Is there any reason NOT to switch to ProtonVPN from Mullvad?
Use cases: privacy, torrenting without getting a DMCA letter.
OSs: Linux, Mac.
I know there was a reason I didn’t pick up Proton years ago when PIA got bought by Kape but I don’t remember what it was. I’d read something on /r/VPNTorrents but that place has since been banned so I can’t refer to it again.
Mullvad is a bit better if you’re hyper concerned about privacy but it doesn’t have port forwarding support so it’s worse for torrenting.
Recently I tried Mullvad, proton and Windscribe. For all I created anonymous accounts and paid by crypto. Proton VPNs speeds are consistently higher.
I have both and I use both.
The big benefit from mullvad is that you can get anonymous much easier, it’s easier to ditch an account and it’s harder for you to screw it up. People get mad about proton turning over metadata to authorities or suspending account access but they’re required to do that by law if they can identify the accounts. The structure of what proton offers requires that they have some way of verifying who a user is, so if you’re okay with being able to be identified if someone really tries (or doesn’t really try that hard if you give them payment information or something) then proton is fine for you.
Air is a good cheap vpn for piracy. If you wanna take the maybe smarter route of using separate services for your own privacy and for piracy that’s what I’d do.
I switched from Proton to Mullvad and I would highly recommend switching in that direction, not vice versa. Proton was unreliable for me for starters. And Mullvad requires no personal info—not even an email address—and you can pay in cash. Mullvad “just works” for me, whereas I had connectivity issues with Proton semi-regularly. You may also have more privacy/political concerns with Proton e.g. them handing over a French climate activist to the police, or some people take issue with the CEO’s comments on Trump. Mullvad has no such incidents like the former, and I’m not aware of Mullvad involving itself in politics beyond privacy politics.
But for piracy specifically, you may want port forwarding. I’ve heard AirVPN recommended for that reason, so if you’re looking to switch, you might want to look into that instead of Mullvad.
Any particular reason for moving from Mullvad?
Mullvad Will stop supporting openvpn protocols in January, which I need since Synology does not support WireGuard. I contacted both Mullvad and Synology support but neither wants to move so I did.
Nothing major, just curious
Yeh, no port forwarding for torrenting is why I moved away.
Mullvad stopped doing it because it can’t be done anonymously.
I torrent through mullvad. I’m not “connectable”. It’s fine for my uses.
Mullvad stopped doing it because it can’t be done anonymously.
Where did Mullvad give this as the reason? There was no mention of anonymity in their announcement post. It was a decision driven by legal issues and the blacklisting of their IPs.
Why are we removing forwarded ports?
Port forwarding in general has added value if you are wanting to allow a friend or family to access a service running behind our VPN. This could be a legitimate website, a game server, or even access to your self-hosted server.
Unfortunately port forwarding also allows avenues for abuse, which in some cases can result in a far worse experience for the majority of our users. Regrettably individuals have frequently used this feature to host undesirable content and malicious services from ports that are forwarded from our VPN servers. This has led to law enforcement contacting us, our IPs getting blacklisted, and hosting providers cancelling us.
The result is that it affects the majority of our users negatively, because they cannot use our service without having services being blocked.
The abuse vector of port forwarding has caught up with us, and today we announce the discontinuation of support for port forwarding. This means that if you are a user of forwarded ports, you will not be able to add or modify the ports you have in use.
We have removed the ability to add port forwards on all accounts.
Ok, you’re probably right. It wasn’t “the reason”. It was part of the discussion at the time though.
“By simply banning ports, we get rid of abuse of content hosted by our IPs via ports, and can focus on giving better privacy for the broader mass of people,” said Jonsson.
He said: “Statically linked port-forwards are not good for privacy, it can be linked to a user account. A VPN service that can identify a user, is not a good option for using port-forward with, if anonymity is important.”
https://www.techradar.com/news/mullvad-removes-port-forwarding-on-security-grounds
Yeah I’d advise the other way around: move to Mullvad.
I’ve found it glitchy. Have to restart it at least twice a day.
What happens that makes you have to restart it? What OS?
What OS?
Android. In fairness I’ve never noticed an issue with macOS or Linux
I’ve noticed it lack robustness on Linux. There’s a pretty solid chance it just craps out without reconnecting (I’d say it craps out once every two weeks on average) so I’d consider that if you plan to pirate with it.
Believe one draw to Mullvad was anonymous payments.
Mullvad is half the price if you want the flexibility of a monthly plan. I actually pay the same as a Proton customer but I think they either gave me a permanent loyalty discount or I’m on grandfathered monthly pricing because as a new customer you have to pay twice as much.
I’ve been using ProtonVPN with port forwarding for quite a while now specifically on Linux by downloading Wireguard config and running it via terminal. Works great for my purposes.
