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FreePN: Open-source peer-to-peer VPN service

freepn.org

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Re: FreePN: Open-source peer-to-peer VPN service

#81

Post by ian-bateman »

dhaavi wrote: post #77
ian-bateman wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi edf13 - We're still exploring different methods of monetization, but leaning towards an Adblock-Plus style model at the moment (but would want to keep any ads we served entirely local / we'd never send any data off device & would want to be as transparent about everything as possible). Personally, I think it keeps our interests best aligned with those of our users & helps keep the focus on preserving user privacy!

So, if I understand correctly, this means that in the long-term you are going to nerf your (future) adblock feature and actually go a similar route the the Brave browser is going with their ad system? The privacy community did not react positively _at all_ to this. This also has gotten them quite a lot of negative media coverage. Also, how are you funded short-term? Like, right now?

We are still evaluating the best way to go about this, but yes, we've been looking at the way Brave approaches it as well (though of course, we'd like to do it in such a way that everyone's incentives align / we don't compromise user privacy in any way whatsoever).

Short term, I'm self-funding the company (day job + previous exit of an entirely unrelated company).

Re: FreePN: Open-source peer-to-peer VPN service

#82

Post by ian-bateman »

dhaavi wrote: post #78
ev1 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds even more legally questionable, where you are replacing others' ads with your own.

I think this is meant to be more like Brave does it.

Yep, if we do go that way, it'd likely be somewhat similar to Brave. Still very much evaluating options here though.

Re: FreePN: Open-source peer-to-peer VPN service

#83

Post by dhaavi »

ian-bateman wrote: post #81
dhaavi wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, if I understand correctly, this means that in the long-term you are going to nerf your (future) adblock feature and actually go a similar route the the Brave browser is going with their ad system? The privacy community did not react positively _at all_ to this. This also has gotten them quite a lot of negative media coverage. Also, how are you funded short-term? Like, right now?

We are still evaluating the best way to go about this, but yes, we've been looking at the way Brave approaches it as well (though of course, we'd like to do it in such a way that everyone's incentives align / we don't compromise user privacy in any way whatsoever). Short term, I'm self-funding the company (day job + previous exit of an entirely unrelated company).

Self-funding! This is great, did not expect something like this coming from VC-land SF.

We at https://safing.io/ are also self-funded, but also receive a lot of public funding. Interestingly our visions are very similar, but our technical views seem to differ a lot.

I think monetizing a privacy product without having the user pay is extremely hard. There will need to be an extremely high amount of transparency everywhere.

Re: FreePN: Open-source peer-to-peer VPN service

#84

Post by ian-bateman »

coddle-hark wrote: post #79
ian-bateman wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi coddle-hark - - Right now we're still undecided / exploring different ways of monetizing the product! (something similar to Adblock-Plus though is our leading idea). - We're working on a way to disallow users from acting as exits for certain kinds of traffic - so you'll be able to categorically block certain kinds of sites through the UI in the near future. - Even with DoH on by default in the browser, we can stil…

Thanks! > We're working on a way to disallow users from acting as exits for certain kinds of traffic - so you'll be able to categorically block certain kinds of sites through the UI in the near future. How does this stop someone posting ISIS propaganda to Twitter? Or uploading CP to Google Drive? > Even with DoH on by default in the browser, we can still override / specify a DNS server. Can you? Browsers don’t respec…

Posted a bit about how we plan to approach this above, so just re-pasting:

  > - we plan to build in something similar to HTTPS Everywhere to the product, to automatically upgrade connections (and we only route traffic on ports 80 / 443 (optionally 53)). - we also plan to build in the ability to allow peers to block certain categories of traffic from going over their connection (using blocklists similar to those used by Fortiguard -- so you could block all torrenting sites, as an example).
And yep you can actually! Can't find better article on it at the moment (lots of search history to comb through, but this kind of touches on it a little / roughly: https://www.reddit.com/r/pihole/comments/gndbod/dns_over_htt...)

Re: FreePN: Open-source peer-to-peer VPN service

#85

Post by halfbaked99 »

oefrha wrote: post #54
dessant wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was approached by Luminati on Twitter to turn my browser extensions into exit nodes, they are enticing developers to exploit users. https://i.imgur.com/EbT96an.png

This is why these days I roll my own extensions except for a few extremely popular ones developed in the open. Forget small QoL extensions, if I need it I write my own. Malware businesses routinely reach out to any remotely popular extension for acquisitions or “joint ventures”, it’s just too risky to install anything that’s not trust: ultimate, or known to be vetted by tons of people. Btw, Firefox seems to have made…

I was wondering why my extensions weren't loading up even if after I messed with the settings, thank you!

