My main question is, should we avoid VPN companies that are apart of the the 14 eyes, etc.? TIA!
No. The 14 eyes fear mongering was always just marketing and not a legit reason to avoid a vpn.
You’ll likely be fine as long as you don’t use it to send classified military material to the Russians.
… and what do I use for that then? Tor?
There’s no one thing you’d use for that, I imagine. You’d want a combination of many things. More than just a 5€/month commercial vpn, at least.
If you want to be anywhere near “reasonably anonymous” on the internet, you must use TOR browser.
A regular browser is so full of functionality and settings that make you stand out that using a VPN proxy or not hardly matters.
You can see what you’re leaking here: https://www.deviceinfo.me/
It’s so much info that it’s pretty unique.
Genuine question, I just tried this on my phone with both Firefox and Brave (my backup browser). Why does Firefox leak so much more data than Brave? Brave pretty much only showed which number version of Android I’m running and my time zone, Firefox showed all kinds of unique data including all the sensor readings from my phone, how many cameras it has, all the hardware components, and that fingerprint reading is allowed and I have all my settings as strict as they can be. I thought Firefox was supposed to be the way better option.
You could try Mull browser (not to be confused with Mullvad browser which is desktop-only), it seems to do quite better. It’s a fork of Firefox for Android, similar to Tor Browser on Android, just without the Tor part.
Which is probably why it’s named “Mull” as Mullvad did the same on desktop.
There has been numerous attempts over the years by unknown actors to essentially crack TOR by controlling nodes. There have been a few theories about who, but it has been a sustained effort over a period of years that has at times controlled up to an entire quarter of the Tor network, leading many to believe state actors and/or law enforcement are behind these man-in-the-middle attacks.
Sneaker net is the only real way to do it. If someone tries to convince you to send it online, it’s a spook. Then you pay someone anonymously to make the drop, so you don’t get picked up by another spook.
So… no Warthunder?
It doesn’t mean anything at all. Swedish SIGINT agency has been working with 5-eyes for ages.
Ingsoc
If not Mullvad, then what? Generally the privacy community holds them up as the gold standard for private VPNs, and I wouldn’t know what to switch to if I were looking for better (read: outside the 14 eyes).
Proton and IVPN are also great choices.
I forgot about them (IVPN).
Apparently Nord is outside the 14 eyes too, but I’m not excited about them – they’re more into KYC than other options. Decent track record (at least according to Wikipedia) though.
