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Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters

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Re: Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters

#181

Post by 5f3cfa1a »

em-bee wrote: post #139
5f3cfa1a wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is always "maybe" until you bring your threat model to the table. I use a VPN to watch IPTV & download torrents without my ISP sending me nasty letters. Mullvad is great for that. I would trust it in conjunction with Tor to protect me from low-level crimes. I wouldn't run trust either it or Tor, alone or in combination, to run a marketplace the DEA would become interested in. If your threat model is obscur…

a DYI VPN may hide my home IP but it does not hide my identity unless the server i route through is not owned by me. also any server that i can use is likely blocked by wikipedia, youtube, reddit, and others because they detect and block hosting services.

> a DYI VPN may hide my home IP but it does not hide my identity unless the server i route through is not owned by me.

Again, threat model matters – hide your identity from whom?

You certainly won't hide it from someone who can seize payment records. You will struggle to hide it from someone who has control of enough of the internet to correlate data across sites, like Google or Cloudflare. But if you're looking to be pseudonymous in the face of a single site, or a small set of sites that don't conspire to unmask users? It might work just fine.

(unless as you rightly note they block your hosting service's ASN;-))

Re: Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters

#182

Post by const_cast »

Y_Y wrote: post #178
kfreds wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it there's four use cases: - protecting your privacy from your local ISP, WiFi, school, government etc - protecting your privacy from some forms of online tracking - circumventing censorship - circumventing geographical restrictions If you combine masking of your IP address with a web browser that protects you from various types of browser-based fingerprinting, you are more in control of your privacy on…

> I'm one of the deeply silly cofounders of Mullvad Cool. Also funny, but it would be nice if you addressed the specific objection. Here are some of the new ads: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/advertising-that-targets-everyon... . Do you think they appeal more to consumers who are seeking "it keeps me vaguely secure", or it helps me watch Venezuelan Netflix and avoid some kinds of targeted advertising personalisation?

Advertisement targeting is a risk. Even just leaking your IP to various services introduces risks and being able to build profiles on your activities online introduces risk.

Usually the risk is you spend money you wouldn't have otherwise spend, but those profiles can also be used for future nefarious reasons. You're basically just relying on everyone running analytics to be good people, forever. Remember, anything on the internet is forever. And, even if they are, you're still relying on them having perfect security, forever. If a database breach happens and people now know everything data brokers and analytics services know... that's a problem.

IMO, nobody should browse the web without a reliable and trustworthy VPN, at all.

Re: Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters

#183

Post by westmeal »

kfreds wrote: post #123
davepeck wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long ago, in the era of Firesheep and exploding prevalence of coffee-shop Wi-Fi, consumer VPN services were definitely valuable. But that was long ago. Now, HTTPS is the norm. The only use cases for consumer VPNs today seem to be (1) "pretend I'm in a different geography so I can stream that show I wanted to see" and (2) "torrent with slightly greater impunity". I live in Seattle and Mullvad VPN seems to have bought…

The way I see it there's four use cases: - protecting your privacy from your local ISP, WiFi, school, government etc - protecting your privacy from some forms of online tracking - circumventing censorship - circumventing geographical restrictions If you combine masking of your IP address with a web browser that protects you from various types of browser-based fingerprinting, you are more in control of your privacy on…

Thanks for running the service guys, I appreciate it

Re: Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters

#184

Post by NoGravitas »

john01dav wrote: post #60
davepeck wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long ago, in the era of Firesheep and exploding prevalence of coffee-shop Wi-Fi, consumer VPN services were definitely valuable. But that was long ago. Now, HTTPS is the norm. The only use cases for consumer VPNs today seem to be (1) "pretend I'm in a different geography so I can stream that show I wanted to see" and (2) "torrent with slightly greater impunity". I live in Seattle and Mullvad VPN seems to have bought…

What about (3) "bypass government censorship"? UK and China are examples of where this is desirable. This is different from (1) because it's broader than just streaming shows and is about authoritarian rather than capitalist restrictions.

Add at least 18 US states to your examples if you consider age verification for porn to be government censorship.

Re: Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters

#185

Post by NoGravitas »

freedomben wrote: post #49
leptons wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn! I was thinking about switching to Mullvad from PIA, but now I guess I won't.

Yeah, PIA is great. You can even use regular wireguard with it if you don't want to use their client. Been a happy use for many years

Reminder: PIA is owned (was bought in 2019) by a company with ties to Israeli intelligence, and which started out producing advertising malware.

https://hackread.com/private-internet-access-pia-vpn-sold-is...

Re: Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters

#186

Post by em-bee »

5f3cfa1a wrote: post #181
em-bee wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a DYI VPN may hide my home IP but it does not hide my identity unless the server i route through is not owned by me. also any server that i can use is likely blocked by wikipedia, youtube, reddit, and others because they detect and block hosting services.

> a DYI VPN may hide my home IP but it does not hide my identity unless the server i route through is not owned by me. Again, threat model matters – hide your identity from whom? You certainly won't hide it from someone who can seize payment records. You will struggle to hide it from someone who has control of enough of the internet to correlate data across sites, like Google or Cloudflare. But if you're looking to b…

sure, threat model matters. no protection is 100%, but more is better. using my own hosted proxy means that my identity is out in public. it's not even hidden. no need to even seize payment records. anyone can look up the ip address and eventually figure out who owns the server. i might hide it somewhat if i use that proxy only for this purpose, not point any DNS records at it, not reveal any public data, never use it for services where i log in, etc.

truly anonymous hosters are high profile targets for law enforcement, so in my opinion they are higher risk than even VPN providers. not interested in getting caught up with that crowd. and for the good VPN providers at least a court order is necessary, and if the VPN doesn't log usage, they can't prove anything.

there is no threat model where your own hosted proxy could ever provide better protection than any VPN. i use my own proxy because it's free, because i already have a server where i host my website, not because it provides me with any kind of protection. to get that, a VPN would be easier and cheaper.

Re: Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters

#187

Post by NoGravitas »

giobox wrote: post #83
pydry wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of the two im more suspicious that NordVPN is a CIA honeypot in the style of Crypto AG.

I also think this is the scandal waiting to emerge in this space; with what we know from Snowden/CryptoAG/Encrypted message app sting operations etc it is borderline impossible for me to believe not one of the major players is owned by a State level intelligence service.

Kape Technologies, an Israeli firm with ties to Israeli intelligence, owns several well-known VPN companies, including PIA, ExpressVPN, and Cyberghost.

https://hackread.com/private-internet-access-pia-vpn-sold-is...

Re: Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters

#188

Post by NoGravitas »

akaksbsb wrote: post #38
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #9

What is this list that doesnt include NordVPN and ExpressVPN?

> ExpressVPN You mean the one owned by an Israeli billionaire? Hopefully they don’t find a way to make your monitor remotely explode.

It's worse than that. The company bought by said billionaire, and which in turn bought ExpressVPN, was founded by a member of Unit 8200 (Israel's NSA), and started out making browser advertising malware.

https://hackread.com/private-internet-access-pia-vpn-sold-is...

Re: Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters

#190

Post by axus »

akimbostrawman wrote: post #163
tetris11 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like the "to plant trees in the shade of which we will never sit" statement. My pessimism only comes from watching trusted giants like Google and Cloudflare turn into critical infrastructure that in turn dictates the web. May you continue to be the beacon of trustworthiness and hope that we all need right now

>trusted giants like Google and Cloudflare How where they ever even in anyway trusted??? They are literally peoples search results for sale and MITM as a service.

When they came out, the alternatives were worse.
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