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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

#131

Post by burnaway »

jmarbach wrote: post #13

You can use https://satoshivpn.com if you want to be anonymous. You get access to your own private server, and user registration is not even possible.

no team disclosed, no ownership information, no real privacy policy, no real terms of service, no info on infrastructure and provider partners, promises "complete privacy" and "anonymity" (as if attainable, especially with no traffic mixing and BTC payments)...

don't trust services that promise things they can't deliver and you cannot vet properly.

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

#132

Post by caymanjim »

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…

Tor is almost certainly a government honeypot, but if you're just trying to hide from Google and other ad companies, it'll help. Except that it's cripplingly slow.

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

#133

Post by LorenPechtel »

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…

This. I'm an occasional customer of ExpressVPN because they're pretty good about getting past the Great Firewall. When we go visit her family I want access to the same things I have in the US. It's not going to be any real protection if the government is after you.

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

#134

Post by bcook »

saurik wrote: post #123
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…

Meanwhile, a lot of users really can't trust their ISP: your "ISP" might be coffee shop, or someone renting on AirBNB, or your friend (as you are at their home or office). If you are in any of these circumstances, I would probably first recommend "tether off your phone or something", but if you are finding yourself needing or merely wanting to use someone else's internet connection (maybe for speed or because you don…

>At some point, the people in the apartment next door to me figured out my wi-fi password

That seems implausible.

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

#135

Post by sxg »

monocasa wrote: post #130
ralusek wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My IP: 1234 VPN A IP: 4321 VPN B IP: 6543 --- Unless I'm missing something, the request would go like this: VPN A sees that 1234 is going to facebook.com VPN B sees that 4321 is going to facebook.com facebook sees that request is coming from 6543 Am I misunderstanding the technology, or didn't VPN A see everything?

VPN A only sees that the request is going to VPN B.

But VPN A has to relay the request for facebook.com to VPN B, meaning that VPN A has to be aware of the user's final destination. If my interpretation of this is incorrect, then how does VPN B become aware of the request for facebook.com?

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

#136

Post by wintermutestwin »

Seirdy wrote: post #104
baron_harkonnen wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What if my ISP is a "bad actor?"

Using Tor is:

1. a huge PITA 2. a red flag 3. potentially exposing me to unsavory actors

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

#137

Post by wintermutestwin »

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.

I've used VPN over literally hundreds of public WiFi...

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

#138

Post by vineyardmike »

jon-wood wrote: post #124
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…

It is in fairness not a winning business strategy to go out and advertise with “we make breaching copyright easier”.

The tech crown is probably not the crowd that would shed a tear over this industry.

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

#139

Post by wintermutestwin »

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…

These are the reasons why I use a VPN provider:

1. my threat model is not my government. It seems that the TLAs have thoroughly pwned our privacy for a long time now. (please note that I am in no way advocating for this mass surveillance, but I don't see that I have much choice in the matter)

2. My threat model includes my ISP. I am forced to use a scummy ISP who would openly steal my data if I let them. Same with my mobile provider.

3. My threat model includes the data thieves who have obvious business models built around selling my stolen data to the highest bidder.

4. My threat model includes black hats and script kiddies.

5. Do I trust my VPN provider? Eh. A little. For now. The thing is, I trust them more than #s 2,3,4 above. What other choice do I have?

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

#140

Post by monocasa »

sxg wrote: post #135
monocasa wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VPN A only sees that the request is going to VPN B.

But VPN A has to relay the request for facebook.com to VPN B, meaning that VPN A has to be aware of the user's final destination. If my interpretation of this is incorrect, then how does VPN B become aware of the request for facebook.com?

VPN A only sees a request to VPN B. Because of that they don't need to know anything about the final destination or even that there is a final destination beyond VPN B.
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