After making a post about comparing VPN providers, I received a lot of requested feedback. I’ve implemented most of the ideas I received.
Providers
- AirVPN
- IVPN
- Mozilla VPN
- Mullvad VPN
- NordVPN
- NymVPN
- Private Internet Access (abbreviated PIA)
- Proton VPN
- Surfshark VPN
- Tor (technically not a VPN)
- Windscribe
Notes
- I’m human. I make mistakes. I made multiple mistakes in my last post, and there may be some here. I’ve tried my best.
- Pricing is sometimes weird. For example, a 1 year plan for Private Internet Access is 37.19€ first year and then auto-renews annually at 46.73€. By the way, they misspelled “annually”. AirVPN has a 3 day pricing plan. For the instances when pricing is weird, I did what I felt was best on a case-by-case basis.
- Tor is not a VPN, but there are multiple apps that allow you to use it like a VPN. They’ve released an official Tor VPN app for Android, and there is a verified Flatpak called Carburetor which you can use to use Tor like a VPN on secureblue (Linux). It’s not unreasonable to add this to the list.
- Some projects use different licenses for different platforms. For example, NordVPN has an open source Linux client. However, to call NordVPN open source would be like calling a meat sandwich vegan because the bread is vegan.
- The age of a VPN isn’t a good indicator of how secure it is. There could be a trustworthy VPN that’s been around for 10 years but uses insecure, outdated code, and a new VPN that’s been around for 10 days but uses up-to-date, modern code.
- Some VPNs, like Surfshark VPN, operate in multiple countries. Legality may vary.
- All of the VPNs claim a “no log” policy, but there’s some I trust more than others to actually uphold that.
- Tor is special in the port forwarding category, because it depends on what you’re using port forwarding for. In some cases, Tor doesn’t need port forwarding.
- Tor technically doesn’t have a WireGuard profile, but you could (probably?) create one.
Takeaways
- If you don’t mind the speed cost, Tor is a really good option to protect your IP address.
- If you’re on a budget, NymVPN, Private Internet Access, and Surfshark VPN are generally the cheapest. If you’re paying month-by-month, Mullvad VPN still can’t be beat.
- If you want VPNs that go out of their way to collect as little information as possible, IVPN, Mullvad VPN, and NymVPN don’t require any personal information to use. And Tor, of course.
ODS file: https://files.catbox.moe/cly0o6.ods
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Totally disagree with the first few paragraphs. Someone makes a post you feel has inadequate depth and you think they’re the goddamned CIA? I don’t see any basis for the hostile tone.
But like it’s nice to be able to have a reference to quickly exclude certain options without having to wade through all their various websites. If you already know that you need port forwarding, then a chart like this will help you exclude several mainstream options. If there is some other criteria you already know about it could save you a lot of time.
Those do exist elsewhere and I don’t think there is much wrong with summarizing the current state of things for an informed audience. We are on lemmy here! I wouldn’t mail this chart out to the whole neighbourhood or anything, it’s probably not a good very first intro for most people. Although even for a person just getting started, having the column of criteria on the left could be useful to point out “what are the things to consider”. Like maybe you wouldn’t even guess that the number of devices would be limited.
Long narrative comparisons can be hard to follow. They are good for understanding the differences but then once you are having an understanding how do you pick? It’s very convenient if someone else goes to the trouble to sift through the information. On wikipedia there are some subjects that have tables comparing things and I find them very helpful. Otherwise I’d just have to spend hours making my own tables.
BTW wikipedia has a table comparing different kinds of wrenches so obviously someone thought it would be useful!!
The main issue is that the information could become out of date or erroneous in the first place so you need to verify for yourself whatever is key to your decisions. That’s just the nature of third party info.
So like I said, I don’t think the post is malicious.
I tried to be careful not to take a hostile tone. It’s possible you’re correctly identifying a critical tone, because my comment was intended as criticism of the post.
There are ways of presenting factual information that are not helpful or useful and actually serve the opposite purpose. You certainly don’t need to use prose to present information in a useful way, but consider how much closer to the old car paint color versus mileage chart (or whatever example they used to teach you about uncorrelated data in school) the posters chart is than the Wikipedia wrench table you linked.
The Wikipedia wrench table is in the context of “tools for dummies” that I said might be appropriate for that type of presentation, just as an aside.
The whole point of using some kind of chart or table is to make understanding easier, not more difficult. The posted chart does the latter. I think its because the op doesn’t understand both what they’re trying to say or the information they’re trying to show to convey it and because they chose a really excessively dimensional way to do so. A flowchart, infographic or anything other than a three dimensional chart would be better but since it’s so unclear what they’re trying to express, except possibly how much they love nymvpn and how people should really take a look at that previously underrepresented option, I can’t really make a recommendation.
OK well then I should divulge to you full disclosure that I think you, like OP, are also probably not a hostile actor who is commenting to fuck with me specifically or ?lemmy users? in general. More likely someone who’s got a bit spun up their head. But I can’t say for sure…
As it happens, last time I was looking at different VPN vendors I had to spend a ton of time basically creating an abbreviated version of this chart that had the items most salient to my use case. To sift through the websites, forums, support sections etc, because the information isn’t clearly presented was annoying. They are all trying to emphasize their strengths to make a sale based on their marketing strategy.
I can say that this chart, exactly as it is, would have saved me significant time had it been available. I found similar but they were old. And I looked at it to see if the conclusion I came to is still the right one for me— it is. I can clearly see the required information.
Good! You’re on a public forum and people do that shit! Our instance is slightly better than the other Reddit offshoots but most of them haven’t kicked the social media curse and everything you read on lemmy needs to get the sidest of ways glances.
I have trouble taking your statement that you can see the required information seriously when the required information literally isn’t there. Important stuff like weather a service accepts cash anonymously, is owned by what company and what that company’s affiliations are (talking about kape and israel here, not the proton red herring) and how forwarded ports are allocated are not included in the chart.
Of course, that kind of information doesn’t fit neatly into a table so it’s another example of the format of the data being inadequate.
I can believe that a broad generalized table like this is useful in the context of learning the ropes of what’s out there in terms of vpn services, but it isn’t being presented in that way. If this kind of table were around years ago when I was getting my feet under me I would have made bad choices based on it.
My comments saying “hey, this is bad and not something to use” are not coming from my seat of power at the player haters annual dinner and awards ceremony but from clear recognition of misleading information based on experience.