Do VPN's actually protect against any of that? They're basically only useful if you want to get around your country's internet filters, log into a website that has blocked your IP, or hide your traffic from the government (and in the latter's case, Tor is probably a better pick).

I guess it may help with tracking, but there are so many ways in which your tracked, is your IP even one of them?

Mullvad. Not even a question

I use Proton currently since it comes with my proton subscription. But I used mullvad for years and prefer it. They're both good, you can't go wrong really.

There'd thundermail coming out soon, which will probably have mullvad included. This also funds firefox too which is nice.

Mullvad any day. Support is awesome.

If you go with Mullvad look for the gift cards out there that are for 6 or 12 months of service. I grabbed one off Amazon.ca for 12 months at $75. Works out to be cheaper than paying per month with the ever changing exchange rates.

I also like the fact that Mullvad has servers in the city I live in where as Proton has them on the west coast or east coast. Not the greatest for those in the middle of the country.

I like that you don't have to provide an email address to mullvad.

I prefer Mullvad. I've found it a lot more reliable. I was a paying Proton customer but still had connectivity issues a non-negligible number of times, whereas I've literally never had Mullvad be the cause of connection issues in my years of using it. It's great that they take cash and have literally only an account hash associated with your account.

I've also found that Mullvad customer support are responsive, helpful, and know what they're talking about. I've had experiences with Proton's customer support that were ok, but occasionally had the typical customer service hiccups along the lines of being assigned a new support agent who doesn't read back all the conversation (understandable—I had one bug I was dealing with for months) and you have to explain again what the original issue was and what has been done since.

I think both options are perfectly fine, but I definitely prefer Mullvad, and it's what I recommend to people if they ask me to recommend a VPN service.

I love that Proton bots/fanboys always get pretty nervous when someone just points out the facts 🤣

Mullvad is much friendlier to privacy, but their proxies get blocked by A LOT of stuff, they also have a very small number of proxies. Mullvad collects literally nothing about you, but that's a double edged sword. not having any way to verify exactly who paid money into which account number means they can't help you if someone steals your account. I also have it on good authority that mullvad isn't very reliable at getting past more aggressive censorship firewalls. the one in china for example won't allow you to use mullvad unless the sim you're connecting from is a US one.

Proton doesn't record anything you're doing with their VPN and they've had to prove that many times and their "sentinel" program and the 2FA and double password you can enable make it very hard if not impossible for someone to mootch off your account. I very rarely get blocked by anything when I use proton VPN, if I ever do get blocked I just have to change the proxy I'm on. I don't even have to change the location most of the time because proton VPN has a huge number of proxies at each location.

Proton also gives you the ability to save recovery phrases and recovery files if you lose your password(s) or your 2FA

ente auth and ageis auth are great for storing your 2FAs and they allow you to back them up to a file if your account with ente fails in some way or if you forget the password to get into your ageis

as for those recovery files and phrases I talked about. save them in text files on a small capacity flash drive that you don't use for anything else

Mullvad.

Proton has a Trump ass kisser working in their C-suite.

I prefer Mullvad. Regularly audited, can pay with cash if preferred, everything runs on RAM, and hasn’t had any controversies so far. The only issue for some is no port forwarding. I also like the multi-hop and DAITA features.

Mullvad hasn’t yet shown themselves fed- friendly.

Proton has.

Mullvad is the answer.

Mullvad. Their servers run on RAM, and they don't have any information about you no email, no username you can even pay with cash. However, Proton has port forwarding, while Mullvad does not.

I like Mullvad better

What about NordVPN? I use it and I’m pretty happy.