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Comment by accidbuddy | Hacker News Reader

Is there any serious website that reviews (rank list) these VPNs? I say this because it is always difficult to find information that is not sponsored on the internet. In fact, I've always heard that Mullvad is one of the best, even supporting P2P

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These rankings are going to be meaningless and littered with blog spam. VPNs as a category are mostly snake oil. The only real world use for vpns is circumventing censorship if you live in a place that censors. The only privacy you're gaining is that from your ISP.

I don't think that's the only real world use for VPNs. For instance, you might be working remote from a foreign country and not want your employer to know that. It's not something that I would recommend, but you know it happens.

My employer blocks all known VPN endpoints (as well as TOR exit nodes) with ingress filtering. Because many attacks come from there...

>The only privacy you're gaining is that from your ISP.

This alone can be worth it for many people. I trust Mullvad significantly more than I trust my ISP.

But you are giving very little to the ISP to begin with. You can use encrypted DNS and most web content has TLS. The only gap there is SNI, which we should be able to close with TLS ECH. I don't know why ECH has been so slow to roll out.

Encrypted DNS is certainly an improvement, but it's only as anonymous as the IP address you are connecting to.

I am not aware of any firewalls that enforce the rule 'only attempt to connect to massively-shared cloud IPs that can't be easily subject to a reverse DNS lookup'.

Yup. I am in awe of what a great job VPN providers have done marketing this stuff to people, just how utter convinced they are they need them. It's next level marketing and it's amazing. Making an entire market almost overnight out of nothing.

How so? If Mullavad says about their no-loggind policy[0], they couldn't help any authorities that are asking about particular IP and particular timestamp. Obviously doesn't save you from Mossad spies under your bed, but it seems to be a big deal nevertheless. Isn't it so?

[0]: https://mullvad.net/en/help/no-logging-data-policy

Port forwarding was removed a year ago which handicapped P2P.

https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/5/29/removing-the-support-f...

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/vpn/

Discussion of the audit of TFA on the Privacy Guides forum:

https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/mullvads-2024-security-a...

The go-to used to be the website of "that one privacy guy". Now, on who is this guy, and whether this is really his site, I have no idea.

https://thatoneprivacysite.xyz/#detailed-vpn-comparison

> (Data last updated on 20/07/19)

I mean, if you knew who he was, he wouldn't be a very good privacy guy, now, would he?

I get what you're getting at, but no, in hindsight, I like my privacy and security watchdogs to be transparent. Like Bruce Schneier. And for a counterexample, Satoshi. I lost my trust in anonymous randos, for authenticity, I like someone with a professional face and contact info.

This hasn't been updated for a while but this is by far the most thorough breakdown/comparison of all vpn services

https://thatoneprivacysite.xyz/#detailed-vpn-comparison

I'm surprised no one has mentioned techlore.tech

You heard wrong. Mullvad is the best ;)

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