10 ms·

Wow. Hadn't heard of Mullvad before reading this, figured I'd give it a try. That is hands down the BEST onboarding experience for an app (let alone a VPN) I'v

Wow. Hadn't heard of Mullvad before reading this, figured I'd give it a try. That is hands down the BEST onboarding experience for an app (let alone a VPN) I've had in I don't know how long. Took me maybe 2 minutes to go from no account to a working VPN connection. I love that everything is anonymous (down to the account credentials just being a randomly generated token).

sph 4y ago
Of all their features, I love that they have an Android TV app so I can watch F1TV on my couch. They're worth more than the 5 euros I give them per month.
- ignoramous 4y ago
  Aren't OTT streaming services notorious for blocking VPN IP ranges? How is Mullvad getting around those? Surely, they don't buy / lease / steal residential IP addresses [0]? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9614993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9614993
  - sph 4y ago
    Probably Mullvad is still unknown to most. They're not the one doing the sponsorships on YouTube.
- StopHammoTime 4y ago
  OH MY GOD. I've had to stop watching F1 in Australia because the only app that has licensing is like $27.50 a month and I don't love it that much. This is a fantastic idea! Thanks mate!
  - sph 4y ago
    Be aware: I share an account with someone in a country with F1TV. If you register from abroad and use your credit card, they'll see you're from AU, block your account and you'll have to contact customer services for a refund. Exclusivity deals are a cancer.
    - NathHorrigan 4y ago
      Best bet is to pay via App Store subscriptions instead of a credit card. It obscures the country so you are free to use a VPN without worrying about being banned.
- vfe2nio590 4y ago
  I tried the Android TV App to watch HBO max though (in a different country vs the subscription's host country) and the HBO app did not even load (not even the splash screen). I had no such problems with some other VPN providers (although to be frank some other VPN providers fail in a different way).
- n80g532n0i 4y ago
  Interestingly I tried to watch HBO Max (from a different country) using Mullvad but it failed me. While some other VPN providers succeeded. So it seems it's kind of a hit and miss what works.
detritus 4y ago
I signed up to Mullvad - my first VPN - literally about 12 hours ago, purely because of how simple, yet comprehensively-explained, their 'onboarding' process was. I also particularly like the flat no-fuss EUR5 a month fee.
malfist 4y ago
Mullvard is behind the mozilla vpn. They're crazy good about privacy. You can mail them cash with account info and they'll set you up.
- kadoban 4y ago
  Mullvad accepts cash as well. In what way are they behind?
  - kzrdude 4y ago
    Mullvad is the service provider, Moz just resells their service
  - JonyEpsilon 4y ago
    Behind in the "controlling or responsible for (an event or plan)" sense was meant, perhaps?
  - palata 4y ago
    Misunderstanding. The Mozilla VPN is Mullvad (rebranded).
    - kadoban 4y ago
      Ohhh, I see. I did not know that, thanks.
  - 7ewis 4y ago
    As in they power Mozilla's VPN: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2019/12/3/mullvad-partnerships-page-has-been-updated-mozilla/ https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2019/12/3/mullvad-partnerships-p...
- eszaq 4y ago
  https://www.ivpn.net/ https://www.ivpn.net/ also generates a random userid and also accepts cash in the mail (only for large purchases unfortunately). I wasn't able to get mullvad's multihop to work on Android, but iVPN Pro does the trick. iVPN also has a nice server status page that helps you optimize for speed (low load server) or anonymity (high load server) as appropriate: https://www.ivpn.net/status/ https://www.ivpn.net/status/ They have a weird "anti-marketing" homepage which devotes almost equal space to explaining why you should not buy their product :-P Perfect Privacy accepts a gift card (more convenient than mailed cash IMO) and has a nifty "neurorouting" feature which aims to be better than standard multihop (claims of speed, at least, I can attest to). They do ask for an email address, sadly, unlike iVPN/Mullvad. Also I just saw this and it looks a bit worrisome https://www.security.org/privacy-guide/perfect-privacy/ https://www.security.org/privacy-guide/perfect-privacy/ Both iVPN and PP let you block various trackers / MANGA corps at the network level. I like Mullvad but it seems good to support a diversity of providers. Curious if anyone has any dirt on either of those two, or if they can make more recommendations.
DrewADesign 4y ago
I've been a mullvad user for the past couple of years. I only occasionally use them for privacy on open wifi networks or whatever, but the experience so far has generally been excellent. I initially used the official Wireguard iOS app to connect, but their iOS native app is freaking excellent. WAY more reliable and user friendly than the others I've used— ExpressVPN and some other. It's been quite some time since I used the other ones, however, and they may have equally good branded clients by now.
misterdee 4y ago
I can wholeheartedly recommend them after using their service the past few months. They offer Linux configs with wireguard (a sore point with other VPN providers, who tend to either not support Linux at all or only offer openvpn), their Android App has worked flawless and it's just 5E/month.
- _abox 4y ago
  Yes and they even make double hopping easy. Many other VPNs don't like this, presumably because they have to eat 3 times the traffic.
HEHENE 4y ago
Mullvad has been tremendous and the ease of use is terrific. I use a VPN relatively infrequently, sometimes going months without turning it on, so the one-time payments have been wonderful. The app is simple to use, and it's so, so easy to reactivate for a month when I need it. I can't speak to their privacy as my VPN usecase is usually just "I need an IP in another region," but to the best of my understanding they are one of if not the best in the business.
- Cyph0n 4y ago
