this post was submitted on 12 May 2025
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Well, just that. Wich is stronger against trackers, hackers and doxxing threats? Proton VPN (I'm using this one actually), or Mullvad VPN?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 25 minutes ago

Mullvad. Not even a question

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 hours 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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 hours 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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 hours ago

I like that you don't have to provide an email address to mullvad.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 5 hours ago

What about NordVPN? I use it and I’m pretty happy.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

it's just a string of numbers with no password

[–] [email protected] 1 points 51 minutes ago

How would anyone get the long string though? Realistically speaking. It would be difficult and unlikely.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 17 hours ago

I like Mullvad better

[–] [email protected] 38 points 22 hours 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.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 8 hours ago

I love that Proton bots/fanboys always get pretty nervous when someone just points out the facts 🤣

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Has anyone used Mullvad vpn with a media server? I’m currently using AirVPN, but it’s not that good speed-wise. I’ve been looking at Mullvad for a while, but they’ve abandoned port forwarding, which I’m not sure how big of an impact that is.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Depending on how you're accessing this, and how many people you're trying to set this up for, it would probably be easiest to learn how to deploy your own Wireguard network. In my case, my phone automatically connects to my own Wireguard on my server (an 11 year old laptop) and whenever I'm on the go I have full access to my LAN + PiHole DNS filtering.

So, what's the point? The point is that you will be able to securely connect to your media server without exposing it directly to the internet, all without paying for a service to do what you can already do yourself, provided your ISP allows you port forward.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I have several people who usually access my media server from abroad. Can you confirm if the WireGuard network you mentioned allows you to “legally torrent” media using it?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

So to be perfectly clear, setting up Wireguard is about bridging two LANs (or devices) to make them virtually appear as if they belong on the same network. For every client that connects they would need to be issued a key and every device would have to be set up. But all the traffic between the two "LANs" would be encrypted and secure.

But I don't think WireGuard is what you're looking for, because this would require setting up all these other people with WireGuard as well. Or doing a more complex setup where you use a VPS and WireGuard and have that serve an exit point instead of your home connection. Or any other number of more complex setups that would work but require a lot more effort... and it sounds like you were just looking for basic port forwarding.

Mullvad took that feature away a couple of years ago (presumably to combat CSAM dissemination). So if you were hoping to just have a secure path for someone to connect to your media server routed through Mullvad, I don't believe that's possible anymore.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Mullvad does have split tunneling on Linux and Android. I don't know about Windows.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

I don't know why I wrote split tunneling, I meant port forwarding. Thanks😀. Windows also has split tunneling.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

Mullvad.

Proton has a Trump ass kisser working in their C-suite.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Okay, but how does the political stance of Proton workers affect my privacy?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

At the moment, it doesn't. He could decide to violate Swiss law and turn data over to Trump.

That would certainly affect your privacy.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but he doesn't have the power to do that. Proton has a board with many members calling the shots.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 7 hours ago

There are sellouts and traitors.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 20 hours 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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

Mullvad hasn’t yet shown themselves fed- friendly.

Proton has.

Mullvad is the answer.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 12 hours ago (3 children)

Proton has cooperated with subpoenas on multiple occasions leading to the user’s arrest.

While they may challenge them, the point is that they have cooperated and thus are not reliable. There are no reported cases of Mullvad doing the same.

There are ample links from multiple sources that describe this with a simple search.

[–] throwawayacc0430 8 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

That's because no one running a service will go to jail for you. None.

Not ProtonVPN, not Mullvad, not IVPN, not Lemmy Instances.

Imagine you run one of these, and you received a lawful order in your jurisdiction.

Turn over data or go to jail for a long time.

Would you go to jail to protect user privacy?

The only thing Proton does better is because they are under Swiss Jurisdiction, which has stricter control over when a court order can be issued. But if a court order goes to Proton, they can't ignore it.

Also: Protonmail =/= ProtonVPN, they are under different laws. In Switzerland, Mail providers have to provide IP addresses upon a subpoena, VPN providers do not. If those users had used ProtonVPN to access their Protonmail, they'd be safe.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

Interesting, thanks.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

To be fair, if your safety depends on whether a particular company cooperates with authorities, you'd better rethink your OPSEC.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago

Proton has cooperated with subpoenas on multiple occasions leading to the user’s arrest.

My thinking is, if the CIA (or whatever country's equivalent) is on to you, it's pretty much jover.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

Please do provide a link, especially if it's very easy to find. I'm not saying anything you say is wrong, only that if it's not an opinion, then a link from a trusted source helps other to understand the situation.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

It's a somewhat convoluted story. Here are some links

The takeaway is when he logged into his Protonmail they logged his IP address which helped track this individual down. But note that Reddit thread I linked. I also cannot find that much information about "what happened next," or the details of who was arrested and why.

There may be other examples, but this particular case kinda hit the rounds back when it happened.

[–] throwawayacc0430 5 points 8 hours ago

Excerpts from your third link https://www.wired.com/story/protonmail-amends-policy-after-giving-up-activists-data/

As usual, the devil is in the details—ProtonMail's original policy simply said that the service does not keep IP logs "by default." However, as a Swiss company, ProtonMail was obliged to comply with a Swiss court's demand that it begin logging IP address and browser fingerprint information for a particular ProtonMail account.

According to multiple statements ProtonMail issued on Monday, it was unable to appeal the Swiss demand for IP logging on that account. The service could not appeal both because a Swiss law had actually been broken and because "legal tools for serious crimes" were used—tools that ProtonMail believes were not appropriate to the case at hand, but which it was legally require to comply with.

ProtonMail also operates a VPN service called ProtonVPN, and it points out that Swiss law prohibits the country's courts from compelling a VPN service to log IP addresses. In theory, if Youth for Climate had used ProtonVPN to access ProtonMail, the Swiss court could not have compelled the service to expose its "real" IP address.

Proton did not voluntarily log IPs, they were under a lawful court order and were out of appeal options.

Like I said, no one running a service will go to jail for you. None.

Not ProtonVPN, not Mullvad, not IVPN, not Lemmy Instances.

If a legal court order is received, they will conply after they run out of appeals

Imagine you run one of these services, and you received a lawful order in your jurisdiction.

You can choose to turn over data or go to jail for a long time.

Would you go to jail to protect user privacy?

That's why its not only a company's privacy practices you need to worry about, but also the jurisdiction. Choose a service that's is in a privacy friendly jurisdiction.

Also, this is about Protonmail, which is under different laws than ProtonVPN.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 15 hours ago

I guess he's referring to this

[–] [email protected] 4 points 22 hours ago

IVPN imo, just because it offers reverse split tunneling, if you prefer having more countries to choose from you can use Proton.

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