What VPN do you use and why?

If you are a pirate VPN is an essential tool. I am trying to ascertain the popularity of various VPNs in piracy community. In this excerise, I will list several Popular VPNs in the comment if you use one of them just upvote that comment and reply the reason. If you don’t find your VPN listed add a comment with just their name. Reply the reason to it. This make it easier to understand the real life user cases.

P.S: I am only looking for paid VPNs please don’t mention “free vpn”.

agame,

Windscribe

agame,

No Non-sense VPN. Plenty of servers and decent speed. FOSS clients for all the major platforms including linux and android.

girl,

For a noob, can anyone explain why this one is getting downvoted? Is it bad?

wolfshadowheart,
@wolfshadowheart@kbin.social avatar

It has 2 votes and the second comment just hasn't been voted on. But I also use Windscribe - the only thing to know about it is that there's been a probe. I personally feel that they handled it well and were transparent about it. Every VPN is going to have this happen to them at some point so IMO it's about how the information is delivered to the users that determines how trustworthy I find them.

girl,

Thanks for the explanation! I saw several more downvotes at the time I made my comment, I think it was 4 downvotes for the parent comment and 2 for the second comment. Votes between instances aren’t always consistent, I’ve noticed when I switch accounts that the same comment’s votes can vary quite a lot.

wolfshadowheart,
@wolfshadowheart@kbin.social avatar

Ah that would make sense lol

Staple_Diet,

Anything that isn’t Mullvad will get downvoted because many here have brought over the Reddit hivemind mentality. Many of the downvoted VPS ITT are completely safe and fine, and actually offer greater functionality than Mullvad, but you can’t deny Mullvad are the top when it comes to privacy - not even using a username/email plus allowing btc payment.

dangblingus,

Why are you replying a bunch to your own post with the name of different VPNs?

girl, (edited )

Did you read their post? They explained that they are posting lead comments with the names of different VPNs, and they want us to vote and comment on the ones we use with our reasoning.

agame,

Proton VPN

LostPenguin,
@LostPenguin@kbin.social avatar

Same. Since I am a paying Protonmail user I've switched to the Proton VPN. It has been fine.

guyrocket,
@guyrocket@kbin.social avatar

I see that Proton allows payment via PayPal. Is it possible to pay via PayPal anonymously? I don't use PP much at all so IDK.

ChrisLicht,

I’d be shocked if it were, as I think they zealously honor KYC/AML/OFAC.

agame,

Mullavad

Staple_Diet,

I used Mullvad, found them great for everything and would be my only VPN if they were big enough to facilitate streaming via other countries. Due to smaller number of servers it isn’t possible to use a lot of streaming services with them…I found this out when o/s and needing to VPN into my home country to access my geo-locked streaming service.

bloopernova,
@bloopernova@programming.dev avatar

Mullvad because they don’t need your name, and you can pay by cash anonymously.

Siddhartha-Aurelius,

They also regularly have independent security audits
and their servers run everything on RAM meaning the second it loses power all data is lost.

datavoid,

Do they still not have port forwarding?

PeachMan,
@PeachMan@lemmy.world avatar

Nope. I’d argue that Mullvad is not for most pirates, unless you’re actually worried about being jailed for your piracy (depends on what country you’re in). If you just want to get the letters from your ISP to stop, there are much cheaper VPNs that can do that.

Mullvad is for actual privacy, which many VPNs don’t really give you. If you gave them an email address and credit card, then it ain’t private, kids!

netchami,

Check out AirVPN if you want port forwarding.

agame,

Expressvpn

KpntAutismus,

they are very committed to not save any of your data, to the point that their servers run entirely in RAM and get cleared daily. but i am considering switching to mullvad when my subscription runs out.

aPirate,

It was bought up by Kape recently its not recommended anymore. It would be good to switch to mullvad they are quite trusted so far. Video from mental outlaw. piped.video/watch?v=hfjCB_oPIuo

agame,

Nord VPN

einfach_orangensaft,

i will never trust a company that had so much investor money on hand to run such a massivr ad campain like Nord did.

It was missleading, agressive and anoying.

The pressure behind that ad campaim kind made me feel like the whole thing was just the biggest honeypot we have ever seen.

Melina,
@Melina@hexbear.net avatar

Nord is the reason I’m under investigation. Wouldn’t recommend

FeelzGoodMan420, (edited )

Lol wtf is this comment? You’re under investigation because of NordVPN? Press X to doubt.