  As an additional data point, I've been using Mullvad as a long-running VPN for a while now (hint: Linux ISOs) and it has been working like a charm.
  - RealStickman_ 4y ago
    You can also utilise port forwarding with mullvad (bound to specific key and location) to make distributing "Linux ISOs" faster.
simias 4y ago
I also like that they let you download the raw wireguard config files so that you can connect without having to use their client. You can just plop them onto your filesystem and use wg-quick to get going. Since I'm also a ProtonMail user and I considered switching to them for VPN as well but their python client doesn't seem to work correctly on my Arch Linux install and it doesn't give me anything useful to debug it beyond "An unknown error has occured" so I couldn't be bothered to investigate beyond that.
- lukvol 4y ago
  I think you can also get the raw wireguard config files for ProtonVPN: https://protonvpn.com/support/wireguard-configurations/ https://protonvpn.com/support/wireguard-configurations/
  - simias 4y ago
    I did not know that! Thanks a lot. I'll definitely give it another try.
  - clairity 4y ago
    i just set it up to try it out (on macOS): created a free config on the proton dashboard, downloaded it, stuck it in the wireguard client, and it worked (without downloading their vpn client app). make sure your firewall isn't blocking the traffic though (something that caught me at first).
- citilife 4y ago
  Been using protonmail on arch for years, you have to setup the configs a tad more manually and do some editing (I forget now); definitely doable and protonmail lets you download the configs (which work out of the box depending what you use).
- banana_giraffe 4y ago
  Be aware, at least Nord clearly does something different with their client than with the OpenVPN files they provide ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21664692 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21664692 ). When I dug into this, I found similar cases with other major VPN providers, but my notes are sufficiently out of date, they shouldn't be trusted anymore. Sometimes the differences are subtle, sometimes they're rather complex like this case. Personally, sketchy stuff like this is why I've moved all of my VPN use to a personal cloud instance running WireGuard.
herbst 4y ago
Crazy thing is, it was just as great already many years ago. And yet people fall for absolutely weird fake privacy vpn offers.
sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago
> Hadn't heard of Mullvad before reading this Just the only vpn with any integrity left remaining, no biggie.
- knorker 4y ago
  What about ovpn.com?
- SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
  Absolutely no way to know they are good and other is bad. The entire VPN industry is “trust us bro”. Which works until it doesn’t.
  - whatever1 4y ago
    That is the entire tech industry. No audits, no repercussions for screw ups.
  - slavak 4y ago
    Would a 3rd party audit work? https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2021/1/20/no-pii-or-privacy-leaks-found-cure53s-infrastructure-audit/ https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2021/1/20/no-pii-or-privacy-leak...
    - SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
      That’s very good. But what do I know about “Cure53” other than they are saying “Yea, trust them bro”. Is Cure53 incorruptible? Would there be any blip in the world if they were not and Mull was really an NSA op? I’m not saying I don’t trust Mull over say, Nord. I am saying the nature of the whole thing is non-falsifiable with our existing technologies. We can only determine who was lying by looking back after an incident, and most are kept secret.
      - Foxboron 4y ago
        cure53 has an impeccable reputation and delivered some of the best security analysis there is. Most of them are also public and on github. https://github.com/cure53/Publications https://github.com/cure53/Publications
anonporridge 4y ago
You can also easily pay with better anonymity with the Strike app, https://strike.me https://strike.me, which abstracts bitcoin mainnet and lightning network payments behind USD, so you don't have to worry about actually holding bitcoin or managing tax implications. You just use bitcoin as a globally agnostic payment rail, masked with your local fiat, so the price volatility doesn't affect you. Mullvad even gives you a 10% discount for bitcoin, bitcoin cash, and monero payments. I am a bit disappointed that they haven't yet integrated bitcoin lightning network. That would be a huge improvement for reduced transaction fees given the low value of transactions they deal with, as well as instant confirmation rather than 6 block (~1 hour) confirmations. You could even theoretically stream nanopayments for each minute of use with lightning, rather than pay for a whole month.
- mderazon 4y ago
  "Global payments for the internet" I was intrigued... Then "currently the Strike app is only available in the United States*, El Salvador, and Argentina"
  - alexchamberlain 4y ago
    It's the "World" Series of Internet payments.
  - anonporridge 4y ago
    I also dismiss a project when it's still nascent. /s Also, "Global payments for the internet" is really referring to bitcoin, not strike. Strike isn't doing the magic here. It's just one of many possible APIs that can be built on top of bitcoin and the bitcoin lightning network. If you integrate with Strike with your company, anyone else on the planet with any other kind of bitcoin wallet can pay you.
    - mderazon 4y ago
      Okay, however I have yet to see any crypto project that even comes close to solving borderless money transfers, although a lot of them claim to. This is unfortunate as that market is ripe for disruption
Pakdef 4y ago
> I love that everything is anonymous (down to the account credentials just being a randomly generated token). How did you pay?
deamanto 4y ago
I wish their scratch cards were available in Australia. Sounds easier than shipping money halfway across the word. I would just pay by card, threat level is not high enough to worry about that but their scratch card is a great idea. Must not be a popular enough option though, even a google search doesn't give you much information on them.

