Topic: List of VPN Service Providers - 2023 - page 9. (Read 3564 times)

Nord have just bought over SufShark, so they are now owned by the same company. The same company that got hacked, tried to cover it up, and then only admitted it to their users months later when they were exposed.

CyberGhost are owned by Kape, and should be avoided at all costs: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.58547859

Windscribe are still largely closed source.

Depends on why you are using a VPN. A VPN will never provide anonymity, as you suggest. A dedicated IP is certainly worse than a shared IP in terms of privacy, though, since all your traffic can be linked together via that IP rather than "lost in the crowd" of different shared IPs.

VPNs aren't only used for hiding A dedicated IP makes it easier to identify the same person is visiting the same website again. But if you want to gain access to something that isn't available to your own location (for instance to bet365 or Netflix), they'll know you use the same account anyway.

Doesn't a dedicated IP dethrones the usage of VPN? I might be saying something stupid but, to my eyes, if you have a dedicated IP attached to your VPN, how is that better than having a shared IP amongst many users that use the same service? I know that for some services you probably have to turn off VPN / split tunnel (like banks for example) but for anything else I would choose shared IP against a dedicated one, at least in what concerns to anonymity. Am I wrong? Windscribe seems to share my view since they state the following regarding "dedicated IPs":

Mullvad is a great choice for Cheap Anonimity and it's the only VPN I know that allows anonymous cash payments.
Some websites block VPNs but in order to unlock them, you need a dedicated IP but it has one negative side, dedicated IP belongs exclusively to you and probably 1-2 other users and your privacy can be easily violated if requested.

But if you only want to play on bet365 that shouldn't be a big issue.

Your option is to use a VPN with dedicated IP. The first one privacy-focused and the next three non-privacy focused providers offer you this benefit: Windscribe, Surfshark, CyberGhost & NordVPN.

Windscribe
1. Visit Windscribe and either choose Monthly Plan, Yearly Plan or Build A Plan.
The cheapest option is Build A Plan. You choose one favourite Location for $1 and unlimited unlimited data for another $1, totally = $2 a month.

2. Let's acquire Statistic IP. Click here to visit the page and then choose Datacenter - $24 / Year or Residential - $96 / Year connection. Residential avoids all blocking but probably in your case Datacenter will be enough too.

SurfShark
1. Visit SurfShark and choose any plan you wish. It doesn't offer dedicated IPs but offers Static Servers. Connect to the Static Server and your IP will stay the same on every session.

CyberGhost
1. Visit CyberGhost, choose any plan you wish and during the checkout include Dedicated IP in your cart.

NordVPN
1. Visit this Guide and follow the instructions.

Try checking settings in your VPN application and see if there is option to switch from UDP or TCP to faster IKEv2.
This should make everything work much faster, almost like your are not using any vpn.

Geographical location is most important thing but latency can sometimes be better in countries that are further away, maybe it depends on the quality of the servers and traffic they have at that moment.
It's good idea to check download and upload speed manually after selecting new vpn location, there are some dedicated websites for this purpose.

Maybe you placed some bet on OSCAR awards that are starting soon? 

Yep, I saw it and I don't remember seeing that somewhere else and it's nice to see that even people who don't want to pay with crypto (or simply don't have it) can still keep their anonymity. Kudos to Mullvad, not many services would bother with that at this day and age.


I tested it today and it seems like bet365 still blocks all Mullvad servers I tried to use, while some others like Sportsbet (which is banned in the country I am currently living in) works without any issues whatsoever. Either way, that's not an issue for me as as I am kinda old school guy and bet online only if I really have to.


I know, and it was the reason why I tested speed with servers that were at the max distance for me, like Australia, New Zealand and West Coast of the United States. If those servers can handle 4k streaming (and they could) then those in Europe which I occasionally use should be even better. And they were when I tested them today.

I've recently transfered large amounts of data between servers, and geographical distance matters a lot. If it's relatively close, I've seen 90 MB/s (almost the full 1000 Gbit/s), but if it's further away, it drops to around 7 MB/s.
You can probably determine if the VPN is the bottleneck by opening many connections (Torrent): if that reaches the maximum of your internet connection, the VPN can handle it.

