Guess y’all saw the news of Mullvad CEO donating to a “remigration” party in Sweden, and making up 70% of their budget last year:
As I don’t want to support that, I am palnning to move to iVPN. Out of the three recommended by PG, I saw the least content about them here.
Is their service working well? Any recent experiences one could share? Is it blocked often or rather similar to Mullvad?
I am leaving too. By the way, this is also commented in this recent thread https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/njalla-vpn/38835
Also, I have not seen anything in PG about the recent Proton sponsorship of a far-right French youtuber. Proton posted a letter to clarify its mistake.
I’ll make sure to buy a yearly subscription this time 
I got access to Chinese residential IP endpointa this month through a gfw research group and both Mullvad and iVPN are worth the price.
IVPN is a good VPN. Moreover, it has Iceland (one of the best freedom country) with Flokinet (one of the best provider for freedom). IVPN also have active member here who is @viktorivpn .
I would rather prioritize the security and privacy of my data over the opinions of someone else that are not my own.
All the VPN providers suggested on PG are reliable, but other options may also be worth considering.
Edit: I’ve just read their respone on X Mullvad.net on X: "@fiskargubbe Mullvad is a political company. We fight for freedom of speech, freedom of information and the right to privacy. These are firmly held values of the founders of Mullvad. Mullvad protects the right for people to express things we don't agree with. We protect the right of everyone" / X
Yeah, here I am looking for usage experience, but in general my criteria are:
I get that the 4th bullet point is subjective and all big companies “tolerate” at one point their governments/policies if forced to (see USA), but you have to draw the line at one point and Mullvad definitely crossed that for me.
Edit: being downvoted for not wanting support to have fascists in governmemt is wild tbh. What do you think those parties will do once in power? See the USA..
I’ll only share my personal experience with IVPN—it won’t be my “opinion,” I’ll get straight to the point:
If you’re wondering whether I’d recommend using it, my answer is: yes.
Here’s why they stopped the annual audits, and it’s actually a positive thing:
Claims around ’no-logs’ audits can be misleading, or at best ambiguous to customers. Audits are a snapshot in time: any VPN service receiving a ’no-logs’ stamp from independent evaluators can update its systems and start collecting sensitive data the following day. We have also seen some VPN providers cite such audits as a marketing tool that creates a false sense of security. For these reasons, we will not commission further no-logs audits.
-–
The decision is yours.
Wear downvotes as a badge of values. Sticking to your personal values is always the right thing to do. Mullvad is very popular here, as it should be, they have fantastic privacy focused projects.
I presently am not using any of their products, but held them in high regard. But no more will they be on my list of potentials
To actually put my money where my mouth is… I was a happy Proton mail paid subscriber. Within weeks of the CEOs infamous comments I was gone
Told I was an “over reacting” alarmist. I put that in quotes because I was not over reacting – it was the right decision for ME, because I was following MY personal values. The CEO (and actually the company itself as they initially defended the statements) showed me who he is, and I believe him. The inevitable walk back would never be enough for ME
And so it is. Never looked back, and happy with my current email providers. Willing to bail if needed. Side note: great reason to not tie into an ecosystem
At end of the day, could I in any possible way feel good handing MY money over to Mullvad now, knowing where some of that money ends up? Not a chance. Ever
Of course, it is fully understood, the game of Privacy whack-a-mole we all find ourselves in, and options are certainly limited. Make your stand, stick to YOUR beliefs best you can, even if it’s not the path well worn. It’s all we can do
Cheers
Wow, I am using it. It makes me consider about that again.
(post deleted by author)
Hello everyone, dumb American here that’s going to need your help. I’m trying to read up on this, but I don’t know what to take away from it, because almost every single source that I’m reading, is giving conflicting editorials. (hooray politics!) To make matters worse, you could be talking about quantum physics and I’d understand it about as well as I understand Swedish politics.
For a tldr, is there actual truth to what’s being said? Or is this just another misinformation snowball effect, just like what happened with Proton and the right wing / Trump thing where the stuff turned out to be either not true or extremely exaggerated?
UPDATE: OK, just saw the tweet. Still out of the loop on the politics, but that tweet clarified things a lot more.
