a few commenters pointed out that the highest rated VPN providers in this table just happen to be the ones that advertise most aggressively and are well-known for buying positive reviews from tech blogs, which are pretty clearly designed to be misleading

Exactly. This is unfortunately common practice, so this breakdown can be dismissed as they're obviously biased due to monetary motivations.

Consider to read Privacy Guides' take on the matter instead.

(Perhaps personal) TL;DR would be that Mullvad VPN in combination with Mullvad Browser offers the most private internet browsing experience for people who don't desire to connect to the Tor Network. Furthermore, Proton offers a suite of privacy-friendly services for mail, drive, password manager etc. Therefore, for the sake of trusting the least amount of parties for these services (at the cost of putting all eggs in one basket), one might consider Proton VPN instead; additionally it includes a free tier and some support to port forwarding (read: allows the use of torrent applications).

I wish there were some descriptions per provider with the ratings. Mullvad gets constant tests by third party against their network and has proven many times they have a no log policy that's working, yet they got a 4 out of 5...

With only numbers and generic descriptions that don't quite match the truth, feels like this sheet is a little misleading. Also, I find it ironic that it's on Google sheets.

You're taking something simple and making it complicated. Go with known trusted VPNs that have a history of proving themselves. Mullvad, iVPN, Proton (most of their history is with the email, but that means something) they're all priced pretty close, no need for insane scrutiny.

Unless you're buying kilos of fentanyl and automatic weapons off the dark web, don't overthink it. Absent that, if your goal is simply hiding your IP and appearing in a different city somewhere, just grab a trusted one.

Is this the r/VPN spreadsheet? They love affiliates. They once asked to partner with my r/privatelife subreddit, I pointed out some unreviewed VPNs and inconsistencies and they went silent.

Go to r/VPNTorrents, the only legit source of VPN info on reddit. Datahoarders and piracy people follow their advice. Ignore Techlore, PrivacyGuides and all those copypasta bloggers. They know nothing and are just quick enough to pick up on what's trending among pirates and serious privacy advocates.

There seems to be a lot of discount codes and affiliate links which usually means payment from the providers to the person running the list. When money is involved, truth is often the first casualty, so I would take it with a grain of salt.

https://www.techlore.tech/vpn.html has a pretty good list, its open source so anyone can create an issue/contribute on github https://github.com/techlore/website/tree/master/assets/vpn. They're open about any affiliate links https://discuss.techlore.tech/pub/sponsors-affiliates and are pretty well regarded for an intro in to online privacy

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/vpn/ is also a great resource with a much smaller and stricter list with regards to privacy and tends to be my go to when I'm looking for a new privacy respecting service. I think they have a community here but I don't think its very active and they also have a subreddit which was pretty active the last time I was on it a few months ago

I host my own on a vps where I pay $15 per year

Check that https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/3080693

https://thatoneprivacysite.xyz/

Happy hunting

Edit: (Data last updated on 20/07/19)

The community around here generally lands on Mullvad or Proton.

My vote (and money) goes with Proton and I'll briefly explain why. It ticks all the boxes regarding being independently audited, state of the art crypto, port forwarding, etc. However, the thing that I find extremely important is jurisdiction.

Switzerland has some of the strongest privacy laws in the world, is outside the EU, and isn't a member of any mass surveillance alliances. Proton VPN keeps no logs that can compromise your privacy and under Swiss law we can't be obligated to start logging.

In my assessment Swiss law seems to have the strongest legal guarantees which are just as important as technical ones. There are a lot of jurisdictions that require government cooperation under gag orders. Even without cooperation, the spy agencies can go and tamper with the hardware anyway. Switzerland isn't part of the global surveillance machinery.

Mullvad is based in Sweden which Snowden revealed cooperates with the 5 eyes nations (e.g., NSA, GCHQ, etc). I completely trust Mullvad from a technical perspective, but there is nothing stopping spy agencies from infiltrating them against their knowledge.

Also with Proton you get a suite of services included which is very nice.

I have been using NprdVPN for 5 years. Speed is pretty good, and their zero-log policy have been proved by 3th party. They also use RAM only servers which is better.

It may be a bit expensive though.