this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2026
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Privacy
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My only major change would be to remove Mullvad.
One of the founders has made major donations to far-right groups in Sweden. People have argues that it’s his money to donate, but if paying for Mullvad puts money into the pockets of a major donor to the far-right, I’d rather support an alternative provider.
I have had a very similar user experience with IVPN, and I have heard people suggest AirVPN as a similar alternative.
As someone else started it's worth noting that Mullvad themselves did not donate to anything. I understand people's argument that money to Mullvad goes to the founder and thus goes to the people they donate to and that was people's argument for Proton as well. So do what you will as it's everyone's personal preference.
That's why lists like these, while useful for those who are just looking into privacy, deGoogle, etc. to first learn of projects and services, are almost always lacking nuance without text or all the major alternatives where then people can choose based on their beliefs. 🙂
Note: I understand this is one person's list and not a general list but just stating my thoughts on the matter as a whole.
Why not Proton as well? The CEO is not any better.
Do you consider a post supporting a Trump policy to be as bad as being the largest donor to a far-right party?
I don’t see a difference honestly, plus you know there is underhand contributions going on.
I'm not aware of any underhand contributions. What might you be referring to?
I strongly believe it's perfectly reasonable to compliment a generally evil person/people when they do a good thing, but hey my opinions are boring.
They haven't donated to political parties, have they? That would have been big news I'm pretty sure I would have seen.
Not aware of donations, but Proton's CEO was glazing Trump around the start of his second term.
Yes, claiming that the GOP was “for the little guy” And would do antitrust on big tech.
Some people are gullible as fuck, man. Anyway I would trust Mullvad over proton as far as privacy and security goes - it’s just too bad I don’t want my money going there.
Tbf, when it comes to email services at least, your only real alternative for Proton is Mailbox.org if you use IMAP/SMTP. When it comes to Mullvad, there's plenty of VPNs as an alternative. Plus, apparently Mullvad has lost talent in light of the controversy so their VPN might degrade in quality anyway, so there's also that
Migadu is great for email
I have been using Tuta myself and pretty happy with it.
What about Tuta?
Ah, right
Tuta also syncs terribly. Often when I open the app, the latest email are from weeks ago. And you can't swipe down to refresh. I paid for a year, and quickly gave up within a month.
So recently I’ve tried finding an alternative but when researching deeper into them I just found worse shit than mullvad. Like AirVPN having their servers seized.
For what it’s worth, I think mullvad is still the best option and worse case scenario you’re donating less than $5 to nazis which is like 2 hamburgers.
That’s two more hamburgers than any Nazi deserves, especially on a recurring payment plan.
I also don’t know if failing to disclose the seizure of a server (that contained no readable user data) is worse than supporting the far right. It also feels like if that’s enough to end your search for an alternative, you weren’t searching very hard.
Oh, they upgraded the standard to 5 devices. I think it was just 2 in the past, which made it far more expensive than Mullvad.
Edit: One large thing missing compared to Mullvad is the proxy-based browser extension for Firefox. It let's you select different exit server either for everything in browser, per domain, or randomize server selection per domain.