Hmm... I thought NordVPN had been taken control of by the government and that the NordVPN app was proprietary...

If I am wrong, its possible you will get support.

Wait a minute!

NordVPN taken over by the government?! Where did you hear that?
If that's even true then what VPN do you think I should go for instead?

I bought a three year subscription with cryptocurrency and my
account uses a temporary email address so should I still be safe.

The reason I deliberately don't use OpenVPN is because it doesn't have a killswitch option and
I lose connection to the servers through OpenVPN a lot without warning.

The thing is - you can never be sure about VPN. There's no reliable way to check what software is actually running on VPN's server and what is being done with the data. A company that claims it doesn't keep logs, may just as well be lying and we just don't know

If You still want/have to use a VPN, it'd be probably better to choose one, that is friendly towards software freedom (as if any1 expected a different recommendation on a FSDG-compliant distro's forum ). Not just because of libre client software, but also because that tells something about the company... Yet, there're no guarantees.

If you're not Edward Snowden or a drug gang head, then nobody might bother enough to track you down... Even a treacherous VPN could be enough to bypass country blocks or stop G from profiling you and MPAA from finding out what you're torrenting .

But if you want real privacy, then think about these:
* Temporary email provider may know the IP from which you connected to them
* VPN provider will also know your IP and who you connect to through them
* They may or may not be able to access or intercept the data routed through the VPN. This depends on the protocols you use. Use HTTPS (not HTTP) for browsing. Check signatures and checksums of downloaded software... It's not possible to encrypt everything, but it's worth doing it where You can
* Is your crypto wallet anonymous? In most cases (exception being Monero from what I heard), it's easy to track the entire history of each coin. So one could check where you got the coins. If You bought them on an exchange, then maybe the exchange has more info about You?
* Lastly, it'd be bad not to mention, that a proprietary client software can do naaaaasty things

Killswitch option? Isn't something like `sudo rc-service openvpn-client stop` enough?
I'm not sure I understand the problem, nvm.

There're also p2p networks like Tor, Gnunet, I2p... They all make it possible (in theory) to route one's traffic, thus anonimizing it.
In practice, I haven't heard of any I2p users routing others' traffic to the outer net. As to Gnunet, I've never tried using it. Tor is probably the most straightforward one to use (and most mainstream ).

To talk about all strengths and weaknesses of p2p networks is beyond the scope of this post. I'm only highlighting some. A certain strenght is that when your traffic is routed through several nodes, it's more diffficult (not always impossible) for an adversary to track You down.  Take a look at this article to see what enormous effort some recommend to use Tor "safely"..

Idk why this may be happening, but I'd expect p2p networks to be less reliable than VPNs. One may be faster than another, but still a lot slower than VPN (because your traffic gets routed through several nodes, not just one).

That's not all! How about renting a remote server anonymously and using it as a VPN You connect to only through I2p (or other p2p network)?
How about routing traffic through several VPNs in a row instead of one? I've never done it, but couldn't sth like that be configured with network interfaces? + You'd make use of already-rented VPN