I’m shopping for a VPN providers, and really struggling to find a detailed and non-biased breakdown of the various options. A number of years ago, I recall finding an extremely detailed VPN comparison spreadsheet that had 30+ columns, which were contained criteria by which the VPNs were judged both quantitatively and qualitatively. I can no longer find that table, so I suspect it has been removed, but I did find the less-comprehensive table, below:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ijfqfLrJWLUVBfJZ_YalVpstWsjw-JGzkvMd6u2jqEk/edit?usp=sharing

In the thread posted by the owner of this sheet, a few commenters pointed out that the highest rated VPN providers in this table just happen to be the ones that advertise most aggressively and are well-known for buying positive reviews from tech blogs, which are pretty clearly designed to be misleading. I too am suspicious that this table can’t be trusted, however I really am not knowledgeable about VPNs, so before passing judgement, I figured I should consult those who know more about it. I also recognize that a strong marketing team and an excellent product aren’t mutually exclusive, however I think that generally applies more in markets where economies of scale play a significant role, as does mass-adoption, which fuels loads of well-informed, independent research (ex: the car market and phone market.) That obviously isn’t the case with the VPN markets… but I’m still sorta holding out hope.

If I end up excluding this table, I’m not sure where to turn at that point. Shilling is extremely pervasive in the VPN market, so it’s tough to trust any one person or any one thread. It’s also well established that a few of the large VPNs actually own a number of review blogs, so I can’t really trust blogs either.

I guess I’m here hoping to be told that my suspicions about this table are unfounded, and / or that another excellent, unbiased resource for comparative VPN info exists. Any help would be appreciated!

  • stifle867
    1·
    1 year ago

    The community around here generally lands on Mullvad or Proton.

    My vote (and money) goes with Proton and I’ll briefly explain why. It ticks all the boxes regarding being independently audited, state of the art crypto, port forwarding, etc. However, the thing that I find extremely important is jurisdiction.

    Switzerland has some of the strongest privacy laws in the world, is outside the EU, and isn’t a member of any mass surveillance alliances. Proton VPN keeps no logs that can compromise your privacy and under Swiss law we can’t be obligated to start logging.

    In my assessment Swiss law seems to have the strongest legal guarantees which are just as important as technical ones. There are a lot of jurisdictions that require government cooperation under gag orders. Even without cooperation, the spy agencies can go and tamper with the hardware anyway. Switzerland isn’t part of the global surveillance machinery.

    Mullvad is based in Sweden which Snowden revealed cooperates with the 5 eyes nations (e.g., NSA, GCHQ, etc). I completely trust Mullvad from a technical perspective, but there is nothing stopping spy agencies from infiltrating them against their knowledge.

    Also with Proton you get a suite of services included which is very nice.