VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies • Hacker News Board

Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies

#91

Post by Traster » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 10:34 AM UTC

People should take this list with a serious health warning. Firstly, a lot of this is just 'internet sleuth'ing and innuendo. Plenty of companies want to operate multiple services to be able to use different marketing and differentiation strategies. Secondly, the fact that the site is funded by affiliate links to a coupole of the big VPN services should really ring alarm bells. I trust we all learned from the Mattress review debacles? [1]

Thirdly, the companies who are funding this site through affiliate links, despite not being investigated in this article are arguably more worth of some serious suspicion. For example: NordVPN, one of their "Top VPN providers" is run by the same guy who runs a Lithuanian data harvesting company[2], but don't worry, lots of websites who make money from affiliate links to NordVPN (Sign up Now! 75% off when you use the code "SCAM" at checkout!)

Now, maybe I'm being cynical - but I suspect if NordVPN weren't lining the pockets of all these referral websites their reviews of NordVPN would involve a lot more of the faux concern they show about other VPN companies in this hit piece, rather than the credulous write-ups about how it's totally not a problem that this shifty Panamanian company has suspicious links to data harvesters.

[1]:https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-blogg...

[2]:https://www.vpnmentor.com/blog/is-nordvpn-operated-by-tesone...

Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies

#92

Post by rocqua » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 10:35 AM UTC

fock wrote: post #29

bsamuels wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be fascinated to hear about how Amazon is spying on EC2 traffic in the same ways ISPs want to spy on/monetize customer traffic

except for long forgotten http-tricks inserting scripts: what do ISPs do today? I guess they log a lot of connection data (which AWS certainly does too)

DNS logging and legally mandated modification. See the recent thread about UK ISPs disliking Mozilla using DNS over HTTPS.

Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies

#93

Post by Nullabillity » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 10:37 AM UTC

duxup wrote: post #2

Nearly as disturbing as the number of people who tell me they use free VPNs. It is a bit mind boggling that folks are concerned about something and use a VPN...but choose a free one...

Paying for it means losing any semblance of anonymity, without any guarantee that they won't just keep on logging everything that passes through.

Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies

#94

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 10:43 AM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #43

harshvladha wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and so 97 VPN products may fall under single digit organizations, big one being NSA!

Now you just need to figure out which one owns which and then chain them cross vendor, and hope that "he's connecting to a chinese spy vpn" doesn't put you on any list ;)

Most people on HN are probably on several lists.

If I mention "The Anarchist Cookbook" then I imagine every username on this page will be added to a GCHQ list, I'll probably have my internet traffic mined to establish if I downloaded it (which they arrest people for in the UK -- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-41802493). Presumably they have my online purchase history that relates to reagents, etc..

I also expect to be on lists for being critical of the establishment, doing online web security courses, buying remote connectable electronics, etc..

The difficulty I expect is profiling to reduce those lists to meaningful actions that have indicative value.

Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies

#95

Post by homero » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 10:43 AM UTC

Traster wrote: post #91

People should take this list with a serious health warning. Firstly, a lot of this is just 'internet sleuth'ing and innuendo. Plenty of companies want to operate multiple services to be able to use different marketing and differentiation strategies. Secondly, the fact that the site is funded by affiliate links to a coupole of the big VPN services should really ring alarm bells. I trust we all learned from the Mattres…

VPNs are the best data mining solution out there. You're literally giving them all traffic plus using their DNS. TLS helps a lot now but DNS hurts.

Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies

#96

Post by petargyurov » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 10:56 AM UTC

Traster wrote: post #91

People should take this list with a serious health warning. Firstly, a lot of this is just 'internet sleuth'ing and innuendo. Plenty of companies want to operate multiple services to be able to use different marketing and differentiation strategies. Secondly, the fact that the site is funded by affiliate links to a coupole of the big VPN services should really ring alarm bells. I trust we all learned from the Mattres…

I am a bit confused -- are you saying that the article in your second reference is one of those "credulous write-ups" that we should be wary of or are you using it as a genuine reference?

Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies

#97

Post by mirimir » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 10:56 AM UTC

None of these are seriously privacy-centric VPNs. I was very pleased to not see any of my old favorites (AirVPN, IVPN, Mullvad and PIA).

Although it's not easy to find them on their site, I believe that the https://cure53.de/ vulnerability assessments are more interesting. Google "vpn site:cure53.de".

Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies

#98

Post by mercora » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 10:57 AM UTC

homero wrote: post #95

Traster wrote: post #91

People should take this list with a serious health warning. Firstly, a lot of this is just 'internet sleuth'ing and innuendo. Plenty of companies want to operate multiple services to be able to use different marketing and differentiation strategies. Secondly, the fact that the site is funded by affiliate links to a coupole of the big VPN services should really ring alarm bells. I trust we all learned from the Mattres…

VPNs are the best data mining solution out there. You're literally giving them all traffic plus using their DNS. TLS helps a lot now but DNS hurts.

better yet it makes it really easy to pinpoint traffic to a single person despite all other measurements to make this harder. I would guess being an IP transit provider would be a lot more beneficial for them otherwise with regards to the amount of traffic they would handle....

Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies

#99

Post by colemickens » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 11:01 AM UTC

bauerd wrote: post #73

colemickens wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this downvoted? It took less than 30 seconds to fire up Orbot, connect, open YouTube and start streaming a video without any issue or fuss. Sometimes when people talk about Tor, it reminds me of how people talked about Linux up until a couple years ago - often touting very out-dated impressions as if they were current observations. Tor bandwidth is very different than it was 5-10 years ago.

Didn't downvote, still >30 seconds for getting a video playing isn't super convincing. That's far too slow for everyday use, at least for me

While I said less than 30 seconds, it really was about 10 seconds but I didn't want to sound like I was exaggerating. And that was of course including switching apps, the initial Tor connection, switching apps back, waiting for my feed to load, clicking a video.

I just tried again, it took 6 seconds to open Orbot and completely connect to Tor. The rest was business as usual. Maybe a 1, 1.5 second delay getting to YouTube and for the video to start playback. For what Tor offers, that is impressive, and I don't know what could possibly be convincing beyond that point. Not to mention that one can just leave Orbot running as well. And since I'm on Android, I can opt to have specific app traffic sent through Tor, or Orbot can act as a system-wide VPN.

I'd make a video showing how painless it is, but setting it up, recording and uploading would take a hundredfold more time than just trying it out.

edit: I know that it's purely anecdotal, but I just enabled Orbot VPN mode and fired up "Speedtest". It is reporting 7Mbps and 3.65Mbps up. It's not great, but to me that is usable if your privacy needs outweigh need for speed. And a screenshot if it's of interest, you can see that it's in VPN mode and Orbot is running: https://i.imgur.com/UZu4aJs.png

edit2: yikes, I actually just backed up 29 full-resolution screenshots to my Google Photos account without even realizing Orbot was still connected. Convinces me!

Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies

#100

Post by pnutjam » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 11:04 AM UTC

nurettin wrote: post #63

guaka wrote: post #54

Not sure if it really helps when making a choice but here's an extensive overview of 185 VPN services over 30+ factors: https://thatoneprivacysite.net/#simple-vpn-comparison

The point is not to make a choice but to be informed about how the industry is somehow tied together in interesting ways. I would also add that many of these VPN services turn your machine into a drone where you knowingly or unknowingly enter into a contract so that they can sell your bandwidth to paying customers to provide them with randomized IP pools so that they can scrape amazon and alibaba.

Don't use any VPN providers client, stick to straight openvpn.