It is quite private from what I understand. You don't share email phone and can evrn choose pay through privacy friendly means. The only thing is, it drains a lot of battery on grapheneOS. To an extent that i had stop using it.
I have found more websites refuse to load with Mullvad VPN than when I use Proton VPN. I use Mullvad on my phone since it's the only one that is able to be used while I also use Tailscale VPN at the same time on Android.
From what I know it's considered "better" because it's one of the first to use things like shadowsocks.
Usually ISP can detect you are using a VPN, some countries/isp actively block it.
With obfuscation it looks like normal trafic thus, harder to block or to detect you are using VPN at all.
"Mullvad's Shadowsocks integration is designed to help users bypass internet censorship and restrictive firewalls by routing traffic through obfuscated bridge servers."
So, it's up to you if it matters or not.
It’s a really cool feature that I think needs to become a standard option for other VPNs that are actually serious about what they are doing. Also whenever I hear shadowsocks I always think of a pair of vantablack socks on my feet.
It's tempting to want it by default but it comes at a cost.
I would prefer to have it as an option. Also it's a game of cat and mouse, if shadowsocks becomes popular, they learn to block it better eventually so you need to move to something else. In fact shadowsocks is considered "old", we also have Hysteria, XRay and other...
P.S I don't know why I know these thighs because I don't even have a VPN, i just find it interesting as a technology...
Well that’s what’s I meant. An option rather than an always on type thing (going to edit the post for my own clarity). But you do make a good point. Tech is cool and it’s good to be informed, especially with the changes going on these days. Being informed is important.
Don't expect to use torrents with it
Torrents work fine on mullvad
There's no port forwarding on Mullvad
It’s the choice of actually surveilled people and the mentally ill.
If you want a privacy focused VPN then Mullvad is great.
If you want one for torrents then it's no good.
Why's that? I used it for torrents a few weeks ago and at least speeds were fine. Definitely slower but not terrible.
Does it leak data or something?
They don’t offer port forwarding. Due to the way torrents work, at least one person (either seed or peer) needs to have port forwarding enabled for the connection to be stable. So if you don’t have port forwarding, you’ll only be able to connect to people who have forwarded theirs. So even if a seed pool shows a lot of available seeds, you may only be able to connect to a few of them. It also means your torrents will take ages to seed, which can be important for private trackers where you need to maintain a certain ratio or you’ll get banned.
Why would you even need a VPN for private trackers?
If you (a Joe Schmo nobody) were able to get an invite, you really think a media company with millions of dollars of funding wouldn’t be able to do the same? They could easily get moles into every single private trackers, complete with full backgrounds to pass the interview process. Private trackers aren’t preferred because they’re inherently more secure. At best, that is only security theater, the same as the TSA. They’re preferred because enforced seeding rules, verified uploaders, etc ensures their torrents are healthy and helps prevent “video.mp4.exe” types of malware uploads.
Plus most people use a mix of public and private trackers. Private trackers are obviously preferred, but sometimes you don’t want to kill your existing ratio with a massive download that will take weeks to seed back up to 1.0.
They could easily get moles into every single private trackers
Maybe if they actually wanted to, but what actually happens is they hire a much smaller company that monitors public trackers and sends them thousands of "successful" takedowns. When have you seen private trackers taking down torrents due to DMCA? It pretty much never happens, even for public ones these days the best case for these companies is to get google or other search engines to remove torrent sites from results.
You are giving these corps WAAAY too much credit, they only target the lowest of low hanging fruit (ISPs and search engines) because anything else is a waste of time and money. There's a reason you don't hear about many lawsuits against private individuals anymore, its because they know its a bad idea to go after "Joe Schmo NoBody" with a net worth of $217 in the bank, who will just declare bankruptcy after the corp spends tens or hundreds of thousands of $ on lawyers for a single case.
I wasn’t talking about DMCA takedowns. That’s not why you’d want a VPN at all. I was talking about being able to monitor the IPs of everyone who is seeding the torrent, which the media companies can then use to get those seeders’ internet access cut off and sue them. They have done so successfully numerous times.
A VPN hides your real IP from everyone else in the swarm. So all they see is the VPN’s IP. And with a reputable VPN, they won’t have any logs to turn over to authorities, so they won’t be capable of ratting you out when the courts start subpoenaing their shit.
Oh, and (super dystopian) fun fact, bankruptcy doesn’t disburse punitive damages. You’d still be on the hook for losing/settling the case, even after going bankrupt.
They don't offer port forwarding so it sucks for seeding. It works but it severely limits the clients you can seed to.
You can’t seed with it in a reliable and anonymous way
Why is it not anonymous?
They don’t allow port forwarding: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/removing-the-support-for-forwarded-ports Meaning if you want to seed you’re extremely limited - meaning you’d have to turn off the VPN to seed. So it’s not like Mullvad itself is non-anonymous, but you can’t do what you want with it anonymously
Having used PIA in the past, PIA is faster and cheaper but I find it suspicious for various reasons.
I discovered they were bought by an Israeli company and stopped using them. Regardless of one’s opinion on Israel/Palestine, I would hope we could all agree Israel is known for using many complex tools and intelligence operations to break digital security and collect data, so this did not feel safe to me any longer.
Cancelled PIA a while back due to BDS issues
Thank you for this
I prefer Windscribe
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
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