Mullvad review: The VPN that doesn’t want to get to know you - lesperancebaboyes

At a Glance

Proficient's Evaluation

Pros

Not bad privacy
Company owns its server network

Cons

User interface leaves a luck to represent desired
Lacks passwords to protect your account

Our Finding of fact

Sweden-based Mullvad is like the Swiss Bank account of VPNs. Rather of attaching your account to an email address, the company auto-generates an account numeral for you, and that's all that's obligatory to log on. Mullvad offers a bare-bones interface, but its speeds are neat, and the company takes privacy selfsame seriously.

Mullvad in brief:

P2P allowed: Yes
Business location: Gothenburg, Kingdom of Sweden
Enumerate of servers: 100+
Number of country locations: 22
Monthly cost: €5 ($5.60 at this writing) billed monthly

Near virtual private networks do their best to know as little about you as contingent, sometimes asking for just an email address. Particularly secrecy-conscious users often use a burner email, but almost users likely hand ended their primary speak—a while of in person identifying information. Sweden-settled VPN Mullvad doesn't even want to know that.

Instead, when you sign skyward for Mullvad the VPN car-generates a 12-digit account number. That number is all that's required to wear your account. No netmail address, zero name, nil.

If privacy is your thing, this VPN is well worth checking out.

Note: This review is part of our best VPNs roundup. Go there for inside information about competitive products and how we tested them.

Features and services

mullvadconnected — Mullvad's primary interface.

Compared to other VPNs, Mullvad is pretty basic. On that point are no specialty servers for Double VPN, or special features like an auto-tie in when you're happening unprotected Wi-Fi networks. Mullvad's focus is on offering a straightforward VPN with good security and privacy.

Mullvad does include few essentials, though. It has a kill switch enabled by default that blocks the internet connection when you lose your VPN connection. The advanced settings also have the alternative to automatically connect to the VPN when you commence the Mullvad client.

The religious service is operative on using the WireGuard VPN tunneling protocol. WireGuard on Mullvad is presently in beta happening Linux, but we'll be keeping an eye on IT once it comes to Windows.

Mullvad also owns its own severs. Most king-size VPNs scarper realistic servers on public clouds much as Digital Sea and other providers.

While Mullvad offers a solid service, it won't advance any awards for interface design. This is as basic as information technology gets. Mullvad has a single panel user interface real similar to venerable-shoal electronic messaging services like MSN Courier.

mullvadsettings — Mullvad's settings tabloid.

At the top are two tabs: Status and Settings. Status is where you can check whether the VPN is connected, and what your current server address is, which port you're using, and the protocol used for the joining.

The Settings pill is where you keister access the aforementioned features as well atomic number 3 choose the country connection. The High-tech settings are simple to use, but will probably stay fresh novices away. They are each text based and use a Even/Fictitious setting that you adjust by typewriting out the word. Patc it's au fond the same every bit checking or unchecking a package, it's unlikely to appeal to anyone merely power users.

Mullvad offers desktop apps for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Chrome OS users could use that operating system's built-in VPN client, and Android users tail access Mullvad via the OpenVPN for Android app.

Performance

In my tests, Mullvad's speeds were bad adept. The service achieved an average of 52 pct of the base speed supported on connections to five contrary countries. Totally but the Australian connection reach speeds were imposingly fast. The base speed happening my mesh at the time of examination was nearly 90.29Mbps.

I did find that the desktop application could sometimes be a little slow to respond. That's few parcel out breaker, just something to personify aware of.

Update: This review articl was updated on July 17, 2017 with a revised quicken rack up.

Secrecy, anonymity, and trust

Personal secrecy is where Mullvad really stands outer. The divine service starts by not missing to know anything about you. However, the troupe does arrange cookies connected your web browser to maintain academic term logins, preferable spoken language, and one security cookie. The session login cookie expires later one hour.

The company doesn't lumber your Information science address and exclusive knows you by your numbered history. The beauty of that is that straight-grained if Mullvad is lying and it does log your originating Information science address, i.e., your location, information technology would still have a rough sledding pinning that numbered account to you personally.

Mullvad says it doesn't log traffic while you're connected to the VPN. It likewise doesn't log DNS requests operating room the amount of money of bandwidth your account uses. The keep company does log data from its servers, including the total number of connections on that server, the CPU load per effect, and the totality bandwidth used per server. That is all level-headed data to log since it helps the company amend and maintain its service.

As for the company itself, the CEO is Jan Jonsson, and the cobalt-founders are Fredrik Strömberg and Daniel Berntsson. The mailing address is Chalmers Teknikpark 412 88 Gothenburg, Sweden. Mullvad is owned by Amagicom AB.

The company accepts a variety of different payment options depending on how anonymous you want to be. You can post in cash if you like, the caller accepts Bitcoin, bank transfer, A well as mention cards via PayPal.

Finis

Overall, Mullvad is a gravid VPN with good deference for privacy and enough servers to accommodate all but users. In my tests, IT was able-bodied to dodge Netflix's VPN police, but Mullvad doesn't advertise that equally a feature and it could change in the future. The bottom line is that for those who just want a nobelium-nonsense VPN at a reasonable price with good privacy information technology's hard to beat Mullvad.

Editor's notice: Because online services are oft reiterative, gaining parvenue features and performance improvements over clip, this follow-up is subject to change in rank to accurately reflect the current state of the military service. Any changes to text edition or our final refresh finding of fact will be famed at the upper of this clause.