According to r/VPNTorrents, Proton and AirVPN are the only recommended VPNs since they are the only well-established privacy-respecting ones left that still have port-forwarding. New ones are popping up with promise, like Azire and a couple others, but time will tell. As for Proton, I decided against it because of its limited port forwarding and lack of IPv6 compatibility and settled on AirVPN But Proton has genuinely great products if you're interested in the full suite. AirVPN, in my opinion, is just the last great VPN. Open-source & fully featured client, run by activists, anonymous accounts, crypto purchasing, IPv6 compatibility, full port forwarding, great support, Tor integration, the list goes on.
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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You can add Windscribe to that list. They've been shown to respect customers and offer port forwarding.
I think people forget how trash windscribe was for years or that they had one of their servers seized and private keys stolen in 2021.
They have made a lot of progress but its still odd how people ignore their past history.
You might want to add the proper context that the servers were siezed by authorities (so not stolen) and they were very transparent about the fact that it was a legacy system. They also followed with a plan to rectify, including third part audits. Every organization makes mistakes, it's how they respond that matters.
If you're looking for a VPN provider that hasn't had issues ever in their history, good luck. You'll just end up with the ones who lie and cover up incidents.
Did you read their comment?
' they had one of their servers seized and private keys stolen in 2021 ' they never said servers were stolen
"If you’re looking for a VPN provider that hasn’t had issues ever in their history, good luck. You’ll just end up with the ones who lie and cover up incidents."
This is the type of ignorant statement makes it hard to take you seriously. First of all its not true, and if you really believed it, why waste time stanning for Windscribe? What's your pitch? "They all suck so go with this one"
Sure, trustworthy VPNs are few and far between but they do exist. On the no port-forwarding side you have Mullvad, and IVPN and other newer ones that seem promising for now. On the port-forwarding side you have Proton and AirVPN with other newer ones that have some promise.
Even OVPN, who now has dubious ownership, has a far better track-record then Windscribe.
They're super transparent with whatever they have going on with them. They had one probe within the last couple years but they don't keep logs so I'm not sure anything bad for the users is possible, and what VPN hasn't been asked for it's information lol
The issue is that authorities were able to retrieve the private key off the server. Yes, Windscribe adjusted afterwards but, it puts their security practices into major question. If you read their response to the situation it was a ton of side stepping the issue, trying to put blame on other VPNs, or trying to act like a government getting access to one of their private keys was not a big deal.
Windscribe is fine, back when they were shit-tier I grabbed a lifetime pro subscription for $30. For the common user, who just wants to download their very legal Linux ISOs on qbit its a good VPN. I just think Windscribe gets a pass on its history more so then a lot of other VPNs.
Damn, I didnt have that good reasons, but I also got AirVPN (;
Is Nord not considered privacy-respecting anymore?
Well-recommended. Thanks for the information!
I use AirVPN
AirVPN is great
I use azire now. Works well so far.
I don't really see people recommending Azire. How are the speeds?
I like how they have an api for stuff like port forwarding etc (albeit with mediocre documentation), and how they use all their own servers.
So far I could always max out my connection, it is only 100Mbit/s tho.
Been thinking about trying Azire, do they provide static ports?
No, the ports expire, but you can script the renewal / new port process via their API. I want to set up a job that gets a new port like 1x per week and tells it to the applicating using the port. Haven't done that yet. So far my port stayed active for like a month.
Oh that's neat. Yeah I use Airvpn currently, but would be interested in Proton or Azire if I could automate with a script like you said.
I use proton with a decent amount of success, although I have had trouble with connectibility.
do you find the protonvpn server is quite unstable?
The speed can fluctuate as users pop on and off a server, but in general I have gotten excellent speeds (100mbps+). If ever I am getting poor throughput I swap to a different random server until I get what I need. I do not torrent with it though so I am not sure how it fares with that use.
I have not. Especially with the desktop client, which automatically will switch to another server if you get dropped. As far as speeds, I've also never noticed a problem but my bottleneck is my ISP so it's hard to know.
AirVPN