Understandable Rikafip, I'm sure you'll be very pleased! I don't know if you've noticed but Mullvad also offers the option for someone to pay with cash[1], which I found also interesting:
So far the only service/website that actively blocked my Mullvad servers (and that also blocks IVPN ones) were gambling websites (specifically bet365.com). Not that I gamble - which I don't - but some friends of mine were looking for VPN's that allowed them to play in such houses and asked me to try it out with bad results. So if you're looking into those kind of options as well Rikafip I advice you to double check before jumping in as well.

If you do intend to make a longer trial period of Mullvad, let us know how it goes! My VPN subscription is about to end and I may finally return to Mullvad

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[1]https://mullvad.net/en/pricing/

I have 200/200. Fiber connection, so very low ping.


True, it could be better, but since those speeds are more than enough for 4k HDR streaming (afaik 25-30 Mbps is enough) I am fine with it. Also, keep in mind that those were the speeds for US/Australia/Japan servers which are very far away from me.


Since Netlfix works good with Mullvad on all those servers that you mentioned (and many more), there's really no point for me testing that one as well. While you can find several VPNs that work good with Netflix, problems start when you want to get one that will work with several others streaming sites. Beside Netflix, I use Amazon, Apple+ and HBO Max and to find VPN that works reliably for all of those while having wide selection of server is very hard. Well, there's one, but it has it's own issues.


Let me know if you check that one!

What is your normal internet speed without using any VPN?
50-60 Mbps is not bad but it could be better especially if your normal speed is much higher than that, but it all depends from country you choose, latency, percentage of use for specific location and other factors.
I saw that windscribe is offering location that are specialized servers used for streaming and netflix, there are four of them in Canada, United States, United Kingdom and Japan.
Only thing is that you can use this locations only if you have pro account I think, but I can't confirm that because I never tried how it works.
I wanted to try Surfshark that looks decent and they son't have any bandwidth limits or restrictions.

For now I will give Mullvad a go, as looking at IVPN server status they have even less countries supported than Mullvad, and only half of what ProtonVPN has so I doubt it would be good choice for me, especially for streaming.

It's not hard at all to find VPN that does one or two things very good, but to find one that does everything good seems impossible. I might try NordVPN again even though I wasn't really satisfied with their reliability at all few years ago but maybe they improved in the meantime, or suck it up and use ProtonVPN even though they miss one country on their list that is important to me. It really sucks that ExpressVPN is by far the best one when it comes to streaming purposes but that one is not an option anymore.

I get your point and i would question those ToS if i'm doing high-risk activity. However, the initial discussion was about VPN with fairly good privacy for 4K streaming. Do you think ProtonVPN is bad choice for privacy even if your main usage is 4K streaming? Can you suggest another VPN with better ToS/privacy policy which also promise it's suitable for 4K streaming, have very high bandwidth or low delay?

Mullvad is probably one of the best privacy focused VPN's that I've used in the past. In fact, it was the only one - that I'm aware - that earned the excellence badge from the deceased thatoneprivacysite.net[1]. Sadly the website is no longer the same as it has been sold to SafetyDetectives - which is owned by Kape Technologies[2] - by the guy that created it[3]. If you want to look for the spreadsheet that was maintained by the site owner, someone over at GitHub managed to scrap (most) of it[4]. As it stands today, I can no longer recommend thatoneprivacysite.net/SafetyDetectives as a beacon of light to identify good VPN companies.

If you are able to, I would also recommend that you check out IVPN[5]. I know it has been discussed in this thread but I've also used them in the past and I enjoyed them as much as Mullvad. They've also got WireGuard implemented which is nice. Recently they've also been supporting Ukrainian refugees with free IVPN accounts[6] - as well to Russian oppressed population - which even though doesn't make them more "privacy" oriented, they could've just continued their operations as normal and do nothing to help with the current crisis.

While they don't have trial accounts, they do offer an "affordable one week trial plan" or you can just use their 30-day money-back guarantee rule if you're not satisfied with the service[7].

