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ExpressVPN employees complain about ex-spy's top role at company

reuters.com

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Re: ExpressVPN employees complain about ex-spy's top role at company

#71

Post by everdrive »

elagost wrote: post #18
lemoncookiechip wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's far from a waste of money. They help with things such as skipping geoblocking, able to deceive ISPs that send mail warning users about pirated content, can in some cases help with gaming ping, allow users to trick sites that rely on IP logging and many other applications besides cybersecurity and privacy. The main issue is that they all seem to advertise themselves as these privacy and cybersecurity services fir…

Browser fingerprinting works much better than checking IPs. With multiple devices being behind the same IP, it's necessary to distinguish between users. I'm not saying VPNs are worthless - I'm on one right now for work. Commercial VPNs, for most people who purchase them, are completely worthless. And I very much doubt that tunneling your connection through a VPN can improve ping.

What about using a VPN inside a VM? (or even a separate computer) Presumably all of your browser fingerprints would be different, yes?

Re: ExpressVPN employees complain about ex-spy's top role at company

#72

Post by garyrob »

marderfarker2 wrote: post #68
garyrob wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: it's still a consensus that they do have value in situations such as airport Wi-Fi, correct? Separately from that, I still do wonder whether, if you subscribe to a VPN that has well-examined security practices and whose reputation depends on such practices, whether it still may have value over relying on the security over a local ISP which may not have as much expertise or reputation investment with…

Most public wifi block all the ports necessary for VPN except 80 and 443. Even then DPI will stop most VPN protocol right in its track. I’ve never had reliable VPN working over public wifi/mobile network, unless I roll my own custom protocol that masquerades as HTTP traffic.

Interesting. I'm an ExpressVPN subscriber (maybe I won't be much longer) and haven't had any problem using it on public Wi-Fi networks.

Re: ExpressVPN employees complain about ex-spy's top role at company

#73

Post by baron_harkonnen »

elagost wrote: post #2

It's been clear for a long time that every single commercial VPN service is a waste of money. At best, you replace trusting your ISP with trusting a different group of unknown people with similar motivations. At worst, it's a government agency honeypot or someone like Facebook. If you think you want a VPN for "privacy", use Tor Browser. If you want a VPN for any other reason that "normal people" think they want a VPN…

> you replace trusting your ISP with trusting a different group of unknown people with similar motivations

I've always seen this argument but it's never made sense to me.

For starters I absolutely don't trust my ISP. I know they are collecting, storing, likely selling my data and that they are 100% going to comply with any government requests from my government (I don't even trust that they would only respond to legal requests).

Years ago I used to use AirVPN. They claimed:

> AirVPN started as a project of a very small group of activists, hacktivists, hackers in 2010, with the invaluable (and totally free) help of two fantastic lawyers and a financing from a company interested in the project and operated by the very same people.

Maybe they're lying but at least there's some chance they actually care about privacy.

But even if they don't care about privacy at all and are lying, at the very least they are based in Italy and have their servers spread throughout Europe. Additionally you can pay via crypto (which gives you more anonymous payment options than your ISP). Simply being in another country then the one I live in makes it much harder for my government to arbitrarily request my data.

Yes if I want to do highly illegal activity that is going to get my government interested in me I absolutely don't think that would be enough. But if I want privacy from routine surveillance this seems like a fantastically better option that 100% giving up.

Re: ExpressVPN employees complain about ex-spy's top role at company

#74

Post by qw3rty01 »

joconde wrote: post #61
qw3rty01 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you think you want a VPN for "privacy", use Tor Browser so replace a vpn, which might be logging your traffic, for a service which absolutely is logging your traffic? Tor is an anonymity service, not a privacy service.

What traffic does it log exactly, and who logs it? As I understand Tor: - the exit node knows the second-to-last node, the cleartext data and the destination, - each intermediate node knows the previous and next nodes, - the entry node knows the sender and the second node. And using HTTPS prevents the exit node from knowing the cleartext data. This doesn't enable any individual node to know who sent what to whom, ass…

Everything you mentioned goes back to my point that it's an anonymity service, not a privacy service. Tor exit nodes don't know who sent traffic, but they do see all the traffic that passes through them.

HTTPS can mitigate some of that, just like it can for VPNs, but the site you're going to is still very much visible.

Don't get me wrong, Tor is a very useful service if anonymity is your goal, but it requires a solid understanding of what can go wrong, which torproject provides a decent list for: https://support.torproject.org/faq/staying-anonymous/

Re: ExpressVPN employees complain about ex-spy's top role at company

#75

Post by danlugo92 »

Get a VPS, they are actually cheaper than VPNs (if you only need one country location).

