Hey I made a big reply about this to someone else a while back but if you trust the news and what the police say then mullvad is safe.

A long time ago they had port forwarding and pedophiles were allegedly using it to trade csam back and forth. Interpol got together with Swedish cops and did a warrant raid and came back empty handed. They had every legal ability to record user data and wiretap the servers but were unable to. Eventually Interpol pressured cdns and major providers to blacklist mullvad servers and rather than give up user information mullvad stopped offering port forwarding. A lot of people left them because of it.

If you don’t trust what the cops say or what mullvad does then you still gotta see mullvad as safe.

Why would the police put pressure on cdns to drop mullvad traffic if it’s a honeypot? That doesn’t make sense. If it’s a honeypot then why would mullvad drop port forwarding and lose tons of customers who rely on it for piracy? That also doesn’t make sense.

As far as why anyone would ever pay a company to act as a proxy vpn, it’s to anonymize the traffic. Some vpn companies don’t have “accounts” with username (tied to email) and passwords, it’s just one secret, the account number. They might also take anonymous cash payment as well. In that case they can’t really do anything to give you up because they don’t know who you are.

Like anything else it’s a negotiation of what degree of trust you accept. Many small metal shops around here are run out of a commercial type building next to the owners house. My favorite small fabricator is in a little building nowhere near his house (I found out because the neighbors dog was running loose and came up to get a pet and said “is this your dog?” And he said “I don’t even live on this road”). If you trust the people you do business with to not bother you at home then there’s no problem with them knowing your home address. If they never know it to begin with then you don’t need to consider or accept that level of trust.