151–160 of 276 posts
Reminder that it looks like NordVPN does shady stuff: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29285988 Allegedly, they are using their customers as botnets to resell traffic from residential IPs, mostly for scraping, through their other business "Oxylabs".
They, and ALL VPN PROVIDERS, sell your DNS data, as well. That's the real business model.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was under the impression that VPN services were very profitable on their own, without selling data. Is this really a price thing, or is it a shady greed thing?
$3 a month per person is not a business model...
Reminder that it looks like NordVPN does shady stuff: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29285988 Allegedly, they are using their customers as botnets to resell traffic from residential IPs, mostly for scraping, through their other business "Oxylabs".
I hear there's a dirty secret that more and more companies are doing this to make things like Netflix that block VPNs "just work" though their services. Not sure how true this is or how widespread, though.
A VPN provider really needs a lot of trust, easy to lose that.
why do they spend so much money on ads? seems like more budget than could be explained via sales to civilians
Reminder that it looks like NordVPN does shady stuff: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29285988 Allegedly, they are using their customers as botnets to resell traffic from residential IPs, mostly for scraping, through their other business "Oxylabs".
Digging into this on oxylabs site i found this document: https://oxylabs.io/Oxylabs_Residential_Proxy_Acquisition_Han... "Consenting and fully aware individuals become a part of a residential proxy network in return for a financial reward or some other benefit. When they choose to participate in our suppliers’ pools, they consent that a part of their internet traffic and a small amount of the device’s hardware resour…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This has been brought up before, Netflix does not work with a VPN on. It knows you’re using a VPN and blocks you (asks you to disable it.) Yes this is true even with NordVPN, which I bought specifically to be able to watch Netflix on when expressVPN didn’t work.
Netflix does however work with a smart dns spoofer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They, and ALL VPN PROVIDERS, sell your DNS data, as well. That's the real business model.
Do you know for sure that Mullvad sells DNS data? They claim to not log anything, including DNS.
Private Internet Access and ProtonVPN both have tenuous relations to shady stuff. Private Internet Access got purchased by the same company that made Cyberghost (malware), but so far nothing bad has come of it. AFAIK they're also the only VPN that has been truly court-tested.
ProtonVPN has some really weird circumstantial stuff related to TesoNet.
Any other VPN I wouldn't trust by default. Shady business sector.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hear there's a dirty secret that more and more companies are doing this to make things like Netflix that block VPNs "just work" though their services. Not sure how true this is or how widespread, though.
I ran into a situation where I left a VPN on my phone on and the Target app (US store Target) would pop up an alert "true". I assume someone was detecting if you were using a VPN and testing and it somehow made it into production. I emailed them and never heard back. Granted ... I get why a retailer with financial activity going on might want to know if a VPN was used to possibly apply extra scrutiny to the purchase.
I used to work for a company that explicitly changed the prices on the site if the request traffic came from a competitor IP address.
Of course this was a hundred years ago in a land far away. I don’t know how much success you’d have even finding your competitors IP’s these days.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was under the impression that VPN services were very profitable on their own, without selling data. Is this really a price thing, or is it a shady greed thing?
$3 a month per person is not a business model...