sph 4y ago

Of all their features, I love that they have an Android TV app so I can watch F1TV on my couch. They're worth more than the 5 euros I give them per month.

ignoramous 4y ago
Aren't OTT streaming services notorious for blocking VPN IP ranges? How is Mullvad getting around those? Surely, they don't buy / lease / steal residential IP addresses [0]? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9614993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9614993
- sph 4y ago
  Probably Mullvad is still unknown to most. They're not the one doing the sponsorships on YouTube.
StopHammoTime 4y ago
OH MY GOD. I've had to stop watching F1 in Australia because the only app that has licensing is like $27.50 a month and I don't love it that much. This is a fantastic idea! Thanks mate!
- sph 4y ago
  Be aware: I share an account with someone in a country with F1TV. If you register from abroad and use your credit card, they'll see you're from AU, block your account and you'll have to contact customer services for a refund. Exclusivity deals are a cancer.
  - NathHorrigan 4y ago
    Best bet is to pay via App Store subscriptions instead of a credit card. It obscures the country so you are free to use a VPN without worrying about being banned.
vfe2nio590 4y ago
I tried the Android TV App to watch HBO max though (in a different country vs the subscription's host country) and the HBO app did not even load (not even the splash screen). I had no such problems with some other VPN providers (although to be frank some other VPN providers fail in a different way).
n80g532n0i 4y ago
Interestingly I tried to watch HBO Max (from a different country) using Mullvad but it failed me. While some other VPN providers succeeded. So it seems it's kind of a hit and miss what works.

detritus 4y ago

I signed up to Mullvad - my first VPN - literally about 12 hours ago, purely because of how simple, yet comprehensively-explained, their 'onboarding' process was. I also particularly like the flat no-fuss EUR5 a month fee.

