Wondering if using ProtonVPN in a VPN chain is an issue.
Wondering if using ProtonVPN in a VPN chain is an issue.
Pretty much what the title says. I have a subscription to Proton as well as Mullvad. I've ordered a router and I plan on running Proton on the router and Mullvad on the device I'm using, or vice versa. I would just like to know with absolute certainty that doing this won't somehow put my Proton account at risk, before I actually do it; I rely on my Proton account for a lot of things. I know there are automated systems in place that detect abuse, especially with respect to DDoS and whatnot. I do not do anything related to DDoS or anything similar, so my account will never be flagged for anything of that nature correctly. I really can't see how/why daisy chaining with another VPN could reasonably be construed as an abuse of the service, but I actually do worry about that in all honesty, whether or not I should. If there's any way something like that might happen, I'll abandon the idea as it would concern my Proton account and figure some other means of accomplishing this. Thanks.
What do you gain by doing this? I trust both proton and mullvad to not fuck up their encryption so attackers can't read your traffic even through one VPN. The second one doesn't offer additional security here.
In your setup, proton will only know you use mullvad but not know which sites you visit in the end. Mullvad knows everything just the same as without proton. So the outer VPN doesnt add privacy either.
If you are suspected of a crime, forcing mullvad to disclose your identity/IP is enough and proton doesn't help.
If you are worried about traffic correlation analysis, then yes 2 VPNs will help. But honestly for normal usage I don't see the point of 2 VPNs.
And about the DoS fear. Just do it the other way round? Mullvad on the router, proton on the device? From protons perspective you produce the same amount of traffic, it just comes from a mullvad server. The outer VPN is the one where you have increased traffic due to 2 VPNs. But I am pretty sure neither will be a problem and tunneling a VPN through a VPN is not a TOS violation
If you are worried about traffic correlation analysis, then yes 2 VPNs will help.
I am trying to obfuscate my traffic fingerprint as much as possible, yes.
The outer VPN is the one where you have increased traffic due to 2 VPNs.
So, does it (roughly) just double the amount of traffic by adding the second one, or…?
Edit:
I'm not sure why I was downvoted. Advanced traffic analysis techniques already exist. I can only imagine that as soon as methods sufficient to fingerprint innocuous use of the clearnet at significant scale become feasible, that is exactly what will happen. I see nothing inherently irrational about having a threat model that makes some reasonable attempt to account for that.
—Update, 2024/09/02—
I still use Mullvad on my phone, first off, so whenever I'm connected to my router at home (that is, almost every time my phone is connected to any network), I'm in effect using the same setup as I described above. Also, I'm now running an AdGuard Home server on my main machine, while also connecting the same machine directly to the tunnel created by the Wireguard client running on my router, which is to say, Proton VPN. I do this through a Wireguard connection with the router's internal IP address as the endpoint (and localhost for the DNS, for obvious reasons), and a Wireguard server with VPN cascading enabled on the router. My AdGuard Home server is set up to use the virtual IP address for DNS lookups already provided by the Proton VPN config. I should be clear that, for this particular application, this is a huge advantage in favor of Proton as opposed to Mullvad; that is, Mullvad's Wireguard configs use, by default, the external IP address of whichever DNS server it intends to use for DNS lookups, and at least to my knowledge, does not make DNS available on any address in the internal space. I'm referring specifically to Proton and Mullvad configs intended to be used on routers, respectively, when I say that. There is at least one method I've been able to figure out, of getting around this in the case of the latter, but I'm not gonna go there because I'm not trying to promote Proton's competition here, if only because said method is significantly slower than my current setup, if only because Mullvad is in my experience significantly slower than Proton. Seriously. I'm not associated with either Proton or Mullvad in any capacity, so I don't benefit from either saying that or not saying it. I was successful in setting up exactly what I'd described when I first made this post, and my current setup using only Proton is way faster. Period. I feel totally comfortable saying that what I'm running currently is AT LEAST secure enough for most normal applications, especially if used with a Secure Core config. I didn't make this post with the intention of eventually updating it long after it'd already been buried, to the effect of personally recommending Proton over Mullvad based on the results of my experiment no one asked for, but that's basically what's happening. Just so we're clear: I do NOT have anything personal against Mullvad. It's just that Proton lends itself so much more easily to my—in all honesty, deliberately, overly complicated—setup, and it's so much faster that there's really no comparison.
Thank you.