Mullvad VPN - Are there any known issues?

[phnx]

@Anon47486929

I am not sure where you are getting I am arguing for Proton.

I had initially intended to ask whether you were suggesting that the opposite was true, or simply that the differences are negligible but your 6th point gave me the impression that you were arguing Proton was superior. I apologise for the misinterpretation.

@Anon47486929

So using Mullvad paid is less anonymous than using Proton Free (in credential less mode) because it requires no payment method that you have to protect and has no obvious user ID tied to it. And Mullvad and Proton both are similarly private in paid mode due to above reasons.

I agree that this topic has probably run it’s course at this point. Privacy Guides recommends IVPN, Mullvad VPN and Proton VPN and they are all fantastic options.

[ignoramous]

@phnx

A credential-less account requires some identifiers including encryption keys in the same way as a random account number which Mullvad uses … (this seems logically sound to me but I could be wrong, I don’t know the exact back-end design of the feature)

Have you looked at Mullvad’s “front-end” code? Is Mullvad’s “account ID” fixed to a payment method?

From my reading of Proton’s “front-end” code, credential-less certs (“encryption keys”) can be changed often (the default expiry is set to 12 hours!)

Proton’s credential-less also has “user IDs”; 2 of them in fact;^[1] and for credential-less, since no email registration is involved, both those IDs are random gobbledygook. These “user IDs” (not certs) are equivalent (or superior?) to Mullvad’s UUIDs (account IDs). You seem to be comparing apples and oranges, I am afraid.

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1. Temporary, intermediate pseudonym (different from the user’s email/ account registration data related credentials) is created to establish a final VPN connection. The only verification performed by Proton is to check whether the user is a paid user or not. The purpose of this action is to terminate excess sessions for free users if the limit is exceeded. During the VPN connection, the e-mail address used to register an account is not being sent to the VPN server at any time. The randomly generated “VPN username” is being sent to the VPN server, but it is not being logged at any time, meaning that Proton VPN does not log information about which VPN server the user is connected to. Similarly, Proton VPN does not log information about which user is connected to a specific VPN server. securitums-security-report-for-proton-vpns-no-logs-policy-2024 : SECURITUM : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive ↩︎

[BadWolfe]

Bandwidth differences? I think I have experienced a difference between Proton VPN and Mullvad VPN.
While experimenting for a month using Mullvad VPN, I cannot do multiple downloads and visit websites at the same time. When I switch to my Proton VPN, I am able to do all with no delays. When I switch back to Mullvad VPN, the delays show up again.
It could just be my current experience (or hallucination) but I do think that I am seeing a difference.