Stack Privacy Research Mullvad is a single VPN service. There is no free tier that unlocks into a paid one, no ladder of plans that gate advanced tools behind a higher price, and no bundled suite of adjacent products competing for the same subscription. One payment buys one product: a WireGuard virtual private network, built as native apps … Read more
Is Mullvad VPN Safe? Mullvad’s strongest safety evidence and its biggest unresolved question come from the same place: independent scrutiny. Over the past several years, Mullvad has opened its desktop application, its Android application, its own WireGuard implementation, its account and payment systems and its relay infrastructure to outside assessors. Several of those components have … Read more
Mullvad VPN has built its reputation on minimal data collection and account anonymity. That reputation invites an obvious follow-up question. Who actually owns and controls the company behind it? The public answer looks simple: a Swedish company, wholly owned by its two founders. The evidentiary answer is more layered. Some parts of the ownership chain … Read more
Two years of independently audited infrastructure, prosecutor-quoted correspondence on a 2023 warrant, and the real gap between what Mullvad claims and what’s been verified Mullvad makes one of the more absolute privacy claims of any mainstream VPN provider: it says it never stores activity logs, and does not collect user data at all. That’s a … Read more
Proton Unlimited is one subscription and one Proton Account, covering paid access to six core products (Mail, Calendar, VPN, Drive, Pass and Wallet) under a single billing relationship. Alongside that paid core sit names a subscriber will also encounter but doesn’t automatically get at a paid level: Docs and Sheets live inside Drive rather than … Read more
An independent technical audit, a 2021 Swiss court ruling, and one common claim about Proton’s servers that doesn’t hold up Proton VPN’s privacy claim rests on a distinction worth stating plainly at the outset. The company does not claim to make you anonymous. It claims that what you do after connecting is not retained in … Read more
Proton VPN is safe for most users, with material caveats for high-risk users. That is the direct answer. What follows is why. Under normal conditions, Proton VPN encrypts traffic, masks the user’s public IP address, and provides platform-specific controls designed to block traffic if the VPN connection drops. Those controls are well documented, but their … Read more
Proton’s ownership story looks simple. It isn’t. Proton VPN presents itself as part of a mission-driven alternative to venture-backed privacy companies. In 2024, Proton announced a share donation to Fondation Proton, a Swiss foundation registered the previous year, and described it as Proton AG’s “primary shareholder.” That phrase carries a lot of weight in Proton’s … Read more
What does NordVPN actually include? NordVPN’s feature set is broader than a single VPN app. At its center is an actively developed core VPN entitlement covering multiple protocols, a kill switch, DNS protection and a wide range of specialty servers. Around that core, NordVPN has added security and networking features that live inside its applications, … Read more
NordVPN is safe for most users, with material caveats around privileged access, mixed-fleet consistency, cross-platform failure testing, and account recovery. That verdict rests on real evidence in both directions. NordVPN’s core tunnel, leak controls, and account protections address the threats that matter most for ordinary use: interception on public Wi-Fi, ISP visibility, and routine DNS … Read more