Which one are you using?
NordVPN
Surfshark
ExpressVPN
CyberGhost
ProtonVPN
Mullvad and IVPN are two very good providers that also work under Linux from my own experience. Personally, I would currently lean towards Mullvad, since their client is open source and they also regularly hire third parties for audits. In addition, I consider their prices to be very clear. 5 euros per month, no matter how long you use the service. Plus, if you want, you can actually put the money in an envelope and send it to Sweden. All what is needed for the assignment is the user account number. Nothing else.
I would strongly advise against NordVPN. A couple of years ago they didn’t tell their customers for 6 months that one of their servers was hacked. In addition, a relatively important article in the blog was recently changed without further notice (https://www.pcmag.com/news/nordvpn-actually-we-do-comply-with-law-enforcement-data-requests).
Personally, I also don’t think much of VPN providers, regardless of which ones, that offer referral links and run intensified advertising (on TV, for example).
Mullvad, works literally flawlessly and is open source.
Using Mullvad rn, works great and quiet cheap compared to others and has a good Linux client.
Mullvad. Works perfectly on linux…better than it did on Windows.
Some of those VPN services are products of the same company with at least a vague background.The same company also has many sites that glow in their own VPN services, so those reviews are really critical.
https://restoreprivacy.com/kape-technologies-owns-expressvpn-cyberghost-pia-zenmate-vpn-review-sites/
https://twitter.com/hackermaderas/status/1450619758324420608
I used to use ProtonVPN, but it did not work well for torrenting, despite using the P2P servers: it dramatically reduced the amount of seeders I could connect to, up to the point that even the most popular Linux ISO (Ubuntu LTS, Debian, Linux Mint…) were taking hours to download. The less popular distros would often take days to download, or wouldn’t at all (Tails was a recurring one, for instance).
I since switched to Mullvad, and I wouldn’t go back. It’s a bit more pricey, but it works much better, the documentation is clear and straight to the point. I also like how the pricing is fixed: it’s 5€ per month, whether you subscribe for 2 years, or pay month by month. You’re not losing out on a discount if you pay per-month, and you can cancel at any point with no strings attached.
Mullvad period.
They use cutting edge protocols, and they plan really interesting techniques : System Transparency is the future
I made my own using Linode and Wireguard.
PIA was the GOAT for me
Last summer I decided to increase my internet anonymity and went for the seemingly most popular option of NordVPN. It was a very bad decision. The product is bad.
Setting up NordVPN is easy. They provide enough documentation that even without any prior experience of using a VPN, I was ready in no time. However, the problems started already here: instead of providing a load balancer, you have to manually decide which server you connect to. For example, my home country of Finland has about 10 servers and I have to just guess which one is the least crowded.
The connection is blazingly fast and I can watch several twitch streams and update steam games simultanously at full speed (I have 100 Mbps inwards, so about 10MB/s). However, the packet loss is noticeable, so for competitive internet gaming I need to turn off the VPN (afaik I could setup ip tables rules to not use VPN for games, but I assume it’s not that simple to figure out all the addresses or ports).
The real grudge I have with NordVPN is how much it is blocked. A lot of content from our domestic broadcasting company is bloxked for VPN access. It doesn’t matter that I’m logged in with my account (tied to my IRL identity, mind you). They just full on block, probably due to copyright restrictions.
Likewise, the other day I tried to vote on a strawpoll. I was blocked for using a VPN.
When I type a search on the browser address bar, I often get greeted with the google photo solving quizz that blocks bots. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten one when not using a VPN.
NordVPN provides an easy to setup solution for VPN on the mobile phone. However, it blocks play store from running updates to your phone. Likewise, “smart” integrations such as the sonos sound system does not work, because it doesn’t know you’re in the same wifi when your traffic is routed through a VPN.
I think internet privacy is becoming more important. Violations of freedom of speech and politically motivated censorship is increasing. However, the solution provided by NordVPN doesn’t seem like a good one.
Gonna have to agree with the majority of people here and say Mullvad. I switched over from Nord, both because their Linux “””client””” was an utter joke, and the company itself doesn’t exactly inspire me with confidence. Oh, and they don’t let you port-forward, so if you torrent you’ll get shit speeds and less peers.
I use Windscribe. It’s fast, open source, and so far it’s given me no problems. It’s easy to use as well, and has both CLI and GUI options as well.
Completely depends on what you want the VPN proxy to do for you.
Without knowing that, any answer is entirely useless.
I use ProtonVPN. The speed is good and they seems like a trustworthy company.
Linux support is not as polished as their Windows client, but they do have an app and CLI tool which I use. There are some missing features on Linux like wireguard and split tunneling (which I had to configure myself with static routes) but I hope to see updates for their Linux client soon.
I heard great things about Mullvad, but yet to try it out.
Mullvad. Using it through WireGuard on my router all the time runs flawlessly.
I use airvpn for my home server.
Own VPS for 6€/mo and Wireguard
I only need a secure way to use public WIFI and want to host some services on my own to be independent of ‘the big ones’.
Check out the YouTube channel “Mental Outlaw” he gives a guide on how to make your own.