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[1]https://web.archive.org/web/20200204212321/https://thatoneprivacysite.net/blog/mullvad-review/
[2]https://restoreprivacy.com/vpn-review-websites-owned-by-vpns/
[3]https://web.archive.org/web/20201201214426/https://www.safetydetectives.com/blog/announcement-tops/
[4]https://github.com/BitWrecker/Archived-VPN-Comparison-Spreadsheet
[5]https://www.ivpn.net/
[6]https://www.ivpn.net/blog/in-support-of-ukraine
[7]https://www.ivpn.net/knowledgebase/billing/does-ivpn-offer-a-free-trial/

Exactly. I knew that it will be hard to find VPN provider that can tick all of my boxes and that some compromises will have to be made. Tbh, If I was doing something extremely risky, I don't think I would trust any of the  VPNs that are mentioned here, no matter what they say about not keeping logs etc as all of those things can change easily.

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So, I took 1 month of Mullvad today to give it a go and I must say that I like it a lot, even though I won't use it for streaming. You can really tell that is privacy-oriented VPN.

First of all, registration is very simply and straightforward; you get 16 digit code that is your only login info. No emails, no confirmations and no hassle. I used BTC for payment of course and what I like is that you get 10% discount compared to other means of payment (to be precise they offer 10%  discount for BCH as well) so it's nice to see that they encourage people to use crypto. I tried various servers, from EU countries to NA and Asia and speed was generally very good, between 50-60 Mbps which is more than enough for comfortable 4k HDR streaming/torrenting.

Regarding streaming sites, I was surprised to see that Netflix actually works as I Googled it a bit and people said that Mullvad is generally not very good for that. So, I managed to access US, Australian, Japanese and few others without any issues. Unfortunately, Amazon didn't work at all, no matter the server I chose so for me it's not an option. Even though I won't use it for streaming purposes, I think that I will extend my sub and continue using it on my PC and mobile phone as as primary VPN since I really like how privacy oriented it is and find something else that I will use for TV only where I watch majority of stuff,

After Mullvad, I was about to get 1 month ProtonVPN sub, hoping that will be my go-to streaming option. Since they boast to have servers in 63 countries I kinda assumed that one certain country will be among those, but for some reason it isn't which is a deal-breaker for me as for some streaming reasons I need server in that country.

The search goes on. Or I will just use 2 different VPNs from now on, Mullvad + something else.

I don't know (never tested it).

For Mullvad, I've never tried 4k streaming either. But it maxes out my internet connection when I'm downloading.
For streaming, I can imagine the server location matters a lot, and ideally the VPN server should be in between your location and the streaming server.

While i can understand you disagreement, it sounds like standard ToS where they include any possible user activity that could give them trouble. Even other privacy-oriented VPN mentioned in this forum have some unsettling/vague details on their ToS, such as


To be fair, those shady government need to pass through Swiss jurisdiction. Although we already know it already happened more than once on their different service, https://restoreprivacy.com/protonmail-logs-users/.

You know those terms looks fine on paper but they can be changed at any time, especially when we know that Mullvad is based in Sweden, and that is one of the 14 Eyes countries.
It's not like we didn't see terms being changed recently or played around them, like for example with Proton mail that many forum members here praised multiple times.
Mullvad vpn is good but I wouldn't trust any vpn including Mullvad for anything serious.

It sounds like the standard disclaimer that anyone just dismisses and clicks "ok" on. In my opinion, a VPN is one of those services where you should not dismiss terms you don't agree with.
All the more reason I won't use any of those VPNs. There's literally nothing like it in Mullvad's Terms.

I can't agree with ProntonVPN's Terms:
So they don't log anything, but they restrict freedom of speech by telling me I can't tell you you're a dick? I'm insulted by the fact that they think insults have to be regulated.

On the one hand they say this:
But on the other hand they say this:
So which one is it? If a shady government bans something that threatens them, that means an activist won't be allowed to use ProtonVPN to promote overthrowing that government.

For my use, free version of either of those is completely useless. As I said before, I am not a fan of "free" stuff as more often than not they end up being more costly (usually wasting my time, and time is money) than those I paid for. So yeah, gonna test ProtonVPN "Plus" plan which fits my needs.

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Regarding all this lifetime/long term subscription thing, I generally avoid the former (I don't remember taking lifetime plan for anything) but I have nothing against 1 year sub. I don't take those right from the start though as first few months I like to test the service and if it proves to be reliable, I switch to yearly sub simply because I don't want to think about it every month. And as @dkbit98 said, it's not like I am risking thousands of dollars but 100, tops. I did the same thing with ExpressVPN, and will do with ProtonVPN as well if it proves to be as good as people claim it is.