Thanks a lot, very insightful. I know a bit about their openness what a VPN can and can not do. They also have some good info blogs/posts I read in the past.
The no-audit thingy is interesting and understandable. Will have to make up my mind. As I understand, it only concerns the no-log audit part and not in general the audits though.
I honestly understand Mudvall’s statement and I believe they are sincere. The situation is much simpler: there are people, like myself, who don’t like seeing our hard-earned money end up fattening the bank accounts of fascists. While “voting with your wallet” is a flawed concept (then billionaires’ votes count far more than workers’), we can always choose to support companies aligned with the values we stand for. That’s the most natural and respectable thing, and anyone with a minimum of civic sense should understand it. That’s why, goodbye Mudvall, just as I did with Google and Microsoft before.
Whoa, take a breath. The only things I know about Sweden is viking larping, Sabaton, and poorly made particle board furniture. Don’t get so angry at my ignorance. Based on your rant, I assumed ignorance was something we had in common.
A void of information doesn’t negate holding true to the process of trying to retain ones personal values, once information becomes available
If we’ve been enjoying weekend BBQs with the neighbors for years, and suddenly we get notice he’s an ax murderer, am I hauling the wife & kids over to the BBQ again this weekend? Newly discovered information has forced me to re-evaluate this situation
Hence, the whack-a-mole reference. It’s an ever changing landscape
We make the best decisions (for our personal beliefs) at the time based upon the information we have on hand at the time
I am long time Mullvad user, but occasionally check IVPN and Proton, and maybe some other decent provider. I need commercial VPN mostly to bypass geo-blocking content and for torrents, I don’t expect it to provide much privacy or anonymity, but I would prefer some decent data protection, i.e. not selling it to 3rd parties. Also, good linux client is highly preferred.
The only thing I didn’t like from mullvad was split tunneling that requires launching it every time that way, instead of setting it once, as on windows. It can be bypassed by editing .desktop files though. That was on their roadmap for long time, but still no updates. Similar is with ProtonVPN
But IVPN has something similar (in beta), called Inverse mode, not ideal, but for sure better, at least for my needs. VPN is bypassed by default and you launch program from their application you want to route through their servers. And it can be done from system tray, which is great.
One more plus is that one geo-block location stopped working on mullvad some time ago, but I see it works with IVPN server. And they have also updated their price to match mullvad (5 devices, ~55€ a year), previously there were 2 devices for basic, and 7 for plus plan, but I need at least 5.
The downsides are number of servers compared to Mullvad, and especially to Proton, lack of their own infrastructure, and I think speeds are lower for some locations, but I need to test it more.
I think I would switch to IVPN regardless of mullvad’s CEO behavior as for my use-case, it seems to be the best. I checked NymVPN, Obscura and Njalla, but they don’t have servers at locations I need, plus last two have no linux clients. But Nym could also be a good choice, as it’s cheaper (for yearly purchase)
If I were to avoid everything just because someone does or has done things I don’t like, I’d probably end up sitting alone in the dark. I take a pragmatic approach to the whole thing. The service does exactly what I want it to do. If the CEO really does support fascists, then I think that’s terrible, but it’s his private business, and I hope he gets a taste of fascism firsthand. Alternatively, he could also advocate for integration and support parties that are seriously committed to it, not just as a token gesture because it sounds good on paper.
I’ve been using IVPN for a while and it’s been good. The main issues are that the server count is low, and many of the servers don’t run on 10 Gbps. Also, some servers aren’t RAM-only.
Fair point, and I appreciate the honesty. I’m certainly not judging anyone who takes a more pragmatic stance. I’m simply sharing where I personally stand on this.
For me, it’s not about pursuing some impossible standard of ideological purity and I completely agree that would be unrealistic and exhausting. It’s more about the fact that when someone in a position of power openly aligns themselves with fascism, that crosses a line I’m personally not willing to overlook. For me, fascism isn’t just another political opinion, so for me, choosing to step away in those cases is a matter of conscience, not perfectionism.
Damn.
I’ve already purchased Mullvad gift cards for the next few years of service so I suppose I’ll keep using it for now since they’ve already gotten my money. But I’ll reassess after that.
As someone who recently read Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem I can’t believe ‘remigration’ of legal residents is once again an acceptable idea in Europe. We all know where it led.