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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[–] matey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (32 children)

What's going on with Proton the company?

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

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[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 3 points 5 months 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.

[–] Eyedust@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 5 months ago (2 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 3 points 5 months ago (1 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

[–] Eyedust@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I did read this somewhere before. I just have to take my chances at the moment. My other option was Windscribe, but unless you're paying for a year+ their prices are astronomical.

[–] Cgers@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 months ago

Yeah I use airvpn myself, its just worth throwing that info out for full transparency/disclosure

[–] redsand@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 months ago

Other providers who know what they're doing include cryptostorm.is, PIA, and ipredator.se

Or make your own with a VPS with openvpn or witeguard

[–] zedgeist@lemm.ee 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] redsand@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

PIA is such a weird one. They're massive and know what they're doing but ownership and jurisdiction have always been questionable. I have long suspected they cooperate with GHCQ but only on legitimate national security cases not piracy.

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[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

mullvad

[–] quack@lemmy.zip 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] TauZero@mander.xyz 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

IMHO if you don't have a globally-reachable address or forwarded port, you are not really a participant of the internet, you are just a receptacle xD

One service I never see mentioned is OVPN. They have a 1-to-1 feature parity with mullvad and were an easy drop-in replacement when mullvad closed their ports:

wireguard
port forwarding
no usernames/emails/registration, only account numbers
crypto payments/cash in the mail
same price as mullvad
multiple device keys
multihop
no bandwidth limits
setup guides
status dashboard

I used mullvad for years, sad to see them go, and all my scripts basically worked without any change other than the server addresses/public keys. Only downside is they don't have as many users so not as many servers. I wish more people would join up so I get more IPs to choose from :D

[–] yardratianSoma@lemm.ee 2 points 5 months ago

Damn, if this is all true, I'll switch once my credits run out with mullvad. If I don't like it, I can always switch back, but port forwarding is more than just something to help with seeding, tad shame mullvad pulled the plug on it.

[–] Eyro_Elloyn@lemmy.zip 1 points 5 months 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 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] Trihilis@ani.social 3 points 5 months 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.

[–] droolio@feddit.uk 1 points 5 months ago (2 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.

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[–] BenchpressMuyDebil@szmer.info 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months 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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