this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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I've been using mullvad for a few years—since PIA got bought out—and would recommend it if you're concerned about trust.
So, using a VPN doesn't actually eliminate all possibility of being tracked. All you're doing is replacing who can potentially see all of your data, from your ISP to the VPN provider, so trust is actually a pretty important factor.
When I switched the consensus at the time was that mullvad was the most true to its privacy statement, i.e. trustworthy. A lot of other vpns are cheaper or have more bells and whistles, but have histories of data breaches or scandals, are based in countries with weak privacy/strong surveillance laws, or are owned by companies that may have an interest in the customers data (like with the PIA acquisition I mentioned).
Mullvad too has had a few incidents where they were served court orders to provide data to the police, but iirc no data was ever actually given up. Plus, they allow a bunch of different privacy-centric payment methods, including just sending cash in an envelope.
I'd recommend taking a look at some more recent discussions comparing VPNs but I think considering mullvad is a good place to start.
For what it's worth, I opted to wait until I had my first issue with PIA after the buyout to switch and it just never really happened. I've remained on PIA for my sea-sailing needs, and still haven't had an ISP email or other problem with them, other than the client being a little janky on occasion.
I'm not an active advocate or anything, but my experience is that they're still good enough, even years after the acquisition. Perhaps they're using the data for something behind the scenes, but it's cheap and keeps my ISP off my back. I'd at least still consider it in the "good enough for this purpose" category.