What are your experiences with NordVPN? Lots of professional review websites seem to recommend it as their top contender, but I’m not sure if they’ve paid review sites off…
I would be using it on a laptop running Windows and on an iphone & ipad.
I’ve been considering if I should get a VPN for a while now, but the Malwarebytes I have installed on my computer’s “Trusted Advisor” is now telling me I should get one, so that has pushed me over the edge.
Yes.
Its sponsored content.
You should know from the amount of YT videos we’ve seen peddle it.
I havent seen the more reputable VPNs being advertised as much as Nord. Quite frankly with a marketing budget like that, it sort of make me a bit worried because only BigTech does it in that scale. And from what we’ve seen in the news BigTech isnt privacy focused as much as they are profit focused.
This is so stressful. How am I supposed to know what VPNs are actually good if the review websites are paid off?
You could take a look at PrivacyGuides’ recommendations: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/vpn/
ProtonVPN might be a good choice, or even Mullvad. Would avoid other VPNs tbh.
100% paid. The VPN industry (and the VPN ““review”” industry) is notoriously horrible when it comes to paid reviews, and disingenous marketing.
but the Malwarebytes […] is now telling me I should get one
Unsurprisingly Malware Bytes just so happens to offer a paid VPN… 
As others have mentioned already, Mullvad and Proton and IVPN are good solid choices that don’t engage in shady or hyperbolic marketing. Privacyguides.org and Techlore.tech both have VPN resources that are not paid or sponsored.
@xe3 I’m not really interested in Malwarebytes’ own VPN, but I trust them security wise and the reccomendation to get a VPN seems to be new (as of last time I looked at the application).
I’m liking the look of Mullvad, my one concern is the reviews of the iOS app. The ProtonVPN app has much better reviews. Unfortunately though, the iOS App Store has been glitching for days and won’t let me actually open and look through the page for any application, so I can’t actually go through the reviews and just have to go off star rating. ProtonVPN doesn’t support IPv6 though which seems like a pretty crucial aspect.
Also relevant blog article:
It still holds true today. None of the recommendations on privacyguides.org compensate or otherwise pay us anything as it has always been.
You should avoid all Nord Security products, that’s all that you need to know.
This is well hidden, but if you look Nord VPN had a vulnerability and they failed to disclose it for over a year.
That’s quite common for them:
A lot. Like was very well put together by Eric Murphy in this video.
are you suggesting its not worth using a VPN at all?
No. You should assess your own needs. For example, for me, even if VPN may not offer any security or privacy value (it offers) I still need to have access to other countries network locations.
It is stressful all this dominance of shady VPN providers in the review scene. Making people confused and consequently adopting services that are very questionable.
I trust this type of constructive online interactions with experienced people in the field that are open to support those that are seeking help for better informed decisions.
vpns are dumb… just use TOR
… If you enjoy watching websites take minutes to load each time…
Go watch videos with Tor then… 
FYI, Malware Bytes is using Mullvad under the hood.
TOR can do 60MBPS it is not slow
they work just fine, 720p, 1080 if lucky