Well, just that. Wich is stronger against trackers, hackers and doxxing threats? Proton VPN (I’m using this one actually), or Mullvad VPN?

  • Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml
    14·
    22 days ago

    Do VPN’s actually protect against any of that? They’re basically only useful if you want to get around your country’s internet filters, log into a website that has blocked your IP, or hide your traffic from the government (and in the latter’s case, Tor is probably a better pick).

    I guess it may help with tracking, but there are so many ways in which your tracked, is your IP even one of them?

  • John@lemmy.mlEnglish
    21·
    22 days ago

    I use Proton currently since it comes with my proton subscription. But I used mullvad for years and prefer it. They’re both good, you can’t go wrong really.

  • edric@lemm.ee
    511·
    23 days ago

    I prefer Mullvad. Regularly audited, can pay with cash if preferred, everything runs on RAM, and hasn’t had any controversies so far. The only issue for some is no port forwarding. I also like the multi-hop and DAITA features.

  • Libra00@lemmy.mlEnglish
    49·
    23 days ago

    A VPN is a VPN, having a different IP address is equally effective against those things no matter which IP it is. The issue is whether or not anyone can associate that IP with yours, and what that comes down to is how willing they are to give up their records when the government asks nicely (or, even more importantly: not so nicely.) I’m not familiar enough with either service to be able to speak to that, but everyone else seems to be talking about features, prices, politics, etc when none of those directly address your questions.

      • Libra00@lemmy.mlEnglish
        34·
        23 days ago

        lol, k, I definitely respect the opinion of someone who drops a half-assed comment like that without bothering to offer what they believe to be the correct information.

        • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍@midwest.social
          5·
          23 days ago

          I can’t presume to know what they meant, specifically, but I think they’re probably referring to the fact that a VPN provider has access to all of the data you’re transmitting through their exit nodes, and a malicious one could harvest and sell it. Or work with LE and hand over all tracking data, all information about your browsing habits for the past year, all of the times you visited PornHub and Grinr, how many times you visited that trans support website… everything LE could get by surveiling your behavior if you weren’t using a VPN.

          A VPN is only worth how trustworthy the VPN provider is. Mullvad, for instance, claims to keep no logs, so a search warrant for logged data is useless. This is not true of all VPN providers.

          • Libra00@lemmy.mlEnglish
            24·
            23 days ago

            If that’s the case then both of you failed to read the part of my comment where I explicitly addressed that:

            The issue is whether or not anyone can associate that IP with yours, and what that comes down to is how willing they are to give up their records when the government asks nicely (or, even more importantly: not so nicely.)

            I admit I didn’t include the possibility of the VPN operator themselves being malicious, but it seems weird to call me out for not addressing the issue of record security re:governments/LE when pretty much the entire point of my comment was to address that specific issue because no one else was, no?

              • Libra00@lemmy.mlEnglish
                1·
                22 days ago

                You ever notice how it sometimes helps to read the whole sentence to understand what some part of it means in context?

                A VPN is a VPN, having a different IP address is equally effective against those things no matter which IP it is.

                There’s a comma after that second VPN so obviously it’s related to what follows, which is the part where I describe exactly how a VPN is a VPN: in terms of getting a different IP address. This is twice now you’ve gone way out on a limb here trying to back the play of some fucking troll who didn’t bother to explain themselves and I’m not sure if that’s where you want to be. Picking through my comment and taking bits out of context to feed back to me as ‘evidence’ to back up your pedantry and assumption that the rest of the text of that same comment shows you to be wrong about is not a good look. If you’re going to nitpick my shit to death then you should at least try to read the whole thing and understand how each of the parts relate to each other first, otherwise people might mistake you for some fucking troll too (albeit a clearly slightly more intelligent one since you can actually elucidate what your issue is with what I said, regardless of whether or not it’s remotely accurate.)

  • communism@lemmy.ml
    71·
    22 days ago

    I prefer Mullvad. I’ve found it a lot more reliable. I was a paying Proton customer but still had connectivity issues a non-negligible number of times, whereas I’ve literally never had Mullvad be the cause of connection issues in my years of using it. It’s great that they take cash and have literally only an account hash associated with your account.

    I’ve also found that Mullvad customer support are responsive, helpful, and know what they’re talking about. I’ve had experiences with Proton’s customer support that were ok, but occasionally had the typical customer service hiccups along the lines of being assigned a new support agent who doesn’t read back all the conversation (understandable—I had one bug I was dealing with for months) and you have to explain again what the original issue was and what has been done since.

    I think both options are perfectly fine, but I definitely prefer Mullvad, and it’s what I recommend to people if they ask me to recommend a VPN service.

  • Vaie@lemm.ee
    5124·
    23 days ago

    Mullvad hasn’t yet shown themselves fed- friendly.

    Proton has.

    Mullvad is the answer.

    • dubyakay@lemmy.ca
      131·
      23 days ago

      When did Proton show themselves fed-friendly? Also what “fed” are we talking about? The Swiss Federation?

        • BevelGear@beehaw.org
          61·
          23 days ago

          Proton’s statement from the linked article

          “We are aware of the Spanish terrorism case involving alleged threats to the King of Spain, but as a general rule, we do not comment on specific cases. Proton has minimal user information, as illustrated by the fact that in this case, data obtained from Apple was used to identify the terrorism suspect. Proton provides privacy by default and not anonymity by default because anonymity requires certain user actions to ensure proper OPSEC, such as not adding your Apple account as an optional recovery method.”

    • utopiah@lemmy.ml
      222·
      23 days ago

      Source please, we in the /privacy community genuinely want to learn so when such things do happen, we all benefit from factual information. Please do not assume we all know what you are referring to. It is particularly in this kind of cases when, for example with Signal what was “shared” with authorities is basically irrelevant, cf https://signal.org/bigbrother/ so we must be precise.

      • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
        3·
        22 days ago

        See my other comment; I think the same user contingent that likes VPNs tends to also want maximum convenience, which isn’t Tor. Of course they frame convenience as the only relevant factor, instead of acknowledging that being the tradeoff they’re making.

      • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
        2·
        22 days ago

        I haven’t really played around with VPNs to make the comparison. Tor breaks for a significant number of sites, but it’s still a pretty small minority; “only works for a small number of sites” is a comical untruth.

        If Tor breaks more sites than VPNs do (which I think is likely), I think it is because Tor is secure. It is easier to do malicious things behind Tor because you have, for all intents and purposes, an unbreakable shield of privacy while you are doing those malicious things. And so, site operators tend to block it more readily than they do VPNs.

        Whether you want to make the tradeoff in favor of convenience or genuine privacy is, of course, up to you. It’s not surprising to me that the Lemmy userbase is more or less unanimous in favor of convenience. Of course it is fine if you want, but you don’t need to misrepresent how things are to make it the only possible choice.

  • nutbutter@discuss.tchncs.de
    9·
    23 days ago

    Mullvad. It’s cheaper than Proton. But Proton has more servers. Like Proton even provies Indian IPs, but the servers are hosted in Singapore, which may be something people need, as Mullvad do not have any servers with Indian IPs.

    You can also try IVPN, it is almost same like Mullvad, no email for account, pay using Monero etc, but you can get a one week subscription for $2.

  • stupid_asshole69 [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    2·
    21 days ago

    I have and use both.

    Without choosing some sort of dns based ip blacklist (offered by both providers btw), neither one really does what you asked about.

    What are you actually trying to prevent? If you don’t know what language to use, just describe the situation.

  • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
    11·
    23 days ago

    They still see source of email and meta data.

    I am not sure why they would ban account for getting links tho