this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2026
45 points (100.0% liked)
technology
24468 readers
251 users here now
On the road to fully automated luxury gay space communism.
Spreading Linux propaganda since 2020
- Ways to run Microsoft/Adobe and more on Linux
- The Ultimate FOSS Guide For Android
- Great libre software on Windows
- Hey you, the lib still using Chrome. Read this post!
Rules:
- 1. Obviously abide by the sitewide code of conduct. Bigotry will be met with an immediate ban
- 2. This community is about technology. Offtopic is permitted as long as it is kept in the comment sections
- 3. Although this is not /c/libre, FOSS related posting is tolerated, and even welcome in the case of effort posts
- 4. We believe technology should be liberating. As such, avoid promoting proprietary and/or bourgeois technology
- 5. Explanatory posts to correct the potential mistakes a comrade made in a post of their own are allowed, as long as they remain respectful
- 6. No crypto (Bitcoin, NFT, etc.) speculation, unless it is purely informative and not too cringe
- 7. Absolutely no tech bro shit. If you have a good opinion of Silicon Valley billionaires please manifest yourself so we can ban you.
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'd say Mulllad remains the best option, though not without their controversies too sadly (the product itself has not proven to be unsafe, but one of their top guys has been caught giving a shit ton of money to some fascist party)
Yeah, this is shitty and upsetting, but basically inevitable. Any popular VPN company with vaguely left-politics would be spied on/shut down to the Moon and back. From a technical and real privacy perspective, Mullvad is very good. If there's another good VPN that accepts cash, I ain't found it.
okay sorry to revive this thread but I'm curious what accepting cash really buys you in terms of privacy in a vpn provider for a reasonably normal person. I like the idea of it but I'm not sure it's all that much in concrete terms?
Certainly it could reduce your profile a bit in terms of like, mass surveillance via credit card processors or banks, but those don't seem like the lowest hanging fruit in terms of tracking VPN use.
If you are totally off the grid, don't have/use credit or debit cards or bank accounts, don't have home internet, etc. then obv cash is a huge boon practically and enables you to keep doing those things and still have access to a vpn.
I guess maybe the threat model is "cops (or copyright narcs or whoever) discover material they don't like online" -> they try to track down the user posting it -> they see its a mullvad vpn and either give up that particular line of inquiry or try to subpoena a stone and get nothing identifiable (would have to compel mullvad to assist in tracking you rather than just give up info they already have, an). And if you paid cash you have slightly less to lose than any other method, since you don't just have to trust their no-logs policy, they simply don't have as much info on you to give up even if compelled to correlate your outgoing traffic to your user account?
So its subpoena insurance mainly? I guess that is more concrete than I initially thought, but curious if anyone else has more thoughts.
Edit: also calyx institute will do cash but only at in-person events and honestly idk if they do many/any besides defcon which is... not probably very private. their vpn is free though with bw caps
I recently switched from Mullvad to IVPN and they seem pretty good so far, although they don't have as many servers.