AlternativeTotal2211
(You expect me to give this on a privacy place? Is this a test to see if I am worthy enough?)
1
Hi,
I’ve read that you suggest Proton, but I hated their free version.
Whereas I love Windscribe free.
Unfortunately I am no expert so I neither have tools or knowledge to properly test a VPN, nor much info about the behind the scenes of how reliable X Company is compared to Y Company.
These are the ones which I thought they could be interesting:
Nord
SurfShark
Proton
Windscribe
These services are important to me:
the ability to choose whatever server I want whenever I want (I guess they all do, but for example Proton free does not, while Windscribe free does, so I ask just in case)
speed: proton free is IMMENSELY slower than Windscribe free, like, seriously, 10mbps vs 400.
Yes I know I am not looking for a paid one and things are different there, but again, better to be clear
it is important that the VPN offers several servers in Europe besides some in the major Countries of other continents.
I am pretty sure that there is no info about me online because I never used my real data anywhere in the last 20 years.
But there were a few cases where I had to, so I now wonder how far it went and I was curious about the personal data reports and removal feature of SurfShark, and Nord lesser offer or data breach info.
I didn’t see any VPN mentioning the Location, Language, and Timezone spoofing offered by Windscribe, and I find them kind of essential from a fingerprint perspective at least for my very poor understanding of what fingerprinting is.
What is your perspective on this?
Would you still suggest Proton and why?
Or what else?
Mullvad tends to be the VPN provider I recommend. The pricing is more than reasonable, they have a lot of locations and servers, they own some of their servers (see mullvad.net/en/servers), they have SOCKS5 proxies for each of their locations, they support both OpenVPN and Wireguard, and support Multi-hop.
They are generally regarded as the gold standard among privacy-focused VPN providers. They don’t require any email address, no name, or anything. You generate an ID and use it. When you want to add time to your account, you can choose a few different payment methods, including Monero.
Even better yet, you can download the Mullvad Browser or firefox configurations, and use both the VPN and SOCKS5 proxies. That way you can split all of your work by using 1 VPN exit for your PC, and then other locations for each of your browsers.
They were raided last year, but supposedly no data was compromised. As far as VPNs go, they’re on the top of my list.
6 Likes
AlternativeTotal2211
(You expect me to give this on a privacy place? Is this a test to see if I am worthy enough?)
5
343 Proton (Amsterdam) vs 892 Windscribe (Amsterdam Red Light) in my case, measured with my ISP speedtest.
I could not use the libre one on Firefox with the Windscribe addon, no idea why, it didn’t want to start measuring.
Can it be that you misunderstand how the location spoofing works in Windscribe?
It’s about GPS, not about IP.
They fake your GPS location.
From their website:
The location API in modern browsers bypasses the proxy or VPN, and returns your physical location based on GPS or Wi-Fi SSID name. Some services use it to “prove” that you’re physically located in the location of your IP address. Location Warp will trick those services by providing fake GPS coordinates in the location you’re connected to.
AlternativeTotal2211
(You expect me to give this on a privacy place? Is this a test to see if I am worthy enough?)
6
I had never heard of it ever before coming to this place.
Not that I am any expert in the matter at all, but between being completely unknown to me and the horribly unsexy logo, it doesn’t really attract me.
I’d need hard facts to be convinced. Speed comparisons (but as the case here proves, these can vary tremendously from user to user), feature comparisons, price comparisons.
But the fact that they don’t offer a money refund is a huge no go for me.
Not that I am any expert in the matter at all, but between being completely unknown to me and the horribly unsexy logo, it doesn’t really attract me.
I’m not sure what the quality of the logo has to do with the quality of the service they provide, but to each their own.
I’d need hard facts to be convinced. Speed comparisons (but as the case here proves, these can vary tremendously from user to user), feature comparisons, price comparisons.
But the fact that they don’t offer a money refund is a huge no go for me.
It’s a VPN provider that is focused on privacy and anonymity, so a refund policy wouldn’t make sense, since they would need to record your personal and payment data to issue a refund. The team behind Mullvad developed and continues to develop their service to log and record less data instead of more.
Can it be that you misunderstand how the location spoofing works in Windscribe?
It’s about GPS, not about IP.
They fake your GPS location.
They’re referring to a specific API in browsers (see Geolocation API - Web APIs | MDN). Since computers don’t come shipped with GPS, the browser can’t use GPS and the best functionality will be used to come up with a location. If you use a VPN, it’s expected that your location will show a different location than your current one. If you use GPS on your phone and give access to an app, then the app will use your GPS location. That is not something a VPN changes, since it’s different from your IP address.
Lastly, you can check out VPN Comparison by That One Privacy Guy. Not sure how up-to-date the spreadsheet is, but there’s a couple different VPN comparison spreadsheets out there that you can take a look at.
4 Likes
AlternativeTotal2211
(You expect me to give this on a privacy place? Is this a test to see if I am worthy enough?)
10
It was a joke, the logo, but I really find it highly unattractive and I wonder if a Company doesn’t even put that much of an effort in how they present themselves, what can I expect from the rest.
It’s like I go to a Job interview in pajama.
Of course if people tell me hey you need to check this, it’s the best ever, I won’t be deaf to it.
