[tetris11]

MullvadVPN seem to be pretty decent at the moment, but it looks like they're laying down a worldwide VPN infrastructure of sorts that other VPN companies can rent (similar to phone networks)

This makes me feel a little uneasy of their unstated longterm goals (corner the entire market), but I do think they are the most trustworthy out there right now

[kfreds]

We have a few partners who use our infrastructure (e.g. Mozilla), but we're not trying to dominate as a white-label solution. In fact, we've said no to a few well-known brands who wanted to white-label our infrastructure.

As for our long term goals, take a look at our owner's directive: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/ownership-and-future-mullvad-vpn

We want to make online mass surveillance and censorship ineffective. Mullvad is political action through entrepreneurship. We're reinvesting a lot of our profit into open-source software and hardware projects that benefit both Mullvad and the wider community.

I really don't want us to "corner the entire market" because that would make us a single point of failure. I would like to think that our hard work help push the market to keep improving.

[tetris11]

I really like the "to plant trees in the shade of which we will never sit" statement. My pessimism only comes from watching trusted giants like Google and Cloudflare turn into critical infrastructure that in turn dictates the web.

May you continue to be the beacon of trustworthiness and hope that we all need right now

[akimbostrawman]

>trusted giants like Google and Cloudflare

How where they ever even in anyway trusted??? They are literally peoples search results for sale and MITM as a service.

[axus]

When they came out, the alternatives were worse.

[timpera]

I think Mullvad's market share is still pretty low compared to NordVPN, which actually cornered the market thanks to their suspiciously large advertising budget.

[Quarrelsome]

and egregious marketing material. I think they're the ones who pushed the whole "its about security". I remember Tom Scott turning them down a lot because they wanted him to say that for the $$$ and he refused. Eventually I think they backed down and he got paid and did an ad for them without saying how it "improves security".

[pydry]

Of the two im more suspicious that NordVPN is a CIA honeypot in the style of Crypto AG.

[giobox]

I also think this is the scandal waiting to emerge in this space; with what we know from Snowden/CryptoAG/Encrypted message app sting operations etc it is borderline impossible for me to believe not one of the major players is owned by a State level intelligence service.

[NoGravitas]

Kape Technologies, an Israeli firm with ties to Israeli intelligence, owns several well-known VPN companies, including PIA, ExpressVPN, and Cyberghost.

https://hackread.com/private-internet-access-pia-vpn-sold-is...

[anon191928]

they probably learned from past and this time it will not be publicly known. so that's another option

[qingcharles]

That and all those Tor nodes too.

[chollida1]

Based on what? They seem to be one of the reputable players in the industry.

[pydry]

Sheer level of advertising and marketing.

[mft_]

I'm a happy Mullvad customer for years now, except a lot of their IPs seem to have been flagged (presumably due to scraping or similar) meaning that some sites are close to unusable when behind the VPN. Reddit is a prime example.

(I read somewhere a while back that they don't refresh their IPs (unlike some other VPNs?) but I have no special insight into this.)

[commandersaki]

This is the reality of VPNs, they’re going to end up with a short shelf life because major sites block them. Australians think that VPN will save them with the upcoming age restriction and verification for social media sites in coming months, and I’m quite sure that most VPN providers will be ineffective.

[immibis]

They'll work to hide you from Australia.

[commandersaki]

Not helpful to circumvent age restrictions when the major social sites block them outright.