It depends on what you mean. Both of the major VPN protocols in use are open source (OpenVPN and wireguard), but at the end of the day the servers are still going to be owned by someone so you should choose your provider carefully.
There's a bunch of resources out there to help you choose. I'm on my phone now but I'll try and link some of those later today when I'm back on a computer.
Hey sorry I totally forgot to come back to this. The privacytools website has some good recommendations, and I think their criteria for choosing providers make a lot of sense. I personally use Mullvad because I like that it supports wireguard, and their clients are robust and easy to use. Haven't tried Nord myself so I can't say. However according to that privacytools site Nord has had 2 security breaches in 2019 and 2020 respectively which is not a good look.
I wouldn't recommend using a free vpn. Like the other commenter said, you're paying to use their hardware. That means that being a vpn provider will always incur ongoing costs, in the form of renting servers/rackspace in a datacenter. This is not sustainable unless they are collecting revenue, and if they're not being paid by their users, then you have to wonder how they're making their money.
related question, are there any good FOSS VPNs?
It depends on what you mean. Both of the major VPN protocols in use are open source (OpenVPN and wireguard), but at the end of the day the servers are still going to be owned by someone so you should choose your provider carefully.
There's a bunch of resources out there to help you choose. I'm on my phone now but I'll try and link some of those later today when I'm back on a computer.
emphasis on the free and open source software,. But if free isn't an option, is Nord bad?
deleted by creator
oh, damn
deleted by creator
Thanks!
Hey sorry I totally forgot to come back to this. The privacytools website has some good recommendations, and I think their criteria for choosing providers make a lot of sense. I personally use Mullvad because I like that it supports wireguard, and their clients are robust and easy to use. Haven't tried Nord myself so I can't say. However according to that privacytools site Nord has had 2 security breaches in 2019 and 2020 respectively which is not a good look.
I wouldn't recommend using a free vpn. Like the other commenter said, you're paying to use their hardware. That means that being a vpn provider will always incur ongoing costs, in the form of renting servers/rackspace in a datacenter. This is not sustainable unless they are collecting revenue, and if they're not being paid by their users, then you have to wonder how they're making their money.
deleted by creator