this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2026
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[–] JoeByeThen@hexbear.net 25 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] christian@hexbear.net 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

This fits my price range, thanks.

[–] iByteABit@hexbear.net 20 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

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)

[–] SootySootySoot@hexbear.net 16 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] reader@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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

[–] CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 weeks ago

I recently switched from Mullvad to IVPN and they seem pretty good so far, although they don't have as many servers.

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 18 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Using proton over here but not for anonymity so I can't comment on that. My usage is primarily because I will not give websites or services my government ID or photo to age-verify. Half the websites I use gatekeep me multiple times per day because I'm in the UK. On the plus side I see vastly less porn daily because of that gatekeeping whereas before it was just always there in various feeds totally normalised.

[–] EdlritchEconomics@hexbear.net 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

+1 for airvpn. Their prices are decent, they support port forwarding and dynDNS, up to 5 devices, have multiple DNS blacklist options, and passed my admittedly somewhat cursory vibe check.

[–] Enjoyer_of_Games@hexbear.net 12 points 2 weeks ago
[–] GeckoChamber@hexbear.net 11 points 2 weeks ago

I recently switched from Mullvad to AirVPN (with Wiresock to get a feature I need), and it has been a little worse and the server availability is bad, but it is a little cheaper and does not support weird fascists

[–] segfault11@hexbear.net 9 points 2 weeks ago
[–] unitedwithme@lemmy.today 6 points 2 weeks ago

I use Proton. I don't care about any politics or views, I care about the product functioning, and I've been paid for over a year without issue.

I have a couple custom VPN profiles, both with and without split tunneling. That's the biggest perk is how well the settings function.

[–] bourgeoisie_burgers@hexbear.net 4 points 2 weeks ago

When mullvad runs out I'm setting up my own cloudserver for it

[–] Feed_el_Castro@hexbear.net 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I rent a VPS and installed AmneziaVPN on ir. It's a very easy setup and even lets you bypass blocks (I've successfully used this in Russia and in China, though at very low speed in the case of the latter).

[–] coolusername@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago

Proton is CIA