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1561 sats \ 1 reply \ @petertodd 17 Jan 2024 \ parent \ on: deleted by author privacy
Mullvad is not a VPN with “resources to buy infinite content creators on YouTube”. They're just not one of those VPNs. They're smallish, and have a long and verifiable track record of contributing actual code and other resources to privacy improving projects. That's a proof of work that is good evidence against them being some covert op. And of course, you can pay with Bitcoin and Monero (they do need to add Lightning support though; you can pay with Lightning via a third party).
Personally I use https://ivpn.net because they do support Lightning. Using it right now.
As for complaints about their email hosting... So what? I've never had to send Mullvad or iVPN an email. Their services work 99.9% of the time. It's ok to not be perfect; running email at their scale is a pain and I'm sure they have more important things to work on.
Frankly all the anti-VPN propaganda smells like a covert op in of itself. VPNs clearly make it more difficult for websites and governments to track you by hiding IP addresses in a large k-anonymity set. It's probably true that governments try to compromise VPNs, same as they do to ISPs. But they do that because VPNs work. Not because they don't.
I might be confusing it with Nord which does spend a fortune on YouTube, but wouldn't call Mullvad small on a relative basis, point is it's not obscure enough to be trusted for critical privacy concerns.
email hosting... So what?
Agreed, my point was if you do in fact care about their email provider then you probably shouldn't be using it in the first place.
anti-VPN propaganda
It's just the straight dope... the realm of privacy is filled with so much larp because people are generally too lazy or uninformed to think about what they're trying to achieve exactly.
Sure, VPN's aren't inherently useless, but they're also not the the right tool for the job if you're someone who has to worry about them using gmail.
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