• Deloitte confirms PIA’s no-log claims, with servers running on RAM-only system for maximum privacy.
  • Independent audit verifies PIA’s infrastructure is not vulnerable to third-party exploitation, ensuring online activity remains private.
  • PIA offers full transparency with open-source apps and regular third-party audits, proving its commitment to data protection.
  • Dark ArcA
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    8 months ago

    Nord had a very bad incident a few years ago https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/21/nordvpn-confirms-it-was-hacked/

    They were also REALLY late to the disclosure and tried to play it off as “them being responsible”:

    NordVPN said it found out about the breach a “few months ago,” but the spokesperson said the breach was not disclosed until today because the company wanted to be “100% sure that each component within our infrastructure is secure.”

    They (at least were) also very aggressive about advertising (all over YouTube at one point sponsoring all kinds of stuff)… Which is typically the opposite of what you want.

    Proton has had write ups in the past about the VPN review market as well and how a lot of reviews are “whoever pays us the most money is the top VPN.” Proton has a strong enough track record in their other software for doing the right thing and truly valuing security, privacy, and open standards, so I’m inclined to believe them. VPN was one of the first spinoff products they launched when it was still mail, and they did so because some of their more sensitive customers (think journalists in some bad parts of the world) were having to rely on third party VPNs of questionable integrity.

    I trust Mullvad and Proton at this point for VPNs, nobody else.

    • evranch@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      I trust Mullvad and Proton at this point for VPNs, nobody else.

      Any reason you can state not to use AirVPN? I switched to them from Mullvad because they support port forwarding. So far I’ve been very happy with their service.

      Having ads and sponsors blocked I can’t be 100% sure, but I don’t think they advertise at all. I only tried them because of a recommendation on Lemmy. Their site design is very old school which really says “run by nerds and not marketers” to me.

      • Dark ArcA
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        8 months ago

        I do not know anything about AirVPN specifically.

        Proton does provide port forwarding these days FYI.

        I think “run by nerds not marketers” is a good thing … though I don’t know if a site looking old really means it’s run by nerds lol

        • evranch@lemmy.ca
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          8 months ago

          Yeah I know, but have you seen their site? It’s like an old 90s static HTML page. The main thing I see is that it’s clearly not a glossy “marketing first” service. They’re surviving off of their actual product.

          • Dark ArcA
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            8 months ago

            Yeah that’s fair. It can definitely go both ways though. Like your sign over your shop can look old because you’re still getting growth/a really nice cash flow without updating the sign or it can look old because you stopped caring a long time ago and you’re just milking what you can from the remaining customers.

            I had a friend who’s ISP was very much in the latter category about a decade ago, charging like $90/mo for 10Mbps (IIRC with a data cap).