About the spoofing thing, it’s not only an Addon thing, it’s also in their Android App and there I find it even more essential because there is a real GPS.
I thought it’s a neat feature, you don’t find so?
And there it’s system wide, not just in the app:
About the refund for Mullvad, they offer GiroPay and PayPal which would make no sense if they would not offer a refund policy.
Indeed I just checked on their website and they offer the same 30 days of most other VPNs, unless you pay in cash (which blame my mother for my trust issues but no thanks).
I’ll have a look at Mullvad.
But let’s say that I pay with PayPal and they know who I am, they can track me whenever I use their VPN, right?
If so, would Mullvad be better than other VPN like Proton where you have to login to use it?
I had a look at the one privacy dude comparison.
It’s not a real comparison, it only compares the official specs, trusting that they say the truth. Still, I investigated on the red for jurisdiction of Windscribe and even asked their AI Garry (quite impressive, I was wondering if it was a human kidding with me. It was a stubborn AI, completely refused to answer on personal questions about its origins ). and it seems there’s concerns about the Five Eyes possibly demanding them to share info about their users. But they claim a strict no log policy, so they have little to nothing to share, right?
Now, Proton should be all green being Swiss and proud of it. But jurisdiction was only yellow, why? And why yellow logging?
Mullvad was scoring well. On a privacy level that’s it.
AlternativeTotal2211
(You expect me to give this on a privacy place? Is this a test to see if I am worthy enough?)
11
I’m not sure you are right, but maybe it’s because I dont know enough about VPN.
They offer this function (and system wide) in Android too.
Then you should also probably stop considering surfshark or nord. setting aside how shady they are in terms of ownership and such, they make it a pain to cancel
3 Likes
AlternativeTotal2211
(You expect me to give this on a privacy place? Is this a test to see if I am worthy enough?)
15
How do you do the quote in this forum? I see no button for an automated quote, only a " here where I’m writing but it does not add your quote, it only adds an empty quote that I have to manually fill.
Is this how you all are doing it?
Thanks for the info, I did not know.
Can you elaborate on that with some more info and examples?
AlternativeTotal2211
(You expect me to give this on a privacy place? Is this a test to see if I am worthy enough?)
16
I had a look at Mullvad (btw I realize another reason why I just can’t feel that instinctive “yeah” for this software: Müll in German means trash… ).
Nowhere in the website they explain the features of their VPN, or is it hidden somewhere that I didn’t find yet?
Well, PG suggests Proton, Mullvad and IVPN with detailed reasons, are you sure you’ve read the VPN section on the site or are you just referring to some thread in this forum?
Not really sure what is the point of this discussion. As @user1 also wrote we have a curated list of good recommended VPN providers that adhere to what we think is important. Now OP asks about services we do not recommend and one recommended one. Then obviously the only acceptable answer is Proton and to read the recommendations. The recommendations are not there for nothing, if you decide to do something different that is all on you but all these other providers have been discussed in the past. It’s pointless to start that all over again here.
If you are looking for the fasted VPN rather than the most private VPN solutions you are not in the right corner of the internet.
I don’t see any reason to use any of the VPN’s you listed (except for Proton and Windscribe). Nord and Surfshark don’t have great track records with false advertising and data breaches.
Just to let you know that free VPNs will mostly not have great speed, so if speed is very important consider buying one. But I had some great results of Windscribes free version.
Even if you never put info on the internet, maybe you used to use Google, Facebook, etc which they probably know who you are.
VPNs will not prevent fingerprinting all the way, it only changes your IP. There are many other ways you can be fingerprinted, like browser, javascript. I dont think its possible for a VPN to do this maybe Windscribe you said but it probably would not help you.
I was about to write a recommendation but I think the first thing you ought to do is STOP using the free VPN’s as these are known to collect user data and SELL it to companies.
I wouldn’t touch any of those VPN’s you listed with a 10-foot pole.
Proton has always had this thing in my head saying something is up.
All the other VPNs you listed say they have “no logs” when in reality they do.
It might not be logs of what you visit, but they definitely log the IP you are connecting from, and which server you are connected too, and for how long you are connect to whichever server you connect too.
My recommendation would be Mullvad VPN since they literally keep “no logs” and was even raided but had no information to give, since there was none.
Long user of various VPN’s so in my opinion this sidails me to my own opinion.
Tested A LOT of them, some paid, some free, some extremely basic, some with highly sophisticated features.
The most important factors while chosing VPN are:
What we are going to do with it? Will we be dicking PIN or whatever
Profiles: select desired server, create it as profile, and than just 1-click-connect.
Stability: no hiccups, no locks, just up till disconnected
Kill-switch: sounds harsh but extremely useful feature
Speeds: the greater, the better,
Resoiurce wise app.
Im using Proton Unlimited with Proton VPN. Excellent service.
I am not sure whether this is always be the case. For example, Windscribe that its free account is limited to 10GB of bandwidth per??? Or Proton that the free account has many limitations (to make sure you pay for the service). Therefore, I don’t think selling people’s data is their main business (fingers crossed ).
I think it would depend on the provider. But I am not going to use any of Opera VPN for sure.
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