Re: FreePN: Open-source peer-to-peer VPN service

#86

Post by piracy1 »

ian-bateman wrote: post #47
piracy1 wrote: post #38

Wait, so the idea is basically, don't trust ur ISP? Have you tried Craig from Bosnia?

FreePN is intended (long-term) to be a general purpose privacy-protection tool.

More seriously, I do think it's an interesting start, I think it creates a platform that you can use to test out some interesting ideas. Good luck with it.

Re: FreePN: Open-source peer-to-peer VPN service

#87

Post by fowl2 »

oefrha wrote: post #16
anderspitman wrote: post #15

I have a project I want to do that would involve a lot of YouTube scraping. But they'll throttle you if they detect it. This led me down the rabbit hole into the world of residential proxy services. Some of them[0] advertise up to 40 million IPs. I can't imagine many of the owners of those IPs know what they're being used for. It would be cool if there was a reputable open source project that would let people share/b…

> I can't imagine many of the owners of those IPs know what they're being used for. They don’t. For instance, Luminati, possibly the best known player in this market, uses HolaVPN users as exit nodes.[1] [1] https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/hk-en/security/news/cybercr...

On the other hand, if these things get common enough it's great for plausible deniability!

Re: FreePN: Open-source peer-to-peer VPN service

#88

Post by eps »

ian-bateman wrote: post #61
bawolff wrote: post #24

Hmm. Dont see any white paper or design docs on their website. Did i miss it. At a glance sounds like a reinvention of Tor, but less secure.

There are a lot more technical details on the project README page here!: https://github.com/freepn/fpnd/blob/master/README.rst

This is really shallow.

You are trying to cater to a privacy-minded audience yet you provide literally no information on how the whole thing works. I don't think you fully understand how crucial a very detailed technical spec is for the adoption of a tool like this.

The first question with any P2P project is if I have any control over other people's traffic that passes through my system. No mention of this anywhere, leave alone a detailed discussion. I saw your replies here on this subject and they are ultimately... inane if you pardon the bluntness. I realize that you mean well, but you are exceptionally naive in terms of how quickly a system like this will be abused to a very severe degree.

Re: FreePN: Open-source peer-to-peer VPN service

#89

Post by BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 »

viraptor wrote: post #18
eightails wrote: post #9

They tried to promote the launch of this service on a bunch of linux-related subreddits 6 months ago, and I wasn't much of a fan of the concept or the way they advertised it, in skipping over the p2p nature of the system. Their answer to the question of 'what happens when a bad actor has their illegal activity routed through my connection' seemed illogical. They claimed that as more people signed up, the proportion o…

The main page copy seems misleading bordering on malicious: > No bandwidth caps. No throttling. Stream all day, and download away. Yes, no caps on the tunneled connection. But it will happily use up your home connection data caps with both your own and other people's traffic. Then once you run an exit for long enough, your home network will get tor-like treatment from many CAPTCHAs and you'll be blocked from anything…

> your home network will get tor-like treatment from many CAPTCHAs and you'll be blocked from anything on cloudflare

That will happen if you use any VPN,so that's expected.

Re: FreePN: Open-source peer-to-peer VPN service

#90

Post by samoa42 »

ian-bateman wrote: post #84
coddle-hark wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! > We're working on a way to disallow users from acting as exits for certain kinds of traffic - so you'll be able to categorically block certain kinds of sites through the UI in the near future. How does this stop someone posting ISIS propaganda to Twitter? Or uploading CP to Google Drive? > Even with DoH on by default in the browser, we can still override / specify a DNS server. Can you? Browsers don’t respec…

Posted a bit about how we plan to approach this above, so just re-pasting: > - we plan to build in something similar to HTTPS Everywhere to the product, to automatically upgrade connections (and we only route traffic on ports 80 / 443 (optionally 53)). - we also plan to build in the ability to allow peers to block certain categories of traffic from going over their connection (using blocklists similar to those used b…

generally you can not block DoH without blocking most of the web, thats literally the point of it.
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