I do have experience in these areas (torrenting for a long time though not at all in the past several years, read TorrentFreak over the years, followed Snowden, etc.), but have never personally bought access to a VPN, even though I feel like I **should ** have been using one since like 2008.

I familiar with most terms and concepts, I know to look for non-FVEY/SSEUR jurisdictions only, strict no-log, network killswitch, pay with cash/crypto, DNS leak protection as a bonus, etc.

I am wondering which service you all have decided to go with.

  • post_trains [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Mullvad is a bunch of cool Swedish weirdos who are generally explicit about the political nature of their business. No logging, no accounts tied to anything but a random number, cash/crypto payments, and a network killswitch in their app if you choose to use that.

    They’re also an early supporter of WireGuard and have it deployed extensively.

    Downside: They’re in a 14 Eyes jurisdiction. I don’t really care about this for my purposes. A VPN - no matter how well-chosen - is relatively weak protection and shouldn’t be construed as an effective privacy solution on its own.

    • standardissue [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Just got an email about Mozilla's new VPN that uses Mullvad's servers but I'm not sure why I shouldn't just use Mullvad directly. At least buying from Mullvad means nothing is tied to my Firefox account

      • post_trains [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Without knowing more about it, I can't really say. It lacks some features I'd like to see, and I personally wouldn't want to put all my eggs in one proverbial basket. But good on them for picking a well-regarded partner and an excellent newish technology.

  • kota [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Private internet access as of right now. They've won court cases proving they dont keep logs and im able to just about max out my bandwidth over their connection. Some huge downsides are that they're a US company and that they try to make you use a crappy custom VPN client instead of just openvpn or wireguard. Plenty good enough for downloading linux isos though imo.

    • john_brown_adk [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I used to use them but then they got bought by some creepy company so I'm not sure we can trust them any more

      • kota [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Oh shit really? Was thinking of switching to mullvad anyway once this year runs out.

    • lib2
      ·
      4 years ago

      I use PIA as well.

  • coppercrystalz [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    What do you people think about Windscribe? I've been using the free data limited version for a while because I dont have high VPN needs.

    • shyamalamadingdong [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Solid free plan, one of the 2 free vpn providers I still somewhat trust (other is Proton). They are based in a 14-eyes country though, FWIW.

    • sunlit_uplands [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      "Don’t #1: Use Tor for Torrenting

      As a powerful privacy tool, Tor might seem like the perfect means of downloading and uploading files via BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer networks, but it is not! Using a torrent client bypasses Tor’s protection and blows your anonymity by sending your real IP address to the torrent service and other ‘peers.’ This action allows them to identify you, the port you’re using for torrenting, and even the data you’re sharing, if it isn’t encrypted.

      They can then potentially target you with malware or even notify the relevant authorities (if you’re sharing copyrighted material). Additionally, torrent traffic places a massive strain on the Tor network and slows it down for others, so it’s selfish and careless.

      For all these reasons, Tor says file-sharing is “widely unwanted,” and exit nodes are configured by default to block torrent traffic."