Don't use shady vpn's like express, nord vpn. etc. they're all shit. At the moment I can only reccomend: Mullvad, Proton and IVPN. I would like to disclose that I am a proton subscriber but also a privacy nut that has done a lot of research about this.
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2024
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Also a subscriber, also pleased.
More importantly, as an aspiring privacy nut, can you share that research with me?
I meant at a lot of research abut forgot "lot". I didn't mean to imply to have written a research paper. but https://www.privacyguides.org/en/ is a good place to start.
Curious: what makes Nord shady? Their model seemed similar to Proton when I was researching the two. What’d I miss?
on the surface they do a lot right. warrant canary, no logs, solid infrastructure, profitable.
for me, i really don't like the weird ways that they market. super misleading to imply that they make a person "anonymous" and/or greatly improve your privacy beyond you sending them your information instead of your isp. i also really dont like the lack of transparency, particularly with closed-source clients. i also really don't like the number of controversies that nord has been in, even insofar as getting hacked. i don't want my vpn provider to have any, let alone quite a few, of these controversies.
in terms of the model, proton is transitioning to a non-profit which reinforces why they are so well-regarded by the community. long history of doing right by consumers, where it matters most.
The biggest thing that did it for me was who runs Nord? Not business entities but the people.
Protons leadership is out in the open with their names (fwiw their CEO is even on the Higgs paper, lol), but Nord has a very intransparent structure.
I've had Proton for a while, I'm satisfied, would recommend.
Previously I used to use Nord, but ever since... Uh I forgot what they did. They changed headquarters? Disclosed something they shouldn't? Somebody here will correct me and point out what happened.
Anyway, Proton 👍
The free tier is faster than paid tiers of lower quality VPNs.
I assume that the paid tier would be excellent
This said, I find it too expensive for my uses
You can always try out their free Tier.
While you get limited bandwidth it's really okayish for normal use. Do not try to connect over a peer2peer connection, it's disabled in the free tier and your connection goes "Wooosh! *
I'm very Happy with their free tier, I even route my mobile's traffic through the same VPN connection with wireguard and some iptables.
*Edit
Do not try to download over torrent, it's disabled in the free tier.
Found that out when a friend shared their screen on Discord and my internet went down lol. It's all p2p traffic.
Ohhh didn't knew that ! Thanks for the info! Although it makes sense :).
Will edit my comment !
PS: Yeah, when my internet went down I was like "huh what the fuck?" XD
It's quite good and also I like that they largely support Linux. They have phone apps, browser extensions, desktop apps, and even CLIs. They also have downloadable configurations for OpenVPN and WireGuard if you want to go that route. They've also got what I assume are fairly basic features of most VPNs like kill switching, private DNS servers, etc.
Browser extension for the VPN? I remember asking in the forums some time back and they were extremely hostile to the idea.
Why would they be hostile to that idea? It allows you to run the VPN only on your browser instead of your entire system which is sometimes preferable.
That was my point. They (forum users, I don't think actual developers) insisted that it's a middle solution. That I could use the application and whitelist only the browser and that some JS could bypass the VPN and get the real IP.
I got two years of Nord for that same reason, then two of Proton that's about to end, so this was probably around 4 years ago.
I switched to Proton from Express when the latter was bought out by Kape.
Proton works perfectly so far for me. Their desktop software was a bit meh, but they've since improved it. Otherwise I have no notes.
Use it daily - phone set to turn on VPN when I leave home. Occasionally use it indoors. No probs - not much difference in speed.
Can use default (fastest) server or take you pick from quite a few choices - again not much speed difference.
YMMV
I've used it, but haven't used others so can't compare!
What did you want to know?
I've recently signed up for Proton Unlimited, and have been playing with things. If you're interested in the drive space, note there's no Linux sync client (it's Lemmy so I feel obligated to let you know), only the web client. There's a windows client though.
The VPN is pretty easy. Log in, quick connect. Or manually select a server.
Needing bridge software for IMAP and having to use their email app on mobile is a bit annoying but it's good enough that it's fine.
I've found their help guides pretty good.
I guess if the VPN speeds were fine, if there were drops in connection, and whether you can manually choose a location.
Have you used the cloud service for photo backup? I currently have an iPhone and it sounds neat to switch to bundling Proton and dropping the iCloud subscription.
I’d probably just use Proton’s mail app on mobile. It’s actually pretty snappy and intuitive, and it has always had the basic features I need.
Oh speeds are great! Hundreds of Mbps. Depends on what you're after. Not sure if they go into the Gbps, but I feel like I remember some locations do. My internet is only 300Mbps so can't test higher. VPN speeds from a random local server are normally about 280Mbps. Not sure if that would be higher if my internet was faster.
