VPNs are a great business these days, but I don't feel that they treat their customers properly, or that they're transparent about what they provide.
My sense is that there's a lot of BS going on. Including the fact that "cool" VPNs are supposed to be coming from Scandinavian countries (but most of them aren't).
I don't understand this comment. At best it's tangentially related, but it's also worded vaguely enough to sound like Mullvad (the topic of this post) is doing something bad.
Mullvad states they're based on Sweden -- are you claiming they aren't? They list where all there servers are located and who owns them, if that's your concern.
They seems to have extensive information about why you'd want to use a VPN or not. They don't log customer data and moved to a RAM-only infra. They're cheap with one flat rate.
So what exactly would you call BS? What would you like to see them do different?
> Including the fact that "cool" VPNs are supposed to be coming from Scandinavian countries (but most of them aren't).
I don't understand what you are implying. Neither why are they supposed to, nor why it isn't true. To be fair, the only "strong privacy", etc VPN I know that is not Scandinavian is ProtonVPN. Is there something else?
Yeah it's a mess as a consumer you have to verify that even the most basic things work. Years ago I was using Nord when I discovered that it was silently failing to actually connect me to the VPN despite showing I had connected, so I reported the issue and they told me not to worry it was a known issue. To my knowledge, they never issued any security disclosures.
I work for IPinfo and am trying to find out if any open-source projects would implement this feature, particularly in a status bar configuration.
The implementation will be super simple. Set up your local IP address or IP address range (if you are on a dynamic IP address connection). Consistently call 'ipinfo.io/ip' every 5 seconds to check if the IP address is changing from your home IP address. You will get an alert if the IP address changes. So, when you turn on your VPN, this notification should alert you that your IP address has changed.
I would recommend using the 'ipinfo.io/ip' with a public IP address-based implementation as you can get a virtually infinite amount of queries. With just an 'ipinfo.io' query which gets you the location information as well, you get 1,000 queries without a token. This could work if you reduce the API call rate to a higher interval (not at a second level but only at a minute-level interval). But you do get the location information, which validates the VPN's location information.
I am a happy mullvad customer since about 5 years. I find it somewhat reassuring that they are not spending a gazillion dollars advertising on YouTube or affiliate websites.
And of course prefer that they are in a jurisdiction that isn't a haven for shady companies.
In short: I like them because there is little bullshit and they seem to be OK. I don't think I could ever trust PIA or all of those companies.
I never said I was against their AFK advertising. The EU chat control advertisement was great. The NYC stuff is pretty meh. Advertisement is was on my brain. I mostly treat it like that.
I just find it weird that there seems to be so many companies spending a seemi gly infinite amount on affiliate advertisement (through bought reviews) and on influencer ads.
My sense is that there's a lot of BS going on. Including the fact that "cool" VPNs are supposed to be coming from Scandinavian countries (but most of them aren't).