Mullvad or Proton VPN?

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?
- Precisely this. Consumer VPNs are not tools for security or anonymity. They won't protect you from most kinds of fingerprinting or tracking beyond IP-based tracking. They have relatively specific uses. I recommend Privacy Guides' article on them for further reading: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/basics/vpn-overview/

Mullvad. Not even a question

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

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.

If you don't need proton's whole suite of tools I say go for mullvad.
You can also just test them both out for yourself. Try mullvad for one month, proton another. The nice thing with mullvad I believe is that it's way more anonymous in terms of various forms of payment and I believe it has a fixed price.

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.

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
- Who knows how to steal you mull account with out you knowing? This seems over blown atleast from that perspective. I'm sure it's possible but unless you are incredibly slopping opsec I doubt it's even on the list of problems. Given all other things you could be doing.
  
  it's just a string of numbers with no password

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.

I like Mullvad better

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.
- Mullvad does have split tunneling on Linux and Android. I don't know about Windows.
  
  I don't know why I wrote split tunneling, I meant port forwarding. Thanks😀. Windows also has split tunneling.
- servers run on RAM
  What's the different with zego logs alternatives, e.g. https://openvpn.net/as-docs/tutorials/tutorial--turn-off-logging.html
  
  If, for some reason, there is any data on the server and a malicious actor pulls it physically out, the data would disappear. There are probably other pros with RAM-only servers that I don't know.

Mullvad.
Proton has a Trump ass kisser working in their C-suite.
- Andy done some bootlicking... I guess whoring for the regime is supposed to print generally but I don't think he understands his user base lol
  Imagine
- Okay, but how does the political stance of Proton workers affect my privacy?
  
  At the moment, it doesn't. He could decide to violate Swiss law and turn data over to Trump.
  That would certainly affect your privacy.

Mullvad hasn’t yet shown themselves fed- friendly.
Proton has.
Mullvad is the answer.
- Source please, we in the /privacy community genuinely want to learn so when such things do happen, we all benefit from factual information. Please do not assume we all know what you are referring to. It is particularly in this kind of cases when, for example with Signal what was "shared" with authorities is basically irrelevant, cf https://signal.org/bigbrother/ so we must be precise.
  
  Proton has cooperated with subpoenas on multiple occasions leading to the user’s arrest.
  While they may challenge them, the point is that they have cooperated and thus are not reliable. There are no reported cases of Mullvad doing the same.
  There are ample links from multiple sources that describe this with a simple search.
- When did Proton show themselves fed-friendly? Also what "fed" are we talking about? The Swiss Federation?
  
  I guess he's referring to this

Mullvad. It's cheaper than Proton. But Proton has more servers. Like Proton even provies Indian IPs, but the servers are hosted in Singapore, which may be something people need, as Mullvad do not have any servers with Indian IPs.
You can also try IVPN, it is almost same like Mullvad, no email for account, pay using Monero etc, but you can get a one week subscription for $2.

100% Mullvad

What about NordVPN? I use it and I’m pretty happy.
- They are the trackers
- they log

Has anyone used Mullvad vpn with a media server? I’m currently using AirVPN, but it’s not that good speed-wise. I’ve been looking at Mullvad for a while, but they’ve abandoned port forwarding, which I’m not sure how big of an impact that is.
- Depending on how you're accessing this, and how many people you're trying to set this up for, it would probably be easiest to learn how to deploy your own Wireguard network. In my case, my phone automatically connects to my own Wireguard on my server (an 11 year old laptop) and whenever I'm on the go I have full access to my LAN + PiHole DNS filtering.
  So, what's the point? The point is that you will be able to securely connect to your media server without exposing it directly to the internet, all without paying for a service to do what you can already do yourself, provided your ISP allows you port forward.
  
  I have several people who usually access my media server from abroad. Can you confirm if the WireGuard network you mentioned allows you to “legally torrent” media using it?

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

IVPN imo, just because it offers reverse split tunneling, if you prefer having more countries to choose from you can use Proton.

Mullvad of course. Proton is American right?
- Proton is Swiss.
  
  Exception when gargling orange.
  
  Ok. Better.

A VPN is a VPN, having a different IP address is equally effective against those things no matter which IP it is. The issue is whether or not anyone can associate that IP with yours, and what that comes down to is how willing they are to give up their records when the government asks nicely (or, even more importantly: not so nicely.) I'm not familiar enough with either service to be able to speak to that, but everyone else seems to be talking about features, prices, politics, etc when none of those directly address your questions.
- False and fake information.
  
  lol, k, I definitely respect the opinion of someone who drops a half-assed comment like that without bothering to offer what they believe to be the correct information.

Tor Browser
- Bruh, good luck trying to watch a youtube video, or even just browse a news article.
  Tor only works for a small number of sites.
  
  I haven't really played around with VPNs to make the comparison. Tor breaks for a significant number of sites, but it's still a pretty small minority; "only works for a small number of sites" is a comical untruth.
  If Tor breaks more sites than VPNs do (which I think is likely), I think it is because Tor is secure. It is easier to do malicious things behind Tor because you have, for all intents and purposes, an unbreakable shield of privacy while you are doing those malicious things. And so, site operators tend to block it more readily than they do VPNs.
  Whether you want to make the tradeoff in favor of convenience or genuine privacy is, of course, up to you. It's not surprising to me that the Lemmy userbase is more or less unanimous in favor of convenience. Of course it is fine if you want, but you don't need to misrepresent how things are to make it the only possible choice.
  
  I think you're exaggerating. Disabling JS breaks way more sites than an exit node's IP.
  Edit: I meant that "small number" of sites is an exaggeration, not that exit node blocking is uncommon.
- Why isn't the Tor browser more popular here?
  
  See my other comment; I think the same user contingent that likes VPNs tends to also want maximum convenience, which isn't Tor. Of course they frame convenience as the only relevant factor, instead of acknowledging that being the tradeoff they're making.
  
  It's generally slow as fuck

They still see source of email and meta data.
I am not sure why they would ban account for getting links tho