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Comment by usednet | Hacker News Reader

I’m curious as to what HN’s VPNs of choice are.

I personally use IVPN and Mullvad.

My own digital ocean droplet. Its easy to set up and get going, costs only $5/mo, and with all of my other droplets bandwidths combined I effectively have unlimited bandwidth.

Only ever use it on public wifi, and it isn't meant to be "private", just good enough to prevent accidental data leakage at Starbucks/doctors' offices/wherever else my 5g doesn't reach and I'm forced onto public WiFi.

I used to do this, and it's nice having your own IP, however keep in mind that while you preserve privacy from your ISP/gov you lose privacy from the websites and services you access as you become very uniquely identifiable.

Yeah I'm less worried about trackers (block those with uOrigin and AdGuard), and just more worried about data leaks on public wifi which are less and less likely with everything being on SSL now, but until everything is FORCED onto SSL then I will still run my own VPN when I'm on public.

Note that those are client side. Nothing can stop a server from seeing your IP.

ProtonVPN because I already have a Protonmail account and they don't sponsor podcasts (as far as I know).

Maybe I'm missing something, but why is "not sponsoring podcasts" a plus for a VPN service? Personally Mullvad is my favorite and AFAIK, they also don't sponsor any podcasts, but I don't think that would influence how I feel about Mullvad.

The VPN industry is generally pretty shady & tries to sell users services that do them no or even negative good by making silly claims.

When a service isn't being honest in their advertising, it makes you think about what else they're being dishonest about.

That's more about what's in their marketing material ("when a service isn't being honest in their advertising") rather than where they actually put that marketing material.

And yeah, then I'd agree, if Mullvad started lying or pushing useless services down my throat, I'd definitely dump it quickly.

I used Mullvad for a few years and was largely happy with it. I got a multi-year deal on ProtonVPN that was too good to pass up, so now I'm on that. Overall, I think I liked Mullvad better so may go back to it when my time is up.

I used NordVPN back quite a few years ago. Once they started advertising on cable tv shows, I knew it was time to jump ship. A VPN service spending that kind of money is either burning through cash too quickly to survive, selling user data, or a government honeypot.

It shows scale and also makes them a bigger target for lawsuit which get's settled through access.

Check out what vpn have been sued over the last year (they all have been no log companies) and you will quickly realize that logs are being shared by anyone of size. The smaller the service the better.

I'm also not sure why sponsoring podcasts is relevant, but FWIW I have heard ads for ProtonVPN on the Darknet Diaries podcast (https://darknetdiaries.com/sponsors/).

It affects my decision making because the stuff that gets plastered across podcasts and YouTube videos is often crap the hosts themselves clearly haven't even used. Just my opinion based on the times I've actually researched the products I've seen sponsoring content. YMMV

> and they don't sponsor podcasts

I do this as well! Annoy me with to much ads and I'll avoid you and your product out of spite.

Mullvad for me. I'm very happy with their offering.

Nice try officer, just AOL for me thanks ;)

Hello fellow youth, I sure do like loitering. Let's talk about our favorite spots around town to loiter with our friends.

I just connect back to my router.

I don’t have a “hide from websites” need, but a “don’t trust public internet” need.

AirVPN

You can use openvpn or wireguard as clients (or their own), and while i was writing this I just saw they accept payments with different crypto (bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin, bitcoin cash, dash, doge, monero)

Same as Mullvad. Personally, the greatest feature of Mullvad is that they accept cash sent in envelopes, it doesn't get more (proven) private than that. Does AirVPN offer something similar?

I couldn't find that option, so I'd say no

Same.

The other big point in AirVPN's favor is configurable port forwarding. Makes it much easier to quickly expose something to the internet on any network.

Mullvad FTW! I've tried basically all VPNs out there and Mullvad and Proton were (at the time I did the experiment) the only ones that were 1) trustworthy 2) just worked

I recently discovered IVPN and really like it. It's my preferred VPN. Previously, I've used NordVPN and ProtonVPN.

https://www.privacytools.io/#vpn

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