In the wake of the Proton controversy, I’ve been looking towards alternatives towards their services. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find a good alternative to ProtonVPN. I’m looking for the following in a VPN service:
- Port forwarding support
- Open source
- Android app and Firefox extension available
- Relatively cheap, around $3-4 month (okay with annual pricing)
The only options I found were Private Internet Access and Windscribe, but I found issues with them. If I’m cutting ties with Proton based on ideals I disagree with, I should be rejecting alternatives on the same basis.
Based on what I saw in the PIA subreddit, Private Internet Access seems to have some issues with service reliability and concerns about its ownership having ties to Israel, implying Zionist affiliation. Windscribe seems to have better service, but they have had a questionable social media history: edgy marketing including an AI-generated Hitler and a controversy where, according to them, they joked about a guy being mentally ill but their post easily looked like they were saying trans people are mentally ill.
Is there an option I missed? Should I try one of these options despite their faults? I’d like to know your thoughts.
Isn’t ECH and DoH basically just using cloudflare as a VPN? I feel like a lot of privacy folk don’t trust cloudflare, considering how much of the internet is now centralized on them I’m sure they’re a juicy target for subpoenas.
Edit: also, if you use ECH and DoH and trust cloudflare, then what would be the point of the Oracle VPS?
You don’t need to use cloudflare at all, use cloud 9 or adguard if you like those better
If you don’t trust any of them, you can use ODoH, where cloudflare gets an encrypted request from a proxy. The proxy is only aware of your IP and CF is only aware of the request and the proxy’s IP. So if the proxy doesn’t report your IP to CF, CF doesn’t know who you are.
You can host the ODoH relay on your VPS and it will protect your DNS queries from the provider, while being able to monitor that the provider doesn’t send your IP to CF. CF gets queries from the VPS, but not able to see your real IP. Your ISP similarly only sees encrypted blobs.
Tbh ODoH sounds like Tor but with much greater chance of collusion between proxy and resolver. I’d still trust it less than a reputable VPN.
And hosting the ODoH on an Oracle VPS doesn’t make it more trustworthy. Oracle has your credit card info. They could report or sell the info, and Cloudflare would now know that the VPS belongs to you, making the setup identical to just sending DoH requests directly to Cloudflare.
Edit: also it seems like ECH only proxies the first packet, and your normal traffic would still go directly between you and the server, or your Oracle VPS and the server. A big part of VPNs is hiding your identity from the server. And VPNs mix the traffic of many customers, unlike a private VPS.