Welcome! This is a community for all those who are interested in protecting their privacy.
PS: Don't be a smartass and try to game the system, we'll know if you're breaking the rules when we see it!
That shouldn't happen. All quantum resistant does is to switch out RSA for ML-KEM. The data transmitted is slightly more, around a KB vs a couple bytes, but that only happens once. The algorithm itself is actually faster.
So something else is going on here. I suspect it has to do with the MTU of your carrier, because the handshake will most likely not fit into a single packet, and then maybe something goes wrong with the related ICMP.
I notice the same effects as well. On desktop I keep it on because it doesn't take any longer and provides extra secutity, so why not. But on my phone over lte it doesn't work at all, so I keep it off.
There are only a handfull of quantum computers that could actually brute force a good vpn, and I highly doubt any of them would waste time/resources on spying on me playing steam games or browsing lemmy. In my opinion it's more of a future-proofing feature, and is less important to have on, in 2025 at least.
If you don't need to use a VPN, eg. while on the move, why use one in the first place?
Personally i mostly use a VPN/tor for browsing the web, because i do not trust my ISP. There is also heavy censorship in my country, so i need to anyway. (For example, feddit.org/blahaj are blocked for... some reason. So it's way harder to browse lemmy without one of them.)
for when you don't trust your monopolistic ISP, and when you want to take advantage of the filtering setup at home
I'm fully fine with a selfhosted VPN, and use that myself. But commercial VPNs are not the solution to anything.
It still helps with localization on websites so that I get better results (for me).
But also, my ISP's IPs have such awesome reputation that in certain places I get less Captchas on Mullvad. For example on Google in incognito or reset browser.
Plus it still helps privacy-wise. ISP doesn't know what I connect to, destination doesn't know my (ISP's) IP.
The only thing I don't use VPN for is, ironically, torrents. The only stuff I torrent is legal, and it's faster this way.
Just use a search with easy language/localization setting then, you shouldn't use google anyway, not only for privacy but also as a matter of principle. Also, funneling all traffic through a VPN just shifts the tracking to them, so they still know which account number visits what and when. While in public WiFis, mobile networks etc. It's probably better to not use a VPN, as to spread traces over multiple seperate services. Or use multiple VPNs.
It isn't useful protection currently as quantum computers haven't done any factoring above 21