In the wake of the Proton controversy, I’ve been looking towards alternatives towards their services. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find a good alternative to ProtonVPN. I’m looking for the following in a VPN service:
- Port forwarding support
- Open source
- Android app and Firefox extension available
- Relatively cheap, around $3-4 month (okay with annual pricing)
The only options I found were Private Internet Access and Windscribe, but I found issues with them. If I’m cutting ties with Proton based on ideals I disagree with, I should be rejecting alternatives on the same basis.
Based on what I saw in the PIA subreddit, Private Internet Access seems to have some issues with service reliability and concerns about its ownership having ties to Israel, implying Zionist affiliation. Windscribe seems to have better service, but they have had a questionable social media history: edgy marketing including an AI-generated Hitler and a controversy where, according to them, they joked about a guy being mentally ill but their post easily looked like they were saying trans people are mentally ill.
Is there an option I missed? Should I try one of these options despite their faults? I’d like to know your thoughts.
Even easier and super censorship-resistant (battle-tested in Russia of all places, where all conventional options are blocked): AmneziaVPN
https://github.com/amnezia-vpn/amnezia-client (Also available on official website, Google Play and App Store. No Firefox extension is available, but Linux/Windows/MacOS apps are all in place)
All you need to do is spin up a server on any VPS and give AmneziaVPN app root credentials to it. The rest will be done automatically within seconds. You don’t need to set up anything manually. In fact, you never need to ssh to your VPS at all.
(Obviously, do not use this installation method if you have anything else on the server. For that case, manual AmneziaWG install is available)
A major selling point of VPNs is mixing the traffic of all users.
If you are in a surveilled country, you’re the only one using your VPS, and the destination server is in a surveilled country, then all your traffic will look like: you -> VPS -> destination. You would have to have multiple VPS servers in non-surveilled countries, and constantly rotate the servers to avoid the intermediate hops from getting associated to your identity, and that’s hoping that the VPS company doesn’t get subpoenad (since they likely have your credit card info and can leak your identity).
Indeed, that’s an important point to remember.
Personally, I place exit server in a jurisditction that doesn’t answer to my local authorities, and have several other people use the server.