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Does a VPN used on a smartphone with Wi-Fi disabled (mobile data only enabled) provide any sort of protection? (beehaw.org)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I've never completely understood this, but I think the answer would probably be "no," although I'm not sure. Usually when I leave the house I turn off wifi and just use mobile data (this is a habit from my pre-VPN days), although I guess I should probably just keep it on since using strange Wi-Fi with a VPN is ok (unless someone at Starbucks is using the evil twin router trick . . . ?). I was generally under the impression that mobile data is harder to interfere with than Wi-Fi, but I could well be wrong and my notions out of date. So, if need be, please set me straight. 🙂

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I feel like one straw man in your arguments, is we keep mentioning mullvad in the comments, but you always compare it to the scummy VPNs like NordVPN.

Mullvad is also based in the EU, and the gdpr applies. They go out of their way to know as little about you as possible, if you pay with crypto or cash, they have no way to identify you as a person.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I checked and there is only a single comment that mentions Mullvad (other than yours that I'm replying to right now) that's visible on my instance with no specific explanation why it's better than other offers other than that you can pay with cash. If I've missed something, I promise you that it's not in bad faith, it's just that this distinction didn't come through clearly.

I hadn't heard about Mullvad before today and a quick look at their website made it look not very different from the fear-mongering you see with the others. Only after your comment I noticed the Why Mullvad VPN link at the very bottom that explains what they do differently. I'm still skeptical about some of the claims and especially of audits that they themselves requested but I'm happy to see that there are providers that seem to be more trustworthy than the ones that are constantly shoved down our throats and I'm definitely happy to have learned something new.

May I suggest that you write a top level comment that explains in detail why Mullvad is better than other services so OP (and others who stumble over this thread) has an easier time finding it?

Edit: minor typos and grammar

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/vpn/#mullvad

You came out so strongly, and forcefully against VPNs, I'd assumed you've already done your research to know they're all terrible horrible things

But I cannot explain the benefit of VPNs any better than privacy guides, and they do an excellent job, and compare different options. So they're definitely the place to go when you're looking at which VPN providers are credible

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

I came into this discussion from the technical perspective (of which I've done plenty of research, both in university and in my job) that commercial VPNs don't do what most ads want you to think they do. Your ISP sees a lot less than they want you to think, VPNs use just the same encryption algorithms as everyone else and while public WiFi isn't great security-wise it's not as if anyone will read your bank password the second you connect. I still stand by those claims.

Then, the discussion drifted towards who you'd rather trust with the things that aren't encrypted (mostly DNS and connection metadata. Someone has claimed that many messengers are unencrypted but I think they have confused a lack of user-to-user encryption with user-to-server encryption), your ISP or some VPN provider. That's the point where we diverged: as I had no need for a VPN myself (because of the reasons mentioned above), I had not researched individual VPN providers and was not aware that Mullvad apparently has a strong track record. For that I apologize. Still, in a thread that started out with someone not knowing if they need a VPN at all and most discussion has been very general, I would not assume that anyone who comments is familiar with a specific provider without them being named explicitly. Also, I've stated in at least three places that I was explicitly talking about VPN providers like NordVPN and Surfshark that are prominently (mis-)advertised. Those I still would not trust further than I can throw them.

But I guess that's online discussions. We've talked about two different things and took a while to notice. I'm thankful for the correction and I hope you can understand where I came from.