I’ve used mullvad for quite a long time, but because it doesn’t have port forwarding, its created some concerns with media sharing. Ive seen TorGuard and AirVPN as the main 2 that are recommended. Are they as trustworthy as Mullvad?
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I had TorGuard for years, but the service just got more and more questionable over time. I stopped using it a handful of years back. I’ve more recently looked at them again, and their VPN-router product is just a whitelabeled device you can buy elsewhere that they did the trivial install of their VPN software on. Their actual VPN speeds are fine, certainly better than I’ve heard AirVPNs are, but you either get thrown in the pool of exit points that are all very well identified as malicious VPN exit points (so everyone blocks you), or you pay to upgrade to an individual “residential IP” exit point. That gives you a completely unique exit point so the minimal VPN “blend into the exit point crowd” simply won’t exist anymore, and it’s questionable what reputation those “residential IPs” might have (I’ve gotten blacklisted IPs from my direct ISP before, IP reputation is everything).
The service claims it has no/minimal logs, but they also have a privacy policy that seems to allow a good bit of data collection now (if I remember correctly).
If you’re trying to use it for geo-unblocking, a residential IP option might work for you. If you’re trying to use it to keep your privacy from your ISP, you might very well be trading one bad actor for another. If you’re trying to use it for hiding P2P activities it will probably function well, but I can’t speak about how well they’ll actually protect your privacy from DMCA requests (if that might be relevant to you).
Highly recommend avoiding Air. I switched from Mullvad, and I’ll be going back as soon as the subscription is up. The speeds are like 2003 all over again
Why avoid air?
Some days my download speeds are dial-up caliber. On Mullvad and Proton I had >300 vs <1 on Air. They’re not worth it for port forwarding in my personal use case (found that out the hard way, very disappointing). But if you don’t require anything beyond a few kilos up or down, they’re fine
Mullvad, Proton, and IVPN are the most trustworthy. Not sure if the other two support port forwarding
ivpn lost port forwarding recently. proton had it last i checked. also tried ovpn, but couldn’t get port forwarding to work and it had a pretty bad case of dns leaks.
Then Proton seems to be the only usable VPN for anyone who Torrents and gives a shit about seeding. (Only scumbags don’t seed)
At least out of the three privacy oriented ones you mentioned that at least has OSS clients IIRC
I have a limited data plan and I never seed. Also I prefer companies that don’t endorse fascists.
Cry me a river.
I use torguard, no issues.