Very telling that big sites are only promoting VPN services that heavily advertise… i.e. - give commissions on signups.
The list of providers they “tested” aren’t even that complete, they didn’t even bother to pretend to check out ones that won’t give a kickback for promotion.
They don’t give specific recommendations, but the EFF has a good list of things to look for in a provider. https://ssd.eff.org/module/choosing-vpn-thats-right-you
Totally agree but I’m fine with them choosing protonvpn as the best overall out of that list. I like proton and have used them for years. But, the fact that Mullvad wasn’t in their list at all is suspect.
Agreed with your last point, though Mullvad axing port forwarding means for torrenters they’ve become drastically less useful, so I wouldn’t rate them very highly myself either. Despite liking them a lot.
I wonder why they don’t employ Nat-pmp like Proton does.
I think Mullvad was being used for a lot of CSAM torrenting, and they didn’t like that. They got tired of regular users complaining of being blocked everywhere, and Interpol knocking on their door.
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PSA: FastVPN is not private, you will have your personal info leaked
Shocker: All these “Best of” lists are nothing but affiliate marketing pages. They’re popular because people do seek them out, since good lists are genuinely useful, so sites capitalise on them as a revenue source.
I’ve noticed this too.
Proton VPN with Proton unlimited. Don’t use anything that is advertised everywhere.
Nord VPN… 🤡
I find I’m getting high ping with proton and relatively slow speeds. Does it get better with proton unlimited?
Definitely, you get thousands of servers in many countries, the free version is just the demo package.
Mullvad is not the first on the list?
It’s engadget, so
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FastVPN has malware in the payload, be careful when installing!
Mullvad no longer supports port forwarding, making it completely useless for torrenting which is my main use case.
I find this interesting because I use Mozilla VPN, which is just rebranded Mullvad, and qBittorrent works just fine on it.
You can torrent without portforwarding. The only issue is on rare Linux isos. You potentially will have trouble discovering new peers. At least one person will need portforwarding.
It’s more that effective seeding is very hard without a forwarded port. If you only leech, you’ll be fine. But that’s not how the system is envisioned.
What about with something like Soulseek? I’m just getting into using it and still have no idea how to optimize using it, and doing so safely.
Can’t really help you there, I haven’t used Soulseek before.
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Wasn’t FastVPN caught holding user logs and selling personal data to advertisement agencies?
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I linked a Docker Container elsewhere in this topic that works with Proton’s implementation of port forwarding. Proton’s price is the same as Mullvad too. That would be my recommendation.
Really? I was planning to switch to Mullvad.
Had to leave MV because of this. I went to Proton, though I did need special software to support its form of port forwarding without introducing a regular hassle. All good now, mostly.
Yep I use the binhex container too, makes everything really easy to set up.
I was looking at Proton too but I’m already a customer and the VPN is going to be shared with family members. I worries if they can access my mail if I share my account.
You can get around this by generating the files for OpenVPN or Wireguard for them and sending those.
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I prefer the TorrentFreak article on VPNs.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The once-niche way to protect your online activity took off, in part, due to massive marketing budgets and influencer collaborations convincing consumers that a VPN’s functionality or privacy features could solve all their security woes.
In other words, secure VPNs work by masking your IP address and the identity of your computer or mobile device on the network and creating an encrypted “tunnel” that prevents your internet service provider (ISP) from accessing data about your browsing history.
“If you’re just worried about somebody sitting there passively and looking at your data then a VPN is great,” Jed Crandall, an associate professor at Arizona State University, told Engadget.
If you travel a lot and rely on public WiFi or hotspots, are looking to browse outside of your home country or want to keep your traffic hidden from your ISP, then investing in a VPN will be useful.
We looked at price, usage limits, effects on internet speed, possible use cases, ease of use, general functionality and additional “extra” VPN features like multihop.
That said, it works on a bunch of devices from smart TVs to game consoles, unlike some other services that lack support beyond the usual suspects like smartphones and laptops.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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Not seeing anyone mention Private Internet Access. Are they not good anymore?
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This post is like 2 years old guys. :)
Ah ok, engadget appearently updated the content to 2025 using the same link used 2 years ago…
Compare their list vs https://www.privacyguides.org/en/vpn/
It’s kind of funny proton comes on top of both lists.
I will have to suggest ovpn. Minus it being slightly more difficult to search issues because it’s too similar to openvpn , I’ve been super happy with it for my use case. I ended up choosing them over mullvad because of the port forwarding issue.
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