When looking for a VPN people try to find the perfect service that makes you Anonymous. But no matter what, through payment or directly putting your name on that account the service you can still be linked to your IP address. The way most VPN’s convince you of security and privacy is through No-log services. This No-log service is a promise that a private VPN service will never track what websites you have been visiting and storing it in a central location. VPN’s allow for great protection of information traveling to and from your computer. But a lot of times they can still reveal who you are and where you are located if someone has access to the servers that is routing your traffic.
How do you truly know if your VPN is actually private
The way you truly know your VPN service is correctly protecting your information is if the VPN service is open-sourcing their code. When a company or service open sources their code on websites like Github this allows for users to look at how certain parts of their traffic is being handled and if it is being stored or passed off to other third party services that you don’t approve of. Just because companies claim to keep your information private or give you anonymity doesn’t mean they are actually giving you anonymity.
A good example of a company claiming to give you anonymity and not doing it at all is the Anom Phone. This was a sting operation led by the FBI, they produced a real phone that promoted anonymity and complete security but had a back door which recorded every conversation and and every text message sent and sent it to the FBI. This led to a massive bust of many criminals across the world being arrested. While on the service this is great but when you look at it more closely its an awful use of power. Its awful because anyone who is not committing criminal acts and using that phone is having his or her data being illegally sent to a government server with out a warrant. This is a gross violation of Americans 4th amendment rights and of course no one will get in trouble for it.
So with that example you can see how companies who claim to give you anonymity my not actually be fully doing so. When looking for a service that provides anonymity and privacy it’s important to be aware about whether or not the company open-sources the core part of their code. Also its important to know the third party services that are involved with the company or service you may want to use. (As detailed lightly in this article about Browser Extension). The tactic described above about the FBI may very well be taking place with any other agency and your VPN service.
Failure Points in a “Private VPN”
When you sign up for a normal VPN service you might be prompted with a screen like this
Two points of Failure are shown.
- The email you have to provide, can identify you if you don’t use a burner email
- The Payment, for every company is providing service in Anonymity this is crucial point where anonymity is totally lost. This is not the fault of the companies but is required by law for KYC which means “Know your customer” this means every time someone provides a payment online they must provide their legal name.
How does Mullvad provide Anonymity?
Like how we mentioned earlier having an open-source product gains a lot of trust with the public and this open-source code can be audited by engineers and security services to approve of the anonymity statements you are making.
This is exactly what Mullvad does they open-source their code for the public to see, which helps their case for providing a truly anonymous service.
Payment
Mullvad’s payment is unique compared to every other VPN providers payment system. This system does not allow any credit or debit card use. The way it works is it give you a random string of numbers. This random string of numbers is now your account code whenever you want to login in or pay for the service. Their is no need for email, name or phone number. Once you have your random string you can then for your service. They provide VPN’s for 5 dollars a month, you can pay as much money as you want at one time and it will provide you how ever long 5 dollars a month would last for that payment.
When you pay for the service their is an option for all types of payment. You can pay in cash, voucher, crypto and credit card if you want to (not advised). The best way to pay is going to be cash or crypto. When you pay in cryptocurrency this allows for no name to be attached to the account and an instant transfer of funds. Unlike sending money through mail.
Features and Service as a whole
- Kill switch– Mullvad VPN shuts down your internet access if the VPN connection drops. You can also configure the kill switch to block all of your internet access if you manually disconnect from the VPN server or quit the app, preventing you from going online without being connected to Mullvad VPN.
- No-logs policy– Theydon’t log any user data which can be IP addresses, website traffic, and downloaded files. This policy has been independently audited by multiple companies
- 256-bit AES Encryption– best encryption available to the public
They have all the bells and whistles that every VPN service has. The speed of the VPN is very reliable and has only dropped when we are experiencing a bad connection. This VPN should be heavily considered when you are looking for a private VPN service.
