure due to locating an installable build from a repo link
What? It fails because it locates an app to install?
Yeah I would try to install from their git as much as possible but it is very inconsistent. Nothing found or no installable build found, so have to hope they are on fdroid.
Oh, it fails to install anything when Obtainium does not find an installable build.
That’s because not every git repo necessarily hosts installable builds at all. The main purpose of git is just to host the source code for that project. With that said, many repos do also build an installable release (
*.apk,*.exe, whatever) of each major version and host that in the “Releases” section.As an example, here is Obtainium’s GitHub repo. If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you see the “Releases” section that contains the most recent APKs and everything:
But not every git repo hosts releases. Eddie is one of those. The git repo for Eddie is just for hosting the source code. They host the releases on their own website instead. In that case, you can often just take the URL for whatever website is actually hosting the APKs and paste that into Obtainium and it will do its usual web scraping method to find the appropriate APK files for each update.
On the other hand, that web scraping often does not work and requires more complicated techniques to get Obtainium to find the appropriate APK files. That is where https://apps.obtainium.imranr.dev/ comes in handy. This is a crowdsourced list of popular apps that require more complicated techniques to add to Obtainium, and each has a neat little “Install” button to quickly and easily add that app to Obtainium by applying that complex config in the background for you.
But there are also some projects that don’t host releases anywhere other than F-Droid. In that case, by all means, just use F-Droid for that app.
There’s Proton, but given the controversy… yeah (though I did look at what they donate to and it seems to not be right-wing companies).
IVPN is perhaps your best bet.
Proton made one positive comment about some Trump anti censorship policy. Their “controversy” is really overblown.
Mullvad is directly donating to Nazis.
That said Proton doesn’t have the same extreme privacy as Mullvad. But they are much cheaper with promos and also have good app support.
Proton also keeps leaking information to the government that led to protesters getting arrested
Edit: Links for the downvoters:
https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/proton-mail-discloses-user-data-leading-to-arrest-in-spain/18191
Dude, they provided payment information because they were legally required to do so by swiss law. They did not share any actual user data from within the product. It sucks but if you use a roundabout payment method this wouldn’t be an issue.
At the same time, Proton makes paying anonymously difficult. If you want to pay with Monero they don’t officially support it and you have to go through a third party and buy a gift card, which is also not documented on their website, or exchange Monero for Bitcoin and pay with that. Contrast with IVPN/AirVPN/Mullvad which all officially support Monero. Also looking at their payment page, if you do pay with credit card they automatically renew by default, thus storing your credit card information without making that clear. Contrast with IVPN which doesn’t by default and clarifies the privacy drawbacks, and Mullvad which doesn’t do that at all. Sure the activist shouldn’t have used a credit card, but at the same time Proton aggressively markets themselves as a privacy service so they need to act like one instead of encouraging bad privacy practices because subscriptions are profitable.
Privacy and anonymity are two different things. Proton doesn’t market themselves as anonymous, they market as a privacy service, as you said. And as for the info given to gov’ts, they were legally required to do so. No company, including Mullvad, will break the law for you. Mullvad/IVPN/AirVPN, etc, will all abide by law and give up info if required.
Yet anonymity is one of the main points of VPNs
That’s your personal opinion. It’s fine to view it that way, but you can’t assume that literally every single vpn user thinks the same way.
Not that much
It is for people who want to not get arrested, especially when the alternatives don’t have the same level of neglect that Proton does (and some of them have a proven track record of not leaking information). IVPN and AirVPN at least accept Monero so I’d trust them more
A Mullvad founder and co-owner donating to Nazis is NOT Mullvad directly donating to Nazis.
No, but it is Mullvad customers money going directly to funding an obviously far right party.
The co-owner is very much the major funder of that party.
Honesty is really easy.
OP asked for options, not for this debate to go around in circles again.
What does the word “directly” mean to you?
What does the word ‘honesty’ mean to you?
To me honesty means that someone is truthfull and sincere. And directly means that there isn’t any middle steps in the process, such as money being used to pay employees or manage infrastructure.
