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Comment by devindotcom | Hacker News Reader

I understand Mullvad has historically been a leader in privacy among the big VPN options. What are some other equally affordable and user friendly options that you all have been satisfied with? Think for someone who saw Mullvad advertised during the Super Bowl but looking to leave because of this news.

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I've been quite satisfied with AirVPN [0].

[0] https://airvpn.org/

+1 on AirVPN. They are amongst the handful of companies which successfully resisted the war on torrenting (targeting VPNs that allowed persistent ports) and still allow for port reservation.

Mullvad, like most other VPNs gave in in the end and removed port reservations.

I wonder how AirVPN doesn't run out of ports since you reserve a static port number across all nodes (which is also a fingerprint). They seem to be almost all allocated. Do they just plan to never have more than 64512 customers?

I believe the ports reservation is tied to a specific node, not globally. The config is via a Wireguard config file you download.

I haven’t used Mullvad, so can’t say how it compares to ProtonVPN but I’m happy with Proton.

It is super easy to set up, even on Linux and iOS devices.

I've used both, and for me mullvad has worked a lot better. They seem more focused on VPN as core to what they do and don't leak data when reconnecting to a different server, and with proton I often experience that my connection stops working if my laptop gas been closed for some time, and the only way to make it work again is to reconnect to a new server. And then it leaks connections for a few seconds.

Do they have a CLI?

Does Proton keep logs? I’ve heard good things.

They don't keep logs but they've been transparent that if they ever receive a lawful court order to intercept new communications, they must comply. I honestly don't think this is unique to any VPN provider. Even if a VPN provider refuses to comply, authorities can simply backdoor or facilitate lawful interception however they'd like.

Thanks that makes sense.

It’s worth noting that Proton’s CEO is also known to be a supporter of right-wing causes.

There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. I keep along the effort, but it just continues to be impossible.

I don't think it's a coincidence that supporters of positions that are broadly considered extremist in their respective countries are also the ones who end up running services like private VPN and email.

Do you have any source on that? Whenever that’s brought up and I look into it the claims are far from credible, with little evidence of wrong doing

Yeah - answered below. As I mentioned, a lot of the tweets and Reddit posts have been deleted so it’s hard to track down now. It was a bit of a shitstorm on Mastodon some months ago though.

There have been many shitstorms, but whenever I looked at the actual tweets or sources, there was not much actual evidence. More often it showed the founder being a poor communicator, but not right-wing.

True enough. Although has Andy Yang openly supported Donald Trump so…. That’s a no for me.

Incorrect

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

I also think that there's significant overlap in the venn diagram of "I want to provide a privacy service" and "I hold some right wing views." If you're launching a no-logs VPN service, you probably have some distrust of institutions, lean closer toward techno-libertarian views which are increasingly getting absorbed into the right, have some form of belief in a free market, which is also starting to become a center/center-right view as the left is seeking a post-capitalist society that may or may not have a free market. The modern left is also unfortunately inching closer and closer to wanting nanny state style policies, so it's not surprising to see right wing views among privacy tech CEOs.

For left wing VPNs there's riseup, but it's not the same category of product as Mullvad, it's a free giveaway that you have to request access to, and intended for your personal use only - no excessive bandwidth like torrenting.

Could be, I don't follow the CEOs closely lol. Any source on this?

Yeah. It’s trace now because many of the tweets and Reddit posts have since been (unsurprisingly) purged but it looks basically the same as what we’re discussing regarding Mullvad right now.

- https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-tru... - https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-tr... - https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/proton-ceo-endorses-trum... - https://tildes.net/~society/1ldg/proton_ceo_tweets_support_f...

Their response says,

> Dems had a choice between the progressive wing (Bernie Sanders, etc), versus corporate Dems, but in the end money won and constituents lost.

And they're using this to say, Republicans are 'more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.'

That seem significantly more nuanced than supporting the right wing.

One of the articles you linked[1] also seems to debunk it.

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

What is the general consensus on NordVPN? They are frequent sponsors on youtube but I haven't heard much substantial about them either way.

I think they're relying on the fact that "Nord" sounds like "Nordic", so consumers think "they must be a Swedish company, I hear some Swedish techies are hardcore on freedom, e.g. the PirateBay is Swedish!".

In reality they're based in Panama, and their parent company is Dutch: https://support.nordvpn.com/hc/en-us/articles/19441152966161...

By any chance are you using any Apple products and are you a supporter of Donald Trump? Because if the answer is yes and no singling out Mullvad seems be rather hypocritical?

Based on his actions Tim Apple openly is an ardent supporter of Trump. So effectively everyone here who has a MacBook was supporting a company run by by a pro MAGA ceo...

Of course greed and corruption might be considered a mitigating factor by some people (instead of seemingly doing it purely due to one's personal convictions and without any coercion which is presumably the case here

Without wishing to defend Tim Cook at all, there is a difference between a corporation donating to an incumbent government that seems unusually receptive to bribes (including to be left alone) and an individual CEO being the main financial backer of a local fringe far right party he wants to make a national force, presumably because of his enthusiastic support for their policies which include the 'remigration' of citizens deemed excessively brown...

Where is the part that remigration would only happen to excessively brown people? I read the party leaders speeches etc but could not find it.

You’re doing the “we should improve society somewhat” meme guy thing. People are allowed to do better without being perfect.

ivpn

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