Thinking about VPNs

I’ve been using Private Internet Access (PIA) for my VPN service for a while now. I’m reasonably happy with them, but they’ve been acquired by a company called Kape, which has a bit of a checkered history. It looks like this is… maybe fine? maybe not?  I don’t know. But it seems like it might be a good time to look into other VPN services, just in case.

Firefox just announced that they’re starting up their own VPN service. So that’s a pretty good candidate for me, since I generally trust those guys. It’s in beta right now, and only available for Windows, but they plan to make it available for Mac and iOS too. They’re partnering with a company named Mullvad on this, so that got me interested in maybe just looking at their VPN service. The Firefox service is supposed to be $5/month, at least to start. Mullvad is in Sweden, and charges €5 per month, which is a little more than $5, I think.

I also took another look at ProtonVPN, from the Proton Mail guys. They’re a little pricey, at $8/month for “Plus” which is probably what I’d need. If their $4/month “Basic” plan supported more than 2 devices, I’d probably switch to that. But I can’t really justify the $8/month plan, which is what I’d need to cover all my devices.

My PIA subscription is only $40/year, so about $3.33/month. (And their plan lets me use it on up to ten devices.) So, honestly, if I can keep trusting PIA, that’s probably my best bet.

I signed up for the wait list for the Firefox VPN beta, and if I get into that, maybe I’ll give it a try. But if they still only have the Windows client out when I get in, then it’s not going to do me much good, since I spend a lot more time on macOS and iOS these days (at least for personal use) than I do on Windows.

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