malfist 4y ago

Mullvard is behind the mozilla vpn. They're crazy good about privacy. You can mail them cash with account info and they'll set you up.

kadoban 4y ago
Mullvad accepts cash as well. In what way are they behind?
- kzrdude 4y ago
  Mullvad is the service provider, Moz just resells their service
- JonyEpsilon 4y ago
  Behind in the "controlling or responsible for (an event or plan)" sense was meant, perhaps?
- palata 4y ago
  Misunderstanding. The Mozilla VPN is Mullvad (rebranded).
  - kadoban 4y ago
    Ohhh, I see. I did not know that, thanks.
- 7ewis 4y ago
  As in they power Mozilla's VPN: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2019/12/3/mullvad-partnerships-page-has-been-updated-mozilla/ https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2019/12/3/mullvad-partnerships-p...
eszaq 4y ago
https://www.ivpn.net/ https://www.ivpn.net/ also generates a random userid and also accepts cash in the mail (only for large purchases unfortunately). I wasn't able to get mullvad's multihop to work on Android, but iVPN Pro does the trick. iVPN also has a nice server status page that helps you optimize for speed (low load server) or anonymity (high load server) as appropriate: https://www.ivpn.net/status/ https://www.ivpn.net/status/ They have a weird "anti-marketing" homepage which devotes almost equal space to explaining why you should not buy their product :-P Perfect Privacy accepts a gift card (more convenient than mailed cash IMO) and has a nifty "neurorouting" feature which aims to be better than standard multihop (claims of speed, at least, I can attest to). They do ask for an email address, sadly, unlike iVPN/Mullvad. Also I just saw this and it looks a bit worrisome https://www.security.org/privacy-guide/perfect-privacy/ https://www.security.org/privacy-guide/perfect-privacy/ Both iVPN and PP let you block various trackers / MANGA corps at the network level. I like Mullvad but it seems good to support a diversity of providers. Curious if anyone has any dirt on either of those two, or if they can make more recommendations.

DrewADesign 4y ago

I've been a mullvad user for the past couple of years. I only occasionally use them for privacy on open wifi networks or whatever, but the experience so far has generally been excellent. I initially used the official Wireguard iOS app to connect, but their iOS native app is freaking excellent. WAY more reliable and user friendly than the others I've used— ExpressVPN and some other. It's been quite some time since I used the other ones, however, and they may have equally good branded clients by now.

misterdee 4y ago

I can wholeheartedly recommend them after using their service the past few months. They offer Linux configs with wireguard (a sore point with other VPN providers, who tend to either not support Linux at all or only offer openvpn), their Android App has worked flawless and it's just 5E/month.

_abox 4y ago
Yes and they even make double hopping easy. Many other VPNs don't like this, presumably because they have to eat 3 times the traffic.

HEHENE 4y ago

Mullvad has been tremendous and the ease of use is terrific. I use a VPN relatively infrequently, sometimes going months without turning it on, so the one-time payments have been wonderful. The app is simple to use, and it's so, so easy to reactivate for a month when I need it. I can't speak to their privacy as my VPN usecase is usually just "I need an IP in another region," but to the best of my understanding they are one of if not the best in the business.

Cyph0n 4y ago
As an additional data point, I've been using Mullvad as a long-running VPN for a while now (hint: Linux ISOs) and it has been working like a charm.
- RealStickman_ 4y ago
  You can also utilise port forwarding with mullvad (bound to specific key and location) to make distributing "Linux ISOs" faster.

simias 4y ago

I also like that they let you download the raw wireguard config files so that you can connect without having to use their client. You can just plop them onto your filesystem and use wg-quick to get going. Since I'm also a ProtonMail user and I considered switching to them for VPN as well but their python client doesn't seem to work correctly on my Arch Linux install and it doesn't give me anything useful to debug it beyond "An unknown error has occured" so I couldn't be bothered to investigate beyond that.