FMT99,

Apparently people don’t like Nord but a few years ago several privacy sites advocated for them. I wonder what changed.

sadreality,

their handling of a data breach if i remember correctly

notdeadyet,
@notdeadyet@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

They had a server breach and didn’t tell anyone until a few years after the fact.

netchami,

NordVPN pays people to advocate for them.

agame,

Cyberghost

ColeSloth,

Shoot. Does this mean I need to switch?

agame,

IVPN

Nollij,

This is what I’m currently using. It’s been great, but they just ended port forwarding. I will not be renewing.

unmagical,

Fully anonymous account, purchased with crypto, has a warrant canary, open source clients, regular server audits to verify no logs, relatively cheap, fast, works on all my devices, VPN bypass for things like steam, killswitch, and a choice of VPN protocols.

It also has multihop, but that’s just a gimmick.

agame,

Surfshark

DAMunzy,

Got them because they’re cheap. Just need to hide the IP a little, arr.

olicvb,
@olicvb@lemmy.ca avatar

i see downvotes, can i know why not surfshark?

LunchEnjoyer, (edited )
@LunchEnjoyer@lemmy.world avatar

Owned by media marketing company, Ziff Davis.

kumu.io/sobeyharker/vpn-relationships#vpn-company…

mbp,
@mbp@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Goddammit, now I need to change my fkn VPN, too

agame,

Free tier VPN

agame,

Adguard VPN

agame,

Tunnelbear

EmpiricalFlock,
@EmpiricalFlock@beehaw.org avatar

AirVPN

EmpiricalFlock,
@EmpiricalFlock@beehaw.org avatar

Port forwarding, relatively cheap, runs a good Black Friday sale, and I think its log policy is decent from what I remember.

000999,

The airvpn client feels pretty outdated compared to something like mullvad. This might not be a big deal for everyone and there are ways around it but I always see airvpn recommended but noone ever mentions this

coldbrew,

The Wireguard client is good enough. I wouldn’t trust VPN providers’ custom apps to be as secure, privacy-focused or reliable as the official client ones.

EmpiricalFlock,
@EmpiricalFlock@beehaw.org avatar

Ever since I switched to Linux I don’t really use Eddie as much, but I agree it could be more intuitive. Even on Windows I typically only spent 30 seconds or less with the client, though, so it didn’t bother me.

018118055,

I use the native wireguard client on Linux

sillyhatsonly,

I also just switched from Mullvad to OpenVPN and I’m very happy with it. I grabbed the 3-year Halloween promo.

weedwhacking,

deleted_by_author

    •
    wolfshadowheart,
    @wolfshadowheart@kbin.social avatar

    Basically what @Metal_Zealot and you have to worry about are if you've downloaded enough to make a profitable case going after you in a civil suit.

    As for using the VPN, any worthwhile VPN has split tunneling with inclusion and exclusion lists. I use Windscribe personally

    weedwhacking,

    Thanks for the info and suggestion :) I will check out windscribe!

    Metal_Zealot,
    @Metal_Zealot@lemmy.ml avatar

    So… at the risk of humiliating myself,
    I’ve never once used a VPN in my entire life.

    I pirated games, movies, shows, music, software… and the worst thing that happened to me was getting a letter from Telus once or twice saying “Hey. Don’t do that.”

    That was 5 years ago

    I know it’s bad practice. But is a VPN 100% necessary? Even a free one?

    Shadow,
    @Shadow@lemmy.ca avatar

    That’s because you’re in Canada. We don’t need to worry like Americans can. It’s not really necessary for us.

    silencioso,

    I find incredible that it’s absolutely illegal for anyone to read your letters and only the police can do that and only if a judge grant them the right to do that case by case, and a private telecommunications company can read absolutely all your digital communication with no judge involved and no one blinks an eye.

    melmi,
    @melmi@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    Generally CnD letters are not generated by the ISPs themselves. ISPs don’t care what you do unless legally obligated to. When you get a CnD letter, it’s usually because someone working for a copyright holder was on a torrent and snagged your IP, then sent an infringement notice to your ISP, who in turn sends a CnD to the current holder of the IP, i.e. you.

    At no point does your ISP have to read your digital communications themselves. Any one of your peers on a torrent can tell what your public IP address is, it’s inherent to the BitTorrent protocol. Copyright holders take advantage of this to catch pirates.

