You do know that you are not getting the best product and prices for something when the company is doing that much advertising
Yes, fuck nordvpn
Most stuff with obnoxious advertising causes me to avoid them, and that’s usually a bad sign. Compare that to Mullvad, who only do pinpoint relevant ads, and they have the receipts that show they actually do what they say.
I’ve noticed Mullvad advertising a lot in London on billboards, tube station platforms and sides of buses. Not saying it’s a bad thing just that I noticed it, they must have really ramped up spending on marketing.
Probably in response to UK’s Online Safety Act
Send like most of the valid criticism is based around the fact that the company also is in the business of user data mining. Which is enough for me to never use them.
Though they also very aggressively advertise, which is also a big red flag.
Sharing co-owners with Tesonet and receiving funding from the same company that owns a data-mining service isn’t ideal. But there is no evidence, and never has been, that anything is being shared between NordVPN and Oxylabs. Besides, NordVPN states that it follows a strict no-logs policy, which means it doesn’t record, store, or share user activity. And this is backed up by the usage of RAM-only servers and multiple independent audits—most recently the service passed a third-party no-logs audit in late 2025 by security firm Deloitte.
Tesonet is pretty well known as one of the biggest tech company in the baltics region so obviously they do a lot of different tech.
VPN itself is mostly harmless and can’t intercept e2e encrypted traffic and today even DSN is under e2e.
The only red flag is really the inaccurate advertising that vpn protects from public wifi issues which is on page with every VPN ad (except Mullvad) but still wrong.
Deloitte? Lol. My past employer was audited by them, and passed. There is absolutely no way we should have passed. I was flummoxed when I read the report. Since then, any time I see a security or privacy audit by Deloitte, I just assume the company being audited would actually fail a bare-minimum audit.
I mean… Deloitte is mercenary, and hired by the company wanting a passed audit.
They get paid to check pre-agreed spots A, B, and C and keep their eyes closed outside those areas.
A RAM-only server can still send metrics, metadata, “anonymized” metadata…
Anything Deloitte touches is crap and their employees are as incompetent as they come. Source: my work contracts with Deloitte regularly.
Yes, NordVPN is garbage. As a SysAdmin, my users that run it on their home PC along with our VPN are a continuous pain in the ass. The product only needs to be 5% of what it is, the rest is Anti-virus bs. It either: does not play well with other VPNs, is impossible to disable, or the people that buy this product are not computer literate enough to use such a complicated peice of shit. All of the above is also a possibility. Since it’s their home PC, we won’t go on it to fix anything and all I can do is blindly troubleshoot. The VPN I use cost me $20 a year and the only thing it does is be a VPN. It should be called NordComplicatedSecuritySuite.
I tested all the alternatives and NordVPN was the only one that worked well with my work VPN. What alternatives do you know that work in parallel with tailscale?
do you have one that you recommend?
When I paid for nordvpn with a credit card and decided to cancel, it took like a week and a half of emails with them to cancel and remove my payment info. A lot of, are you sure you want to cancel, are you sure you’re who you say you are
After that no more nordvpn. Pay for these services with crypto
They are right this time
I still have 200+ days on my plan, but cancelled it for now. Not because of any major concerns, it’s good enough for what I need it for.
But they just making the app worse. There used to be like a map where you could select servers, they removed it. You used to have a “pause” and a “disconnect” next to each other. Now the “disconnect” is the last option behind the “pause” menu. Why?
I hate enshittification and that’s just that.
Will probably switch to mullvad after it expires.
I don’t like how the specific IP address is simply no longer listed.
At least that is still around for me (macOS desktop)
Nord is good for what it is; they advertise to casual users for a reason.
My experience with them was bad. Somehow they automatically moved me from a plan for just vpn (which is pretty cheap) to one that included a bunch of bullshit I didn’t need, want, or even know I could use. The new plan was over $30/mo. There are ISPs who charge less than that!
My previous VPN service has been about $36 per year or something. I remember it was small enough that I just paid it annually out of pocket change, which also lowered the price in comparison.
I stopped sailing the seas, as it were, and dropped it. Then I needed to briefly, and tried Nord. Meh. Anyways it’s strictly land-lubbing these days.
Reddit also hates people who criticize child predators.
I question calling something Nordic if it’s based in Panama and headquartered in Lithuania. I get it, it’s just branding, like how Texas Pete isn’t made in Texas (at least it’s not made in New York City, I suppose) but maybe call it something else?
IIRC Proton is Nordic, but I don’t know if that makes their VPN better or worse. They do have a free ordering and I use it when I’m on public WiFi because I can, but otherwise can’t vouch for it.
Proton is based in Switzerland, which is not a Nordic country. Neither’s Lithuania, but at least the Baltic is Nordic-adjacent.
The notion that the home country of a company operating in multiple countries matters? Only if that home country’s regulatory regime can be trusted. In the case of Proton, a US request to the Swiss government led to a Swiss warrant that forced Proton to disclose the details of a user who had criticised the fascist government in the US. Many countries will do favors like that for other countries without any sort of due process. The best you can hope for is that the vendors’ system architecture retains the minimum user information needed to sustain operations.
The taxes are really high, so Nordic folk tend to base their online businesses in countries with lax tax laws then live off the proceeds in their home countries where the benefits are great.
Ask it on reddit , not here in fediverse
To be fair they asked and answered on pcworld.com