I haven't had any connection drops, and you can choose the location. Their guides also explain which locations work for streaming services if you want to check out the catalog from other countries. And they have specific servers that have P2P enabled if you want to use bittorrent.
I haven't used Proton Drive for photos. It's worth noting Proton Drive is a relatively new offering. The lack of Linux client is also a show stopper for me, as I don't have a Windows computer to run it on. I'm keen to use it though when they get a client going.
The proton mail mobile app is fine, I use it and don't have complaints. But I don't like that I can't use a different app if I want to 😆. It also doesn't let you add other third party accounts into the app with IMAP so I have two apps while I transition.
Proton drive has a photo backup option in the app, but their gallery thing is still lacking in features. You can't edit or crop photos, and you can't create albums and stuff like that. It's really just a list of photos and nothing more.
'only 300Mbps'
Cries in 45Mbps
Haha, you never know if you're talking to the Europeans that thing 1Gbps is slow, or the Americans that think 10Mbps is fast 😆
While it's a pretty good vpn all round that's super easy to set and forget, I've been having issues the last ~6 months in Australia with the CIDR ranges getting blocked by Google, Reddit, and the like. It's annoying to have it run fine for a few days, then suddenly have every second thing I do needing to solve a captcha for it.
Try the freemium tier for a while and see if it works for you - I may be wrong and you'll run a whole month with nothing, but never hurts to verify.
I've used Proton for a few years now. I'm very happy with the service and will continue to use them going forward.
Proton VPN is in my experience fast, I've never experienced any drops in connection. It's fine for sailing the seas, and they have dedicated servers for Tor, P2P, support for split tunneling, as well as their "Secure core" which routes your traffic through an additional location for extra security. They also offer "NetShield" for ad and malware blocking through the VPN.
Proton Drive is also great for my use. It's not as polished as Google Drive and Google Photos, but functionality wise it's good imo. The photo backup feature is pretty new, so there's no fancy features there yet - it just backs up your photos. The main thing I miss from G Photos is the timeline UI on the web interface for quickly scrolling to a day/month/year. Their document editing feature is also relatively new and kind of bare bones compared to the offerings of Google and Microsoft, but personally I don't use it a ton so for my use case it's fine. Sharing files and folders through Proton Drive is also great, since you can password protect your share links and set an expiration date. Really useful for when you just need to share something with someone temporarily or whatever, it's nice to not have to go back in to revoke access.
Proton Mail is, you guessed it, also great. The UI in both the web interface and the Android app is nice and intuitive, like you said. They've actually improved it quite a bit since I switched to Proton. No complaints there. Big plus for supporting custom domains and hide-my-email aliases through Proton Pass.
I've also made the switch from Bitwarden to Proton Pass, the main reason for switching for me was the aforementioned aliases. They acquired SimpleLogin a while back, which was a service I was already looking into, so when Proton introduced it through Pass the switch was pretty obvious for me. They mostly have feature parity with Bitwarden. The only thing I miss is the ability to fill passwords from the Firefox extension window, instead of from the input field you're filling out.
Proton Calendar: it's fine, it's a calendar. No bells and whistles really, but once again it works for me.
Proton Wallet: haven't used it so can't comment on it.
I use it through a docker container for certain services that should not use my own public ip. It works great, very stable, great performance and they don't discriminate against certain types of traffic
I use it when I'm on travel. It's pretty decent, and it wasn't hard to import the Wireguard configs into Network Mangler.
I've used Mullvad in the past and I use Proton now. It works well for me and afaik they're a pretty good company. I found that Mullvad was better, but I'm still using Proton because the email + storage make it better overall.
I only use proton VPN for public wifi and have had no issues with it. Can select your locations and some do support torrenting if you need that.
I'm a sub to their services and use it for travel and getting UK shows on BBC that don't come to the US. Works great and no complaints.
Been using it on my phone and browsers for maybe a year. Works great.
Browser plugin can be a bit shaky at times, but that might just be some side effect from my config of LibreWolf or something else.
I use proton vpn secure core on my desktop browser via the extension and mullvad everywhere else, I like it for that but not much else since mullvad is just better with their ram only servers
I have been using for the past month. I am not a power user, I mostly use it when I need to access libgen. Previously, I was using nordvpn. I feel proton is faster both when connecting to a server but also the connection is faster/more reliable. For example, if I forget to turn it off, I can watch a yt video without any issues.
Yep, I use it. I like it.
I use it since I subscribe to Proton for email. It seems fine. I used to use Windscribe -- or rather still do since I have a lifetime subscription -- but I tend to alternate between the two services these days. Proton seems to have tons more servers though. I've torrented on both and have had no issues with either.
It works for me