lukvol 4y ago
I think you can also get the raw wireguard config files for ProtonVPN: https://protonvpn.com/support/wireguard-configurations/ https://protonvpn.com/support/wireguard-configurations/
- simias 4y ago
  I did not know that! Thanks a lot. I'll definitely give it another try.
- clairity 4y ago
  i just set it up to try it out (on macOS): created a free config on the proton dashboard, downloaded it, stuck it in the wireguard client, and it worked (without downloading their vpn client app). make sure your firewall isn't blocking the traffic though (something that caught me at first).
citilife 4y ago
Been using protonmail on arch for years, you have to setup the configs a tad more manually and do some editing (I forget now); definitely doable and protonmail lets you download the configs (which work out of the box depending what you use).
banana_giraffe 4y ago
Be aware, at least Nord clearly does something different with their client than with the OpenVPN files they provide ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21664692 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21664692 ). When I dug into this, I found similar cases with other major VPN providers, but my notes are sufficiently out of date, they shouldn't be trusted anymore. Sometimes the differences are subtle, sometimes they're rather complex like this case. Personally, sketchy stuff like this is why I've moved all of my VPN use to a personal cloud instance running WireGuard.

herbst 4y ago

Crazy thing is, it was just as great already many years ago. And yet people fall for absolutely weird fake privacy vpn offers.

sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago

> Hadn't heard of Mullvad before reading this Just the only vpn with any integrity left remaining, no biggie.

knorker 4y ago
What about ovpn.com?
SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
Absolutely no way to know they are good and other is bad. The entire VPN industry is “trust us bro”. Which works until it doesn’t.
- whatever1 4y ago
  That is the entire tech industry. No audits, no repercussions for screw ups.
- slavak 4y ago
  Would a 3rd party audit work? https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2021/1/20/no-pii-or-privacy-leaks-found-cure53s-infrastructure-audit/ https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2021/1/20/no-pii-or-privacy-leak...
  - SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
    That’s very good. But what do I know about “Cure53” other than they are saying “Yea, trust them bro”. Is Cure53 incorruptible? Would there be any blip in the world if they were not and Mull was really an NSA op? I’m not saying I don’t trust Mull over say, Nord. I am saying the nature of the whole thing is non-falsifiable with our existing technologies. We can only determine who was lying by looking back after an incident, and most are kept secret.
    - Foxboron 4y ago
      cure53 has an impeccable reputation and delivered some of the best security analysis there is. Most of them are also public and on github. https://github.com/cure53/Publications https://github.com/cure53/Publications

anonporridge 4y ago

You can also easily pay with better anonymity with the Strike app, https://strike.me https://strike.me, which abstracts bitcoin mainnet and lightning network payments behind USD, so you don't have to worry about actually holding bitcoin or managing tax implications. You just use bitcoin as a globally agnostic payment rail, masked with your local fiat, so the price volatility doesn't affect you. Mullvad even gives you a 10% discount for bitcoin, bitcoin cash, and monero payments. I am a bit disappointed that they haven't yet integrated bitcoin lightning network. That would be a huge improvement for reduced transaction fees given the low value of transactions they deal with, as well as instant confirmation rather than 6 block (~1 hour) confirmations. You could even theoretically stream nanopayments for each minute of use with lightning, rather than pay for a whole month.

mderazon 4y ago
"Global payments for the internet" I was intrigued... Then "currently the Strike app is only available in the United States*, El Salvador, and Argentina"
- alexchamberlain 4y ago
  It's the "World" Series of Internet payments.
- anonporridge 4y ago
  I also dismiss a project when it's still nascent. /s Also, "Global payments for the internet" is really referring to bitcoin, not strike. Strike isn't doing the magic here. It's just one of many possible APIs that can be built on top of bitcoin and the bitcoin lightning network. If you integrate with Strike with your company, anyone else on the planet with any other kind of bitcoin wallet can pay you.
  - mderazon 4y ago
    Okay, however I have yet to see any crypto project that even comes close to solving borderless money transfers, although a lot of them claim to. This is unfortunate as that market is ripe for disruption

Pakdef 4y ago

> I love that everything is anonymous (down to the account credentials just being a randomly generated token). How did you pay?

deamanto 4y ago

I wish their scratch cards were available in Australia. Sounds easier than shipping money halfway across the word. I would just pay by card, threat level is not high enough to worry about that but their scratch card is a great idea. Must not be a popular enough option though, even a google search doesn't give you much information on them.