You will have one single IP and you won't share IP with hundreds of other people thus being flagged.

I have never been blocked from a site when using my VPS, including sites that otherwise block VPNs, I think they don't care for whatever reason.

Doesn't mean they can't know, they will, but they seem to not care?

Some websites might do.

Only way you can get a completely "native" experience is for someone to set up a VPN in a computer connected to a residential connection in the country you want appear in.

Re: ExpressVPN employees complain about ex-spy's top role at company

#76

Post by elagost »

weinzierl wrote: post #63
elagost wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browser fingerprinting works much better than checking IPs. With multiple devices being behind the same IP, it's necessary to distinguish between users. I'm not saying VPNs are worthless - I'm on one right now for work. Commercial VPNs, for most people who purchase them, are completely worthless. And I very much doubt that tunneling your connection through a VPN can improve ping.

Just for a moment close your eyes and imagine a world where you have to fill-in a mildly complicated form before you visit a website (or blindly sign away whatever rights you might have had). A world where every second funny video you might have found on Reddit leaves you with a cryptic message that some "rights holder" doesn't permit you to see it (and denies you from joining the fun everyone else seems to be having…

Ok. Use a proxy, or set up your own Proxy/VPN on a VPS? Then you also have a VPS - you can host your own website there, use it to download stuff and rsync it back to your local machine, deploy nextcloud, etc., all for less than the cost of ExpressVPN. And bonus points, you can use unlimited devices.

Re: ExpressVPN employees complain about ex-spy's top role at company

#77

Post by garyrob »

elagost wrote: post #60
garyrob wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: it's still a consensus that they do have value in situations such as airport Wi-Fi, correct? Separately from that, I still do wonder whether, if you subscribe to a VPN that has well-examined security practices and whose reputation depends on such practices, whether it still may have value over relying on the security over a local ISP which may not have as much expertise or reputation investment with…

Argument is the spice of life! An argument doesn't have to be angry. But nonetheless I appreciate your earnest kindness. It's less of an issue when every site you connect to uses https, and every app you use employs ssl/tls for its connections. That is common practice these days. Getting man-in-the-middle'd on airport Wi-Fi is less feasible these days than it was 10 years ago. The attacker would have to also install…

"Getting man-in-the-middle'd on airport Wi-Fi is less feasible these days than it was 10 years ago. "

I think the "consensus" I'm referring to may actually have been from at least 10 years ago. I'm an old-timer!

Thanks for the feedback

Re: ExpressVPN employees complain about ex-spy's top role at company

#79

Post by filmgirlcw »

lemoncookiechip wrote: post #5
elagost wrote: post #2

It's been clear for a long time that every single commercial VPN service is a waste of money. At best, you replace trusting your ISP with trusting a different group of unknown people with similar motivations. At worst, it's a government agency honeypot or someone like Facebook. If you think you want a VPN for "privacy", use Tor Browser. If you want a VPN for any other reason that "normal people" think they want a VPN…

It's far from a waste of money. They help with things such as skipping geoblocking, able to deceive ISPs that send mail warning users about pirated content, can in some cases help with gaming ping, allow users to trick sites that rely on IP logging and many other applications besides cybersecurity and privacy. The main issue is that they all seem to advertise themselves as these privacy and cybersecurity services fir…

Totally agree. The geoblocking is the most common reason a lot of people use VPNs, even if that isn’t always how they are directly marketed. A friend’s mom asked me a few weeks ago for VPN recommendations so she could watch British TV easier. She’s 70. Her concern isn’t about safer browsing stuff but watching GBB more easily.

*Disclosure: ExpressVPN has sponsored my podcast in the past (tho I don’t handle ad sales fwiw) and I’ve always chosen to do the “this is how I watch X service in X country” use case in ad reads, b/c that’s the value in it for me vs rolling my own Wireguard/Tailscale setup (I actually have Tailscale setup for my home network).

Re: ExpressVPN employees complain about ex-spy's top role at company

#80

Post by [deleted] »

johnklos wrote: post #30

For any company, ask why they'd actually care about doing the right thing. Is it reputation? Integrity? Is the reasoning purely financial? Then ask whether the company operates in a way that suggests they'd do the profitable thing over the right thing if they think they might get away with it. Does that picture look realistic? As an example, look at Apple. Leaving the tangential discussion about scanning iCloud photo…

[deleted]
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