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Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?

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Re: Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?

#91

Post by alliecat »

hazz99 wrote: post #18
Johnny555 wrote: post #13

I'd be most worried about the legal liability, what happens if someone starts using your service to download or sell pirated movies or child porn? Whats your legal exposure?

Yeah this is my issue. I'm not too worried about it being a successful business (more like a small side project), but I don't have the resources to fight any legal claims.

Then you don't have the resources to run the business.

The technical side is pretty cheap compared to the legal manpower you need to protect your end users.

Re: Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?

#92

Post by naegelin »

I ran a venture backed VPN company for many years (Spotflux). These days there are tons of huge players in the market, some of which have hundreds of millions of dollars in funding. Your challenges will be as many have stated the following:

1) Convincing providers to let you have VPN traffic on their networks. 2) Dealing with tons of DMCA complaints 3) Dealing with GDPR compliance in the EU 4) Maintaining compatibility for dozens of different user configurations and having apps in the mobile app stores 5) Dealing with credit card and payment fraud. 6) Dealing with law enforcement once you reach a certain scale (no, incorporating in whatever random island will not help you) 7) Maintaining constant uptime of your servers. When a user faces even a minute of downtime, their internet connection is now effectively broken and you are to blame. 8) Dealing with lots and lots of customer support issues and an endless mix of customer configurations which will have you ripping out your hair trying to resolve. 9) Constantly make sure your systems are secured from the latest exploits so you can guarantee privacy and safety of your users. 10) Maintaining a brand and a niche with mature marketing channels that keeps new users coming and paying for your service.

At the end of the day, its a very difficult company to run and its even harder to maintain profitability with so much competition.

Re: Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?

#93

Post by Kaveren »

krn wrote: post #84
Kaveren wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you referring to? The situation I found bits and pieces about didn't seem to amount to much of anthing. ProtonVPN was able to explain what happened to what I thought was a satisfactory degree [1]. I definitely don't trust NordVPN in particular, they advertise their "military grade encryption", and I have no clue who runs it. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonVPN/comments/8ww4h2/protonvpn... What other VPN w…

> ProtonVPN was able to explain what happened to what I thought was a satisfactory degree ProtonVPN's explanation was extremely hardly believable[1]. > Mullvad, absolutely no clue who runs it. It's clearly stated on Mullvad's homepage[2]: > The legal entity operating Mullvad is Amagicom AB. [...] Amagicom is 100% owned by founders Fredrik Strömberg and Daniel Berntsson who are actively involved in the company. The re…

I thought the Reddit reply was thorough, though I can't speak to the claim by krn.

At the end of the day, I can't name many (if any) VPN providers that operate their own data center, which is extremely important since they all (including ProtonVPN) lease from the same companies. ProtonVPN does provide Secure Core though (routing traffic through certain countries to attempt to mitigate exit node threats), too.

I wasn't aware about Mullvad, thank you for pointing that out. I still have little clue who those people are, while Andy Yen has given a TED talk, so he has some public presence. I'm personally more inclined to trust them.

Re: Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?

#94

Post by _kxbd »

tasticanal wrote: post #88
Kaveren wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you referring to? The situation I found bits and pieces about didn't seem to amount to much of anthing. ProtonVPN was able to explain what happened to what I thought was a satisfactory degree [1]. I definitely don't trust NordVPN in particular, they advertise their "military grade encryption", and I have no clue who runs it. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonVPN/comments/8ww4h2/protonvpn... What other VPN w…

Why so? ProtonVPN explained the situation quite clearly though I don't understand why you wouldn't trust NordVPN. Just because they are advertising? Or 'military-grade encryption'? They aren't misleading really, even if it is a marketing gimmick. And who runs it... Well, it is a caveat with most of the VPNs. Because of the delicate nature of them (cybersecurity service, various jurisdictions and such), you don't real…

You should know who runs a VPN in my opinion if you're going to trust them. Private Internet Access you at least have a name at London Trust Media, but Andy Yen has a public presence.

I don't trust anyone who uses "military grade encryption", period, even though it is just a marketing ploy.

ProtonVPN has their own data center of some sort in Switzerland. All VPNs are leasing the same servers from Leaseweb and friends (even ProtonVPN). They say it's in an underground retired army bunker, which sounds good for physical security assuming that's really the case. You never know for sure, but it's better than the alternatives.

VPN companies are notoriously shady, and I only trust ProtonVPN. I believe their service in _some_ respects is a cut above the rest, and I am willing to deal with multi-day customer service responses, DDoS attacks, and the like because of that.

Re: Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?

#95

Post by protonmail »

Kaveren wrote: post #93
krn wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ProtonVPN was able to explain what happened to what I thought was a satisfactory degree ProtonVPN's explanation was extremely hardly believable[1]. > Mullvad, absolutely no clue who runs it. It's clearly stated on Mullvad's homepage[2]: > The legal entity operating Mullvad is Amagicom AB. [...] Amagicom is 100% owned by founders Fredrik Strömberg and Daniel Berntsson who are actively involved in the company. The re…

I thought the Reddit reply was thorough, though I can't speak to the claim by krn. At the end of the day, I can't name many (if any) VPN providers that operate their own data center, which is extremely important since they all (including ProtonVPN) lease from the same companies. ProtonVPN does provide Secure Core though (routing traffic through certain countries to attempt to mitigate exit node threats), too. I wasn'…

Actually, ProtonVPN does own the physical hardware and network for our secure core servers, which we fully operate and run ourselves. This is rather expensive to do, but it's the only way to be sure things are behaving as they should.

Re: Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?

#96

Post by extremum134 »

wild_preference wrote: post #58
foob wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As part of a company in the residential proxy space [1], I just wanted to point out that this type of proxy is used in a very different way than low-end VPNs. Residential proxies tend to much more expensive, and this results in them being used almost exclusively for legitimate business purposes. It's even a standard practice to go through a KYC process before obtaining access to residential proxies in order to ensure…

My critique is that Hola VPN users don't realize that they are peers, nor what that entails even if you were to use more direct language than the vague "share your idle resources with the community!" rhetoric on Hola VPN's homepage. But since you brought it up, we both know residential proxies are especially attractive to bad actors and circumventors. It's like how we're both capable of pitching Tor as the emancipato…

Most users from third world countries can't distinguish between ads and content.
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