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Comment by plmpsu | Hacker News Reader

Just pay for and use Mullvad.

By mailing cash, if you like. They don't care if they know who you are or not. They don't ask for your email address, you just log in with a randomly-assigned account number and a password.

Just spin up a server with wireguard.

or with Tailscale (and configure the server as an exit node).

This is the way (or Tailscale). Easier to move around between datacenters to find one with an ASN/IP that isn't blocked by the apps/websites you use. If you do want a more off-the-shelf solution, Mullvad is probably the best choice. All of the consumer VPNs (including Mullvad) get blocked by various services - I get degraded/intermittent connection to Google Maps on them. GCC countries block most of the well-known VPNs as well, if you ever travel to the Arabian/Persian Gulf region. My private datacenter VPN gets blocked only very, very rarely.

WireGuard/udp commonly gets blocked on public wifi

That defeats the entire purpose of anonymously mingling your data with others’

I did until they killed port forwarding.

OOC what's your current favored provider? AirVPN? Proton?

I tried Airvpn but the MacOS client is beyond trash.

And the website just gives 2005 amateur PHP coder vibes. Not just the design. The session expiry is seems very long - I hadn't visited for a few days and I'm still logged in. I'd be surprised if it wasn't infinite.

On Mac you can just use OpenVPN/Wireguard and import one of the profiles you can generate through their website.

Not for feature parity.

And I find there's a good correlation between the quality of the apps and the overall quality of the company. No surprise that the Mullvad VPN app is excellent

For multiple reasons it's better and safer to avoid using official provider client in the first place, regardless of provider, and connect with a good wireguard/openvpn/whatever client.

Not universally true. The Mullvad client has lots of additional features to enhance privacy. Killswitch, split tunnelling (you might otherwise disconnect the VPN to use a certain app, so it can overall improve privacy), Shadowsocks, Lockdown mode etc

It's extremely high quality on MacOS in my experience. It's never crashed for example whereas Airvpn's crashes daily. It connects almost instantly. I don't think I've ever seen it give an error

AirVPNs main proposition isn't "we have a nice app / UX". It's "we give you the most configs / options". AFAIK they're currently one of very few that allow you to configure both port forwards and give you a stable config (keys) to run your own wireguard instance

Proton for me.

Proton right now. It's okay but it causes some network issues even when it's set to split tunnel default-exclude.

Yep.

And I was on Proton for 3y, until the CEO were backing Trump and Vance on Reddit and other places. Their port forwarding was also painful as well, but it worked.

Cancelled. PIA does the port forwarding nicely and stabily. No jank scripts to run every 60 seconds.

Now evidently PIA is a bunch of scum capitalists. But in reality, who isn't?

Mullvad? But they killed port forwarding for "abuse".

> the CEO were backing Trump and Vance on Reddit and other places

Something happened, but THAT didn't.

https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-tr...

> Given Proton’s outstanding track record and reputation thus far as a free, open-source, crowdfunded organization, owned by a non-profit and based in Switzerland (a country known for its neutrality), this topic is worth a deep dive.

Either it was someone paid to write this, or if author really believes this, they are not someone I trust.

Maybe the organization is non-profit (which I do not believe is practically true), it does not explain them sharing so much with Tesonet.

The Proton CEO is not "backing Trump and Vance." He wrote something positive about a narrow policy Trump supported that's favorable to little tech over big tech. That's it. It's certainly possible that someone you detest can still occasionally support a particular policy you think is good.

Particularly when dealing with someone like Trump, who has, on occasion, backed both sides of an issue, depending on the day of the week! ;P

I do and I like them, but Cloudflare blocks their ips aggressively.

Reddit too, I wished they offered residential or dedicated and/or unlisted ips. But most of the time you just have to cycle through different ips to unblock.

At this point in the cat/mouse game, wouldn't any set of IPs used by a VPN eventually be able to be sussed out by anyone interested?

Some vpn services offer dedicated residential IP addresses, meaning you get an IP from just a regular private ISP in some other country. It's admittedly a bit shady though, and more expensive ofc but that will unblock everything

There was a bumpy ride with CF a while ago but they seem fine now (still plenty of captchas, of course)

They dont port forward unfortunately

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