Maybe try both!! I love both VPNs
this post was submitted on 12 May 2025
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Privacy
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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?
Precisely this. Consumer VPNs are not tools for security or anonymity. They won't protect you from most kinds of fingerprinting or tracking beyond IP-based tracking. They have relatively specific uses. I recommend Privacy Guides' article on them for further reading: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/basics/vpn-overview/
Mullvad. Not even a question
Also, the Proton CEO publicly supports Trump
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.
There'd thundermail coming out soon, which will probably have mullvad included. This also funds firefox too which is nice.
If you don't need proton's whole suite of tools I say go for mullvad.
You can also just test them both out for yourself. Try mullvad for one month, proton another. The nice thing with mullvad I believe is that it's way more anonymous in terms of various forms of payment and I believe it has a fixed price.
Mullvad any day. Support is awesome.
If you go with Mullvad look for the gift cards out there that are for 6 or 12 months of service. I grabbed one off Amazon.ca for 12 months at $75. Works out to be cheaper than paying per month with the ever changing exchange rates.
I also like the fact that Mullvad has servers in the city I live in where as Proton has them on the west coast or east coast. Not the greatest for those in the middle of the country.
How does one verify that a gift card bought from Amazon is legit?
Make sure it's "Sold by Mullvad VPN" and "Shipped from Amazon".
https://www.amazon.ca/Mullvad-VPN-Devices-Protect-Security/dp/B092M5G1G7
I like that you don't have to provide an email address to mullvad.
You can also send them money in a letter
Same for proton
Isn't it the same for Proton? I have been using it for so long now that I don't remember
Mullvad is much friendlier to privacy, but their proxies get blocked by A LOT of stuff, they also have a very small number of proxies. Mullvad collects literally nothing about you, but that's a double edged sword. not having any way to verify exactly who paid money into which account number means they can't help you if someone steals your account. I also have it on good authority that mullvad isn't very reliable at getting past more aggressive censorship firewalls. the one in china for example won't allow you to use mullvad unless the sim you're connecting from is a US one.
Proton doesn't record anything you're doing with their VPN and they've had to prove that many times and their "sentinel" program and the 2FA and double password you can enable make it very hard if not impossible for someone to mootch off your account. I very rarely get blocked by anything when I use proton VPN, if I ever do get blocked I just have to change the proxy I'm on. I don't even have to change the location most of the time because proton VPN has a huge number of proxies at each location.
Proton also gives you the ability to save recovery phrases and recovery files if you lose your password(s) or your 2FA
ente auth and ageis auth are great for storing your 2FAs and they allow you to back them up to a file if your account with ente fails in some way or if you forget the password to get into your ageis
as for those recovery files and phrases I talked about. save them in text files on a small capacity flash drive that you don't use for anything else
Mullvad also has hidden servers they give access to on request if you can't access the regular ones. Can help with government censorship etc
Who knows how to steal you mull account with out you knowing? This seems over blown atleast from that perspective. I'm sure it's possible but unless you are incredibly slopping opsec I doubt it's even on the list of problems. Given all other things you could be doing.
it's just a string of numbers with no password
How would anyone get the long string though? Realistically speaking. It would be difficult and unlikely.
It's just numbers, no punctuation marks, no letters, no math symbols. No entropy really.
For most people that's not an issue, but some people out there can guess them.
one way to mitigate that problem is simply to not load your mullvad account with more than 1 year of time at any given time. If your mullvad account has like...10 years of time then yeah, lots of people are going to mootch if they figure out which number has that
Or even if they don't mootch, they could just remove the devices on your account and fuck with you
Unless you are willing to do the math, “no entropy really” deserves a [citation needed]
Unless you are willing to do the math, “no entropy really” deserves a [citation needed]
what kind of password has more entropy? one with capital and lowercase letters, numbers, math symbols and puncuation marks?
or the one with only numbers?
Is there really a citation needed for that?
Entropy is calculated from the character set size to the exponent the length of the string: E = log2(R^L). A long string of numbers can have more entropy than a shorter alphanumeric string with special characters. I looked it up and apparently their account number is 16 digits. That’s 53 bits of entropy, which is not guessable. Someone brute forcing would have quadrillions of login attempts to try.
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.
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.
Mullvad. Their servers run on RAM, and they don't have any information about you no email, no username you can even pay with cash. However, Proton has port forwarding, while Mullvad does not.
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I like Mullvad better
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