Cool, you know what honesty means
It’s just not for you?
proton is privacy greenwashing
How so? i know only about the CEO saying stupid things. But the technical aide?
proton are an ai company, and an email provider. do the math there.
I had a 2 year subscription with them, using their vpn and email. I stopped using them after approx 6 months of product use, customer support, and paying attention to their social media manipulation, and repeated lack of attention to product quality. Throwing away the other 18 months of subscription.
They are a very dodgy company, trying to be the next google, which is ironic considering how many canadian patriots are now heading there due to trump/google.
Their brand is very popular with their zombie fans who struggle to think, but are very quick with upvotes, and downvotes.
You’re pretty vague for a “non-zombie”. What’s the issue with being an email provider? Also, they have an AI chatbot, I’m not sure they’re training any models, and I don’t know of any issue they’ve had with that product. Lastly, define them being a “dodgy” company.
I believe I made it obvious I wanted going to bother dealing with proton fanboys again?
People can make their own minds up by paying attention, or they can just follow the crowd, not my problem.
Not even close to a fanboy. Just someone that calls out a non-existant argument when they see one.
Repeated misleading marketing on both their social medias and websites such as the false “no-log” claim that got someone arrested
Interesting. I’ll read up in that.
Also: check your permissions to prevent possible rights escalations. (And yes, I know that it relies more on the sudoers file but I am sure there is some attack surface there …)
Yeah IRL for most things I actually use a separate account not in the “wheel” group that doesn’t have sudo access and use a Nix module that locks down directory permissions lol
Why would you migrate from Mullvad?
One of the owners of Mullvad donated a vast sum of money to a Swedish Nazi political party, accounting for 70% of their funding, which resulted in boosted popularity there.
This is the leader of that political party:
https://www.friatider.se/markus-allard-om-andra-generationens-invandrare-de-ska-ocksa-ut
Örebro Party leader Markus Allard goes to the election on expulsions. He opens to withdraw citizenship and also expel second generation of immigrants – even if they were born in Sweden.
“I’m prepared to cross corpses,” he said.One suggestion that he has is that citizenship and permanent residence permits can be torn up – with reference to “Sweden is the country of Swedes”.
In a section of Yoshi’s Podcast, Allard develops his view on expulsions and explains that he prepared to “go over corpses” to bring home unwanted immigrants. The host notes that there will be no beautiful sight when, for example, immigrant mothers who have been on maternity leave for 15 years are to be deported together with their children. “It’s not going to be pretty to send these people home,” he said. Markus Allard agrees, but says: I think you can handle that optics. Even the children will need to be deported, he explains.
He further explains that many of the problems relate to second-generation immigrants. They are going out too. Even if they were born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedes. They have not become Swedes. It says Sweden in the passport, but they have not been interested in becoming part of Sweden. There’s a difference. It’s a qualitative difference," Allard said.
The CEO donated money to a Swedish party that is for remigration/deportation.
OpenVPN on a VPS from Njalla paid for in Monero
I’m not being silly (other than that I’m a freakin’ tinfoil hat compared to most people)
This is my actual setup.
Depends on your reason for using a VPN. Presumably your Njalla VPS has a static IP address. I like being able to rotate servers if one is being blocked by a given service (ie YouTube).
Seconding electric nan’s comment. There is a valid use case for that model IMO, but it also ties your identity to a different fixed IP. Maybe if you were PERFECT about opsec it wouldn’t tie to your ID, but in practice nobody is going to be. That’s nearly impossible in today’s tracking centric world. So data brokers will learn user X has IP Y, nobody else uses that IP, so other connections from IP Y are probably user X too.
There’s a benefit to sharing an IP with many other ppl and rotating the IP around. There are drawbacks too ofc.
Why OpenVPN and not something like wg out of interest?
Because I set it up like 5 ywars ago as a pandemic project and that was the top option from my searches
IVPN is very good imo, I’m using it, and I love it
