What VPN do you use when you cannot use Mullvad.

I switched away from Mullvad when they killed port forwarding years ago. I have used AirVPN since and it has always been pretty good!

Proton

i use proton.. airvpn looks good but i still haven't tried it

AirVPN does good for torrenting I use it now that mulvad doesnt support port forwarding

I've been pretty happy with Windscribe. They are headquartered in Canada, but they have also proven they don't keep logs. https://cybersecuritynews.com/court-dismisses-criminal-charges-against-vpn-executive-affirms-no-log-policy/

If you're looking for a good comparison, I found the Techlore comparison table helpful: https://vpn.techlore.tech/

I am also considering either IVPN or Nym. Not sure which is best for best privacy/security. Probably IVPN? Can anyone more knowledgeable help me decide between these two?

yeah i'm switching to ivpn

I use AirVpn as they allow port forwarding and are reasonably priced. They are no logs and allow payment through non-bank methods

I wouldn't recommend NYM, I tested it for multiple months, it's quite unreliable and had serious security issues (e.g. updates weren't available through multiple repositories they publish to).

Airvpn... few servers, but reliable on different machines and no problems.

It really depends on whether you care or not about State Surveillance.

If you don't and only really care about general privacy and things like not getting letters from lawyers demanding money because you torrented something, then any no-logs VPN will do:

• For starters just having a VPN means it's not just a case of a lawyer claiming to represent a copyright owner demanding from a local ISP the identification of the user of a specific IP at a specific time (which many countries have made laws to facilitate, so they don't even need a court order) so now they probably need a court order
• Then if the VPN is in a different legal jurisdiction said court order needs to be from a court there, not where you are. Even if said lawyer are there and get that court order, they still need the ISP in a different country to give them the information of the user whose IP is in the VPN logs, so that's a lot more complex.
• Then if the VPN has no-logs, they can't even get the user IP address because it's nowhere to be found. They would need a court order to install what's basically wiretapping equipment or software in that VPN in order to catch a user whilst they're actually using that connection to torrent some file or other. No court is going to be issuing a wiretapping order for a VPN provider to catch a non-commercial case of copyright violation.

If, however, you care about State Surveillance, then merely a no-logs VPN isn't necessarily safe anymore. You see several countries, such as the US and UK, have special surveillance courts (such as FISA courts in the US) which can issue court orders to facilitate data access for mass surveillance WHICH THE RECIPIENTS CANNOT PUBLICLY ADMIT THEY'RE UNDER. In other words, the wiretapping equipment/software to allow bulk tracking of what users are doing might already be installed at the no-logs VPN (and they cannot tell you about it otherwise they'll literally end up in jail) so it's not in fact no-logs because the likes of the NSA is actually logging it all. Any VPN hosted in such legal jurisdictions can be the target of it, any company registered in such legal jurisdictions can be the target of it and it doesn't matter how honest and pro-privacy the people in those companies are - I vaguely remember the case of a secure e-mail provider in the US (forgot the name now), who tried to fight one such court order and ultimately the only way they found to do so was to close down the service and their company.

So if you VPN company is for example registered in Gibraltar (which is a British jurisdiction) or the US and they're still operating, they're very likely compromised and even if they're not, they can silently be compromise at any time.

If you care about avoiding mass surveillance from actual governments, then beyond the usual autocratic nations you'll want to avoid VPN exit points in and VPN providers based in or registered in at the very least the US, UK and Israel and any of the regions under their jurisdiction (for example Gibraltar and the Channel Islands for Britain, Puerto Rico for the US), probably more broadly all the 5-Eyes nations (so, the first 2 plus Canada, Australia and New Zealand).

So check were that "wonderful no-logs VPN" company is registered and were is based and avoid those in countries with insane civil society surveillance legislation like the Patriot Act and even avoid exit nodes of other VPN companies in such countries.

Someone mentioned https://cryptostorm.is/ on another board, but I never heard of them before.

Any experiences here? I know a lot of VPNs like Express VPN or PIA are controlled by Israel/Mossad - so I won't recommend tbem without a lot of research.

I have 5 days left, looks like I'm not gonna renew.
I find the support of that political party pretty disturbing.

I think I am just going to use tor for general browsing. Mullvad IP addresses get blocked just as much as tor these days anyway.

Personally I'm not using any of them that haven't been raided and proven not to keep records and as far as I know Mullvad is the only one who fits that bill.

I never got around to changing from PIA when they were purchased years ago. Haven't found any practical reason to change since, and though I get the backlash over the purchase.

My main use case is keeping my ISP from cutting me off for seeding, and it's done that reliably.

I'm a happy IVPN user. Small team, privacy enthusiasts, transparent, great products. Just a heads up, some IVPN subscription tiers offer MailX (email aliases, like SimpleLogin), ModDNS (like Contro-D or NextDNS) and Portmaster (app firewall, and SPN network, inspired on TOR). It's hard to compete!

ivpn seems like a good enough replacement privacy-wise

I use Proton VPN, but also exist self-hosted VPNs which is better

Im broke as hell so I'm using pia right now, I very much regret it I will probably switch to nym as soon as my subscription runs out.

Had a bad experience with Nym. It's not compatible with GrapheneOS. It runs, but there's a data limit that in my experience kept getting artificially hit by the forming and breaking of connections that occurs when switching GOS profiles. Maybe this happens less on stock Android?

Regardless, I had to keep contacting their support for extensions. In 6 years, I haven't yet had to contact Mullvad support. It just works!

I experienced DNS leaks when Nym claimed it was 'fully' connected. Mullvad.net could 'see' where I was located. That's not considering that in general the connection with Nym was much slower than Mullvad. Nym offered me an extended free trial, but I haven't claimed it yet. Reckon they'll need another couple of years to iron out the obvious issues.

In summary, Nym felt like a very early prototype much more than a production-ready service.

ivpn is the only one on the list privacy-guides recommends other than mullvad and proton - obviously their recommendations aren't law but a good starting point for looking into things yourself

I've been using nym for a few month now. It generally works and I'm convinced by the project. However, they are still implementing features and there are often small issues (slow connections, no servers found, needs new permissions on Linux after update, etc.)

I've been using Windscribe, on their $69/year subscription plan, (currently on sale for $49 USd) and it has worked as advertised in my own experiences with it. https://windscribe.com/

I'm trying to figure out what the purpose of Nym is compared to a network like Tor or I2P. It seems to perform a symilar function, except it's a paid product.

I use self-hosted on a cloud bought by crypto, but it's primarily because my relatives living in a country with almost all VPN solutions and protocols blocked, so you always need to figure everything out yourself and try something new.

Mullvad is still the best. For the time being, until the situation clears out, I wouldn't stop using it.

I care more about the results of privacy audits than I care about moral purity tests and bandwagon boycotts.

I am paying for a service. I'm not tithing to a religion.

Cyber Ghost is also pretty good. One of the best in independent tests. Encrypted traffic, no logs, €1,59/month.