4 ms·

Mullvad is the best, but last I saw, they had to disable port forwarding due to bad actors ruining it for everyone else. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3

by kmfrk 3y ago

Mullvad is the best, but last I saw, they had to disable port forwarding due to bad actors ruining it for everyone else. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36113215 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36113215 They also work with Tailscale which makes per-device setup easier: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/tailscale-has-partnered-with-mullvad https://mullvad.net/en/blog/tailscale-has-partnered-with-mul.... Tailscale was using a bit too much of my iPhone battery last I tried it out, but they're at least aware of it.

DefineOutside 3y ago
After mullvad disabled port forwarding, I switched to AirVPN and it works fine. I trust it slightly less than Mullvad but I'm avoiding copyright trolls, not three letter agencies.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  I've been using AirVPN for a few years now, seems fairly trustworthy so far.
  - LadyCailin 3y ago
    Not to sound snarky, because this is a genuine question, but what does that even mean? Unless you’ve been brazenly selling child porn over the VPN and been getting away with it for years, I don’t really know how you would establish a VPN is trustworthy vs you just haven’t been targeted for your minor torrenting, or whatever.
    - dotnet00 3y ago
      Well, it's been operating for a while now without any major outages, no issues with torrents, exposes way more "techie" features than any other VPN I've used (customizable port forwarding, dynamic dns and customizable subdomain names on those ports, different device profiles, customizable dns filtering lists, all sorts of stat graphs for their various nodes, script generators for openvpn which allow choosing all sorts of protocol related details) works fine for bypassing region locks on the obscure music sites I care about and they've been completely fine with an anonymous Monero payment (well, as anonymous as you can be to what is effectively your ISP). They have a good record of responding to various restrictive legislation around the world (eg pulling out of Italy after they passed an overly broad 'anti-piracy' law) and also haven't had any open scandals. That's about as good as I can really expect considering that I'm mostly just not interested in my local ISP knowing what I'm up to, and am not doing anything hugely illegal or pirating at a large scale. For reference, the VPN I used before then offered no real controls besides a limited country selection and a randomly assigned port forward. It was bought up by a company owned by a guy known for running scams, after which I switched out. Now having seen all the customization I was missing out on, I can't really go back to a simpler VPN.
raggi 3y ago
(Tailscalar here) I identified a big chunk of the background drain on iPhone recently, and so drain just for being on in the background is much reduced now. There’s still more to do, and we still end up with accounting for dns if you force dns via us, but things are much improved.
- Terretta 3y ago
  Fantastic news on that battery work. (Also the third party app beta!) Our iOS users also report random delays turning it on, sometimes half a minute to connect. Sometimes full restarts are needed before connect. And random ask -- could you enable a toggle for video conferencing to stay outside the tailnet? Teams, Zoom, WebEx, etc... You'd have to take on maintaining the IP lists, so users didn't have to. (This can be done today with features you have, but most users and even IT admins don't realize that.)
kornhole 3y ago
ProtonVPN is easy for split tunneling on my Androidish device. Linux requires a little CLI configuration.
Dylan16807 3y ago
I wish they had just disabled TCP port forwarding. Based on the description of bad actors it sounds like that would have been enough, and at least torrent clients would have continued to work.

by kmfrk 3y ago

DefineOutside 3y ago

After mullvad disabled port forwarding, I switched to AirVPN and it works fine. I trust it slightly less than Mullvad but I'm avoiding copyright trolls, not three letter agencies.

dotnet00 3y ago
I've been using AirVPN for a few years now, seems fairly trustworthy so far.
- LadyCailin 3y ago
  Not to sound snarky, because this is a genuine question, but what does that even mean? Unless you’ve been brazenly selling child porn over the VPN and been getting away with it for years, I don’t really know how you would establish a VPN is trustworthy vs you just haven’t been targeted for your minor torrenting, or whatever.
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    Well, it's been operating for a while now without any major outages, no issues with torrents, exposes way more "techie" features than any other VPN I've used (customizable port forwarding, dynamic dns and customizable subdomain names on those ports, different device profiles, customizable dns filtering lists, all sorts of stat graphs for their various nodes, script generators for openvpn which allow choosing all sorts of protocol related details) works fine for bypassing region locks on the obscure music sites I care about and they've been completely fine with an anonymous Monero payment (well, as anonymous as you can be to what is effectively your ISP). They have a good record of responding to various restrictive legislation around the world (eg pulling out of Italy after they passed an overly broad 'anti-piracy' law) and also haven't had any open scandals. That's about as good as I can really expect considering that I'm mostly just not interested in my local ISP knowing what I'm up to, and am not doing anything hugely illegal or pirating at a large scale. For reference, the VPN I used before then offered no real controls besides a limited country selection and a randomly assigned port forward. It was bought up by a company owned by a guy known for running scams, after which I switched out. Now having seen all the customization I was missing out on, I can't really go back to a simpler VPN.

raggi 3y ago

(Tailscalar here) I identified a big chunk of the background drain on iPhone recently, and so drain just for being on in the background is much reduced now. There’s still more to do, and we still end up with accounting for dns if you force dns via us, but things are much improved.

Terretta 3y ago
Fantastic news on that battery work. (Also the third party app beta!) Our iOS users also report random delays turning it on, sometimes half a minute to connect. Sometimes full restarts are needed before connect. And random ask -- could you enable a toggle for video conferencing to stay outside the tailnet? Teams, Zoom, WebEx, etc... You'd have to take on maintaining the IP lists, so users didn't have to. (This can be done today with features you have, but most users and even IT admins don't realize that.)

kornhole 3y ago

ProtonVPN is easy for split tunneling on my Androidish device. Linux requires a little CLI configuration.

Dylan16807 3y ago

I wish they had just disabled TCP port forwarding. Based on the description of bad actors it sounds like that would have been enough, and at least torrent clients would have continued to work.