Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

101–110 of 175 posts

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

#101
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first one would still know everything though.

The first one would know that you are talking to the second VPN. The second VPN would know that VPN1 User is talking to facebook.com. In principle, neither of them has the full picture. In practice, you may leak enough information that both of them could get the full picture.

[deleted]

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

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fw…

It’s funny express has you advertise as being able to watch X service considering when I used express I couldn’t watch Netflix because they throw an error saying they know I’m using a VPN. Same with Amazon prime. I’ve switched to nordvpn but they are no different I can’t even use fast.com to check the speed when the vpn is on. False advertising I’d say

Yeah Netflix is the reason I switched from ExpressVPN to NordVPN.

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

#103
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…

> Why do we even give these companies the time of day?

My understanding is that most people use a VPN to either watch the foreign catalogs of streaming services or insert a third party in a foreign country to make themselves less tempting targets for random enforcement of copyright laws.

Obviously they don't advertise like this because these activities are illegal.

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

#104
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 lega…

It is far easier for a bad actor to compromise or start a commercial VPN provider than it is to do the same for an ISP.

If you want online anonymity, use Tor. And torrent with a seedbox.

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

#105
post #91

Decentralised VPNs are the future. Edit: https://dvpnalliance.org/

Any reason Orchid isn't a part? https://www.orchid.com

I have no idea and wasn't even aware of its existence. I have no affiliation with either dVPN Alliance, Mysterium or Sentinel but I have used both of the latter two as well as Privatix. Mysterium is my go to choice but there's an issue with split tunneling which prevents me from using it right now.

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

#106
post #19

Making someone with a history of doing exactly the thing that a company purportedly stands against the CTO seems like an absolutely baffling choice... unless the company is doing that thing (enabling surveillance). If I were to use a VPN service, this news would certainly disqualify ExpressVPN from my list of possible options. I imagine that if I were working for a company like that out of belief in the mission that…

In the field of legal representation oftentimes the best defense lawyers that specialize in defending against federal probes and investigations have years of prosecutorial experience leading those government teams.

That idea of insider knowledge turned to the client's benefit might be utilized here - but yes it is a bit less comforting in contexts where the legal duty to client does not apply.

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

#107
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first one would still know everything though.

The first one would know that you are talking to the second VPN. The second VPN would know that VPN1 User is talking to facebook.com. In principle, neither of them has the full picture. In practice, you may leak enough information that both of them could get the full picture.

That seems like a great technique if it is correct.

Seems obvious to me that many of the top VPN providers are operated by intelligence agencies or have ties to data brokers: they can afford to operate the services at an initial loss for the benefit of information learned later.

For example, touting that a VPN is operated outside of a country with ties to the “five eyes” doesn’t seem like a benefit, it likely means they can operate with impunity on your data.

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

#108
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…

True. I use VPN to get behind the geoblocking on my banking app which is prohibited to work in my African country. Also viewing movies banned in my country.

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

#109
post #86
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Less of the cost sure but you are saving a couple bucks a month tops and replacing that with work on setup and maintenance instead. Moreover that way you get a single IP rather than the 40 different countries with multiple IPs my provider gives me.

By analogy with CDN VPN in that role is "Content Receival Network".

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

#110
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is a bad faith argument. Proton logged IPs in response to Swiss court order and handed over that data after the order was received. They do not log IPs otherwise. And bear in mind, the specific request in question here had the involvement of the French state as well.

How is this a bad faith argument? Proton's claim was they didn't log IPs and then it turns out that in certain cases they do – regardless of the reason, they reneged on their claim.

Their original claim was that they don’t log IPs by default, not that they don’t log them even when required by law.
Post reply on HN