    Metal_Zealot,
    @Metal_Zealot@lemmy.ml avatar

    I’m gonna google “How to bomb Telus Headquarters and assassinate their board of directors” and see how fast they respond

    PeachMan,
    @PeachMan@lemmy.world avatar

    The letters from your ISP have nothing to do with them monitoring your traffic. When you torrent, you’re connecting to a public network of seeders and leechers. Copyright holders pay people to monitor that public list of IP addresses, and they record your IP (because you connected publicly, in the open, and uploaded or downloaded). Then, they send your ISP a letter reporting that your did an illegal thing, and asking them to punish you. Finally, your ISP sends you a letter making some vague threats and asking you to stop. They might make you do a training course to educate you on why piracy is bad, and they might cut off your internet until you pass a quiz and promise not to pirate stuff again. They go through this charade not because it actually accomplishes anything, but because they don’t give a shit, and they’re just doing the bare minimum to keep lawyers off their back.

    _dev_null,
    @_dev_null@lemmy.zxcvn.xyz avatar

    and a private telecommunications company can read absolutely all your digital communication

    Well maybe. It’s one of the reasons e2e encryption is so imperative to online privacy. For instance, turning on https everywhere, then your isp can only see which servers you’re connecting to, not what’s in your traffic to them.

    And to point it out up front, yeah the distant end’s servers likely have some for of that traffic captured, but now law enforcement has to dig up every company that they’re trying to pull info from. Which is significantly more difficult than just relying on a one stop shop arrangement.

    And for the best privacy, like security, a multi-layered approach is better. So throw in a VPN, throw in something like a mullvad browser, throw in pseudonymous accounts, throw in different usernames + passwords across accounts, throw in…

    daq,

    Same here. Started with IRC, then private trackers. Always force encryption. Zero issues. VPN is a waste of money for piracy.

    thorbot,

    No, you don’t need it if you have trustworthy private trackers. Most people on here just use Pirate Bay or some shitty public alternative that’s seeded with all the planted stuff that the RIAA looks for

    JCPhoenix,
    @JCPhoenix@beehaw.org avatar

    I’ve only gotten two strikes in my life, 7-8yrs ago. And I feel like this was because my brother was downloading then recent, popular movies (which I almost never do). But before that, never did, without a VPN, and I used to pirate a lot more. Even further back, used to have a roommate who would go on movie and show torrenting sprees. We never got strikes. And that was when commercial VPNs weren’t really a thing yet, but copyright strikes were well known. I’ve known others who’ve never gotten strikes either.

    So I’d say no, not 100% necessary at all. But it’s free or cheap enough to mitigate the risk. So that’s why I use one when I do pirate, which is rare these days.

    UnhealthyPersona,

    I think of it like having sex with or without a condom. If you don’t use a condom, there’s a chance to get an STD (or get “caught”). It’s not a guarantee to get caught, your IP address needs to end up in the pool of addresses they collect to send out DMCA notices so it won’t happen every time. But having a “condom” (VPN) reduces your chances by nearly 100%, assuming it’s properly setup which usually is a very simple process

    CatZoomies, (edited )
    @CatZoomies@lemmy.world avatar

    While people sometimes suggest ignoring it because they say that your ISP is only sending you those notices because the laws compel them to and you downloaded something that was tracked, you may want to evaluate your risk.

    Nothing has happened so far. Could something happen in the future?

    Your ISP has built an entire portfolio of the things you’ve done online and which content you pirated. Who know how long your ISP retains that data, or which companies or regulatory bodies it shares this data with?

    Laws may change.

    Up to you on what you want to do with this information.

    antlion,
    @antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    ISP can’t track bittorrent content without downloading the same torrent as you. They only see domain names of trackers and ip addresses of peers. The content itself is either obfuscated or encrypted.

    CatZoomies,
    @CatZoomies@lemmy.world avatar

    Fair point. There is temporary obfuscation, and certainly not end to end encryption when torrenting.

    The creator of BitTorrent himself has this to say:

    “The so-called ‘encryption’ of BitTorrent traffic isn’t really encryption, it’s obfuscation. It provides no anonymity whatsoever, and only temporarily evades traffic shaping. There are better approaches to obfuscation, and I’ve got a great team of engineers who are quite eager to fight that battle, but I’m hoping that everything can be resolved amicably without getting into a serious arms race.” Source: torrentfreak.com/interview-with-bram-cohen-the-in…

    In my opinion using a trusted VPN not just for torrenting, but also for sourcing pirated software or other content is just a best practice.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
  • localhost
  • All magazines
    •
    Loading…
    Loading the web debug toolbar…
    Attempt #

    Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 22495648 bytes) in /var/www/kbin/kbin/vendor/symfony/http-kernel/Profiler/FileProfilerStorage.php on line 174

    Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 10171416 bytes) in /var/www/kbin/kbin/vendor/symfony/error-handler/ErrorRenderer/HtmlErrorRenderer.php on line 339