Last time I looked at VPNs, mullvad seemed highly recommended for privacy and security. Sounds like it may still be the case.
I also like that you don’t have to give them any private info at all to make an account. You can just send crypto and they’ll give you an account code and that’s it, you don’t even need an email address.
I haven’t tried it but apparently you can even mail them cash. You get a payment token and just send cash in an envelope and they’ll activate it whenever the money shows up!
I personally use this and it works great. Takes like a week to arrive (sending from europe).
Be aware that Mullvad recently removed support for port forwarding if that matters to you. They’re no longer a preferred option for torrents for that reason. Other than that I enjoy using their service.
It’s basically the gold standard, audited and proven. I hear good things about IVPN as well.
Just for my understanding when they boot such a server, where does it get it’s operating system from? Over the network from a different computer which has a hard drive or some read only ROM on the server or what?
The result is that the operating system that we boot, prior to being deployed weighs in at just over 200MB. When servers are rebooted or provisioned for the first time, we can be safe in the knowledge that we get a freshly built kernel, no traces of any log files, and a fully patched OS.
But can it run Crysis?
Yes, but you lose your save game every reboot.
Great for speedrunning then!
Anyone pro-Mullvad that can explain to me how it’s better than PIA?
To my knowledge, which may be wrong, PIA has faster speeds and is also entirely RAM-based.
That said…I’d gladly switch if that’s untrue and Mullvad is better. On the outset, it sounds like Mullvad triggers search engine captchas less, which would be a nice win.
edit: Well, you all convinced me. Made the switch.
PIA and Mullvad should have equal speeds because they both have 10gbps servers and wireguard. Both PIA and Mullvad use ram-only servers exclusively. As for search engine captchas, I never get them with Mullvad. The main issue with PIA is that they were bought by a questionable company that previously developed adware. You can read about that here. Personally, I would never use a privacy tool that is owned by an ad company, even if they claim to have changed. I used them up until the acquisition, then switched and have been extremely happy with Mullvad.
PIA is also a US based company
As for search engine captchas, I never get them with Mullvad.
That has nothing to do with VPNs, and everything to do with how your browser “leaks” your user behaviour history.
Captchas go through your browser behaviour history and examine the clicks and pages you have gone through, how long you were on each one and how you scrolled through each page. Stuff like that. If that browser behaviour history reaches a minimum threshold of “human-like behaviour”, there is no test to pass. If it doesn’t, or there is no history to go after, you get a test.
Does it make sense that a privacy VPN has 4 tracking scripts and 5 third party cookies on their website? https://themarkup.org/blacklight?url=privateinternetaccess.com&device=mobile&location=us
Mullvad has 0.
https://themarkup.org/blacklight?url=mullvad.net&device=mobile&location=us
Teddy Sagi > Kape Tech > PIA, Cyber Ghost and ZenMate.
As someone who works in enterprise ISP tech space I always keep the bigger picture in mind, especially with the latest “tech Fads”, VPNs are really easy to sell, especially when you already have other companies and even bigger shell companies.
Take the following scenario (it might be true it might also be conjecture):
person1 owns 2 shell companies that are big names in tech.
shell 1 starts out as a an ISP and soon grows to be a network transit provider.*
shell 2 starts out as a cyber sec company.
shell 1 get’s really big and becomes a tier 1 provider that sells transit to BBC and is now peering with the likes of Cogent, Lumen/CenturyLink and others.
shell 2 get so big it branches out into VPN carrier tech and purchases a well used VPN company that also stands out as having a no logging policy.*
shell 1 starts providing seriously detailed analytics to it peers on a subscription basis with discounts to peers that repeatedly hit the 95th percentile on billing cycles, all the peers love being able to see detailed info of the traffic flowing over their transit relationships.*
Shell 2 also purchases another company that deals with adware and advert injection tech.
later shell 2 becomes so financially liquid it is now breaking out in to gambling and lucrative AIM ventures.
In the scenario above I’ve marked points with a * that should be red flags to VPN users BUT they have something obvious when laid out in this manner that a user of a VPN would not know. That is that even though the VPN is sold as no-logging the wider company still gets your data as all the traffic is flowing over the wider network owned by shell 1 that you have no idea of the relationship between them.
All traffic/data can be monetised and ultimately with decent visibility of all comprising parts tied back to you or your account, VPNs are good but just be aware of forced perspective, look beyond T&C’s, look at the company and who owns it and what else they own.
You all got a hint at this with pirate bay, the feds couldn’t take 'em down so the went to the DC provider and the network transit providers, you should do the same if you value your trust and data so much that you need a VPN for every connection.
Finally, with or without a VPN, Your IP is only used for 20% of the connection(10% at the start and 10% to the final endpoint), when your data/traffic flows over provider networks it becomes an AS number, a layer tag and even a colour, all of these interchange until it becomes an IP again, hits a website and for the most part all of that is accounted for and can be connected to you.
Can someone explain to me what this means? I’m technologically inept when it comes to privacy, slowly getting better day-by-day thanks to Lemmy.
What does “without any disks in use” mean?
- If the computer is powered off, moved or confiscated, there is no data to retrieve.
- We get the operational benefits of having fewer breakable parts. Disks are among the components that break often. Therefore, switching away from them makes our infrastructure more reliable.
- The operational tasks of setting up and upgrading package versions on servers become faster and easier.
- Running the system in RAM does not prevent the possibility of logging. It does however minimise the risk of accidentally storing something that can later be retrieved.
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2022/1/12/diskless-infrastructure-beta-system-transparency-stboot/
While mostly true, there are ways to preserve ram if the device is confiscated.
Your local PD likely couldn’t pull it off, but if one of the larger abbreviation agencies were to get involved, data on RAM isn’t a huge hurdle. Assuming no one flips the power switch, at least.
Yeah, freezing and dumping RAM is a well known attack, even happening at some airports with laptops. But it still requires very recently powered ram, basically still in operation before extraction. It’s a big step toward security at least.
