Daniel Berntsson, founder of Mullvad, gave a personal donation of 5 million SEK (roughly 450,000€) in 2025 to Örebropartiet. This enormous donation accounted for 72% of the party’s revenue in 2025.
How does this affect Mullvad’s legitimacy as a company advocating for a free and open internet, while also funding a political party whose agenda seem to contradict these values? The official party website (in Swedish) can be found via the link below.
I use Kaspersky VPN, from Russia, part of BRICS. The Global South lives on its own work, unlike the Global North, who kills and robs the Global South.
I remember all the FUD about their anti-virus back in the day, even though it consistently tested the best. I didn’t know they had a VPN. I’ll have to look into it.
Edit: website says “purchase is unavailable for US customers”. I’m sure that’s the US government’s doing and not their own choice, if I had to guess.
Here in Brazil I could buy it, although I could not download it not from the Play Store. I downloaded an APK from the website. It is also available on Galaxy Store, Huawei App Gallery, Xiaomi GetApps, and even the Apple App Store! It seems Google interprets the sanctions more harshly than necessary.
Google doing the CIA’s bidding as per usual. I’m glad it’s an option for people outside the US.
So instead of American or European spyware, you instead use Russian spyware :)
Living in America, I’d rather give my data to Russia or China, if I lived in one of those countries, it would be the other way around. The US and Europe have more leverage over my life, so I’d rather give them less about myself.
One downside is that if a western country ends up capturing someone or something important (like France arresting the Telegram CEO), then they might use them as leverage to attain the data on the service. So best case is nobody collects the data.
100% agree. I’m trying to keep everything self-hosted, and j think I’ve made very good progress, but reaching total sovereignty is very hard. I’m guessing it’ll be way easier once I retire and dont6really need to rely on some of the imposed shit anymore.
I’ll give you that, what you’re saying makes sense, but in an ideal world, we don’t have to give our data to any government… only in our dreams though…
Why do you day “any government”? Your phrasing exempts corporations.
Yeah, it’s unhinged across the board, for sure. I’m doing what I can to own my data and control as much of it as possible, but it is a full time chore if I also want to have a life in this time and age.
On the brighter side, that has led to me spending more time with family and friends in person, outside (hoping not to be recorded 🤣).