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Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership
31–40 of 66 posts
Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership
#32Is there any reason to trust a free VPN service? At least with a paid service I might think that my money ... could be enough to sustain the company. At least it could be. I would assume a free service would have to be selling your information just as a matter of policy / economics.
You could extend the argument on price though. You can easily pay an ISP $50/mo for broadband, so why should you trust a paid VPN that will handle all your traffic for only $5-8/mo on top? Is the difference all infrastructural costs? What about those cheap $3/mo VPNs? Where do you draw the line?
I presume the majority of that difference is because there's a healthy market for VPNs with practically no barrier to entry, whereas your ISP is a monopoly usually, or a duopoly if you're lucky.
Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership
#33My guess is that the once ubiquitous Chinese VPN companies one found ads for everywhere in China have been driven out of the local market leaving people with gear and no customers, moving to courting offshore (from China) customers is the obvious move for these guys
Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not entirely true. Some, if not all, of these companies start outside of china, but end up getting bought by chinese capital. I do not have a source for this, i just know from my chat with friends.
It works both way. I used to use a shadowsocks based service called "God Use VPN" or 佛跳墙 in Chinese, which is a dish name. It was so popular to the extend that google translation used to believe that the English name of that Chinese dish known as "佛跳墙" is "God Use VPN". It was recently sold to a foreign owner and stopped provided any Chinese based services - if you send them some emails in Chinese, you get English re…
> Pretty clear sign that they quit the Chinese market for whatever reason
Well, I'm not very sure, but we had few crack downs on VPN selling recently in China, some people even received prison time plus fine.
It's not very safe to operate VPN company in China, so maybe the best way is to sell that hot potato to whatever who wants to take it. The only exception is probably "Game Accelerator"(s) which is a special type of VPN that only transports game traffic.
Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership
#35Is there any reason to trust a free VPN service? At least with a paid service I might think that my money ... could be enough to sustain the company. At least it could be. I would assume a free service would have to be selling your information just as a matter of policy / economics.
You could extend the argument on price though. You can easily pay an ISP $50/mo for broadband, so why should you trust a paid VPN that will handle all your traffic for only $5-8/mo on top? Is the difference all infrastructural costs? What about those cheap $3/mo VPNs? Where do you draw the line?
I assume that the VPNs buy bulk bandwidth, and also they have to compete with each other, whereas the ISPs have to run (or lease) the actual lines to my home.
Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership
#36This should be the HN motto:
"If you aren't paying for it, you are the product".
Also, VPN isn't a magic cure for the disease of privacy violation. You are just choosing to trust the people running the VPN service over the people running your ISP. Should you trust a VPN company more than your ISP? I really can't say, but VPN isn't a magic fix.
Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could extend the argument on price though. You can easily pay an ISP $50/mo for broadband, so why should you trust a paid VPN that will handle all your traffic for only $5-8/mo on top? Is the difference all infrastructural costs? What about those cheap $3/mo VPNs? Where do you draw the line?
I presume the majority of that difference is because there's a healthy market for VPNs with practically no barrier to entry, whereas your ISP is a monopoly usually, or a duopoly if you're lucky.
Not outside the US. E.g., in our apartment, we can subscribe to fiber, cable, and DSL. On fiber and DSL, there are many ISPs to pick from. However, the prices are still similar to the US (you just get a lot more bandwidth for the same price).
I think it is more that the costs of running an ISP are much higher, you do not only need peering, but the networks including the last mile need to be put in the ground and maintained. Plus, in to some extend, people in areas with high-density populations subsidize expansion into lower-density areas.
The VPN market is really different. In principle anyone could start a VPN using just a VPS (it wouldn't be the best, but many VPNs are terrible anyway).
Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
VPN use is illegal in China, which is a good reason to quit the market. For Chinese apps, we can only imagine that the government does really police the ban or that they are honey pots...
In fact they don't care that much if you are deemed reliable, like some state institutes, researchers, there's is a priviledged net CSTNET for those people, they don't block anything on that. They are far more lenient on English sites, presumably due to the requirement of high education level to read. And there is a university net, it's slightly less blocked than public nets. They've charged someone for selling VPN o…
That myth was perpetuated for a long time. So far, I have not seen any genuine "unblocked network" in China. The few companies and universities with campus-wide unblocked internet simply use VSAT, or just a regular VPN. I've been on Microsoft's campus once, and the external IP of their wifi was that of an HK colo, same with the famed "very secret" Nottingham uni network that had Singaporean IPs.
Not even people in Qinghua (number one uni in China, if you don't count central party school) I know, know of anything that amounts to that.
The very same thing with MPLS, and allegedly "physically uninterrupted" links to HK. They also have GFW on them.
There is nothing that amounts to "officially permitted VPN" in China. That's a myth.
The only thing that amounts to that are microwave to HK/Macau, HK SIM, VSAT, or a cable across Sham Chun, and all of this is being actively looked for by police and three letter services.
Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership
#39Likely the reason why a lot of VPN apps are Chinese is because there is an actual demand for VPN usage in China. You then multiply that with the population size (19% of the world is Chinese or roughly 1 in 5 people in this world) and you will have a massive market to grow for local Chinese VPN developers and for them to prosper. The article author sounds surprised but it is quite logical if you think about it.
How do these VPN bypass the Great Firewall if they are in China?
Re: Many free mobile VPN apps are based in China or have Chinese ownership
#40VPN just shifts the trust from your ISP to the VPN company. It doesn't matter where they're based. If you pay with a credit card under your real name the burden of risk is always on you and if the company has agreements with whichever jurisdiction you are in then they will collaborate with LE. that said, trust is fickle: The ultimate example of why not to put trust in companies was WoSign/StartCom. WoSign acquired St…
Not to forget that sometimes the definition of shit changes over time and while the things you were doing were not classified as shit at the time, after a certain date they might become (even retroactively) so.