They lost me at calling ExpressVPN the gold standard. Even their audit is bs. KPMG is the same company that provides the "always-on" audit to PureVPN.

Any article that still uses the "eyes" as a factor in their evaluation is a massive red flag. Very public intelligence alliances are the least of your worries.

[–] barnaclebill@lemmy.dbzer0.com 25 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I had not read about this criticism of KPMG before. For the benefit of other readers, I found this other forum post from March 2025 where commenters question the worthiness of the KPMG audit for PureVPN. For my own part, I'm not sure I understand what an audit that's acceptable to privacy communities would look like. If somebody can elaborate on this, I would appreciate it.

[–] upstroke4448@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Audit providers just like VPN providers come in a wide variety of quality.

Its hard to point out specifics of what makes a good audit as most people don't, and have no need to, understand the technical details of the audit and just go off its summary.

Another difficulty is just like most VPN providers, there just isn't much info provided about Auditors or the auditing process.

A few have well known reputations...

KPMG is a low quality provider. Any auditing company that provides an "always-on" service is not being serious.

Cure53 is a high quality provider.

[–] Rolder@reddthat.com 4 points 1 day ago

I’d imagine it would be very difficult to audit a VPNs privacy, since most at least have a veneer of privacy and the auditor won’t have nearly the same pull or resources as a state actor

[–] chaoticnumber@lemmy.dbzer0.com 49 points 2 days ago

The only gold standard here, is this article being the gold standard for hand-wavy "truths".

Such a load of BS. Mullvad is the only one so far that has not squealed.

[–] 0x0@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago

No IVPN?

[–] HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 39 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

The founder and CEO of redact (the site this is hosted) is Dan Saltman, a man so obsessed with online drama that he would side with Hitler if he went after Hasan.

There are also allegations that Dan has used redact to dox someone, though, I find this less substantiated.

[–] stupid_asshole69@hexbear.net 25 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Expressvpn, pia and cyber ghost are owned by kape technologies

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

For the unaware: Kape has a history of bundling malware into software that they have purchased. Like they’ll buy out an existing piece of software, then bundle malware into updates for that purchased sodtware. I remember a lot of PIA users fled when Kape bought it a while ago. PIA hasn’t had any bad updates yet, but it’s still putting a lot of trust into a company with a rocky history.

Notably, PIA is one of the few VPNs that still provides port forwarding. Most VPNs dropped port forwarding support a while ago.

[–] stupid_asshole69@hexbear.net 3 points 2 days ago

Yes, here are some non kape vpn services with port forwarding for the people reading along:

Air, proton, ivpn, windscribe.

VPN services are targeted at different user bases and have different features. It would be unwise to rely on one service for wildly different uses like browsing, bypassing edge devices, p2p, hosting, location spoofing, etc.

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

CyberGhost is great if you support zionism and trust mossad.

[–] MangioneDontMiss@lemmy.ca 21 points 2 days ago

Well that was pretty useless

[–] Dsklnsadog@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

ExpressVPN is a Chinese govt aproved company... do all audits you want. You need trust. Audits doesn't matter. They can change everything after. I trust IVPN and Mullvad

[–] outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

So i wouldn't recommwnd them to anyone with people in china but i kind of trust them a little more for my use case now.

[–] Dsklnsadog@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

If you like one spy over another, be my guest. I think companies that spy are not worth it at all.

[–] sgtlion@hexbear.net 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

A Chinese spy cant do shit to you outside of China. Only western ones can (and will). So yeah I definitely prioritise

[–] outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 days ago

I don't like them, but my threat profile is what it is, and that's a thing when compromises need to be made.

Like i said; would not recommemd to any friend who knew people in china.

[–] black_flag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Any of them have port forwarding? Thought not...

[–] ReCursing@feddit.uk 11 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Proton does... but you need to use a shell script to enable it on Linux. It's easy enough and documented on their site, but it's annoying. Mullvad does not, that's why I moved away from them. Can't speak for others

[–] nfreak@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 day ago

This is why I moved from Mullvad to Proton. Mullvad worked great for me, but then I started my own media server, and port forwarding goes a long way for torrenting Linux ISOs. Proton also offers double the active connections as Mullvad, which helps when hooking it up to various Gluetun containers which are mostly routed through different servers for one reason or another. And despite how gimmicky the marketing for it is, the "VPN accelerator" fuckin works.

That being said, Proton sketches me out - their CEO has said some awful bullshit last year, and it just feels like enshittification is around the corner. But their VPN is proven and works great.

I'd love to go back to Mullvad for those reasons, but the feature set Proton offers right now is unmatched imo.

[–] Unforeseen@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

Not anymore. Port forwarding now works from the app, been using it for months now.

Agreed the script was a pain in the ass

[–] black_flag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Proton is too fucking expensive.

[–] ReCursing@feddit.uk 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Same price as Mullvad, about a fiver a month, if you buy a year at a time. Annoying that you have to buy a year upfront but works out to the same price

[–] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Paid for itself for a year in like 2-3 movies!

[–] barnaclebill@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Do you know if Proton's port forwarding times out and needs to be reconfigured every so often in the same way the other commenter mentions about Windscribe?

[–] Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's pretty solid, but if you reconnect to a different server then you'll likely have a different port number. There's an add-on script for docker qbittorrent though that auto updates the port number.

[–] ReCursing@feddit.uk 5 points 2 days ago

I have it alias the external port to local port 2000 and point qbittorrent at 2000

[–] easydnesto@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

For Linux it does timeout and basically just need to run a bash while loop to keep open. I’m not sure if windows is the same way, but from what I hear it’s more integrated.

Overall the port forwarding is not that big of a hassle on Linux. It’s an opt in feature and I just have bash aliases to enable the port forwarding when I need it.

[–] ReCursing@feddit.uk 2 points 2 days ago

Same

[–] kbal@fedia.io 6 points 2 days ago

Windscribe, although unless you pay an extra $2/month they time out and need to be reconfigured after one week.

[–] cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

i use windscribe and mullvad at this point but their android apps are so useless :(

i also hate how expressvpn is the only one i found that does auto connect by wifi network

[–] LENINSGHOSTFACEKILLA@hexbear.net 4 points 2 days ago

I've had windscribe for a few years and love it! Dirt cheap and pretty damn fast. Haven't had any issues with their android app, but I rarely use it. What's the issue with the windscribe app?

[–] DeepChill@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago

IVPN has this feature for iOS, iPadOS and macOS. I’m sure it would be in the android app too.

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