Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters
191–200 of 203 posts
Re: Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters
#192I'm surprised no one has mentioned iCloud Relay-style Multi-Party Relays yet: https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2024/11/17/where-are-... It greatly improves on the existing VPN trust model by separating the "who" (connecting IP, potential payment info, etc.), from the "what" (IP traffic). You no longer have a trust a single entity not being malicious or compromised. Disclaimer: I run obscura.net, which does exac…
so now i have to trust two providers doing the right thing instead of one?
It's trusting A OR B, rather than A AND B
Re: Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do say many critical things about my political leaders and government policies, online. But, like I said, I am more mindful of what I say and how I say it (e.g. I often quote such things from a news source / media). (People in Germany and UK can do so too - just understand the law and quote DW, BBC, DailyMail etc., all of whom have mentioned something about the Gaza genocide or Elon Musk's Nazi like behaviour, at s…
I have faith the courts will interpret the law as written, because that's what they almost always have done so far, and the way they've previously interpreted it. And the law as written says don't be antisemitic. And the law as previously interpreted is that saying anything bad about Israel is antisemitism. Quoting antisemitic publications for the purpose of agreeing with them is also antisemitism, not sure why you'd…
Yeah, I understand your point quite well. Many western countries do (or are trying to) conflate criticism of Israel and antisemitism, to create a chilling effect to protests against their own foreign policies on Israel and Israel's policies on Palestine ( see https://politics.stackexchange.com/q/93431 ). But, like I said, while a government intent on persecuting will do so, they still have to deal with the courts too - as far as I know, no one has been successfully prosecuted under such laws.
> Quoting antisemitic publications for the purpose of agreeing with them is also antisemitism, not sure why you'd think it wouldn't be.
Not really. It would be the media outlet who would be liable as you are only simply repeating what they said in good faith.
Re: Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also wouldn’t trust VPN provider standing up to the pressure of really angry Western government. If Mullivad gets US FISA warrant followed by threat to destroy their ability gain access to US payments, they are going to flip logging for you on so fast.
I'm not necessarily sure they would, they've built their company based on no logs and privacy and seem fairly ideological, if this occurred their business would likely be permanently crippled. Most of their users use them because of their strong guarantees.
Turning on Logs for single user vs taking what could be crippling business hit? Maybe their CEO is ethical but that would be behavior I haven't seen from CEO ever.
Re: Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a niche fifth reason. Roaming between upstreams while not having open TCP connections drop. I use multiple ISP's and on mullvad I can swap which wifi/ethernet I'm on and all my connections stay up since wireguard is stateless.
Good point. That is indeed a distinct fifth reason. Here's a sixth one: for some users it can improve latency, bandwidth and/or even cost. latency/bandwidth: because of weird peering agreements between ISPs / ASes. cost: there are networks where consumers pay per MB for international traffic, but not local traffic. Consumers can sometimes establish a VPN tunnel to the local data center and get an unmetered internatio…
> Here's a sixth one: for some users it can improve latency, bandwidth and/or even cost.
I find that using a VPN over starlink is quite a different experience than terrestrial. I can VPN through another country and the speed isn't affected nearly as much. My guess is that the route is satellite to satellite, so it is much faster.
Re: Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters
#196Earlier 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?
> it would be nice if you addressed the specific objection
I'm pretty sure I did. I'll happily answer yours as well.
> 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?
Between those two options, definitely "it keeps me vaguely secure". None of the ads you link to are intended for customers that want to circumvent geographical restrictions. We don't market to that customer segment.
Re: Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters
#197Final results from the table on page 50:
Operates more transparently. No concerning findings identified.
• Mullvad (Mullvad)
• TunnelBear (TunnelBear)
• Lantern (Lantern)
• Psiphon (Psiphon)
• ProtonVPN (Proton VPN)
Operates more anonymously. Potentially concerning, but no definitive findings.
• HotVPN (HotVPN)
• LetsVPN (LetsVPN)
• Astrill VPN (Astrill VPN)
• CookieDevs (Cookie, Ciao Proxy Pro)
• VPN Super Inc (VPN - Super Unlimited Proxy)
• PureVPN (PureVPN)
• Potato VPN (Potato VPN)
Concerning and suspicious findings (users should avoid).
• Innovative Connecting (Turbo VPN - Secure VPN Proxy, Turbo VPN Lite - VPN Proxy, VPN Monster - Secure VPN Proxy)
• Autumn Breeze (SnapVPN, Signal Secure VPN - Robot VPN)
• Lemon Clove (SuperNet VPN, VPN Proxy Master Pro, VPN Proxy Master Lite)
• Matrix Mobile (Global VPN)
• ForeRaya Technologies (Melon VPN)
• Hong Kong Silence Technology (Super Z VPN)
• Yolo Mobile Technology (Touch VPN - Stable & Secure, VPN ProMaster - Secure your net)
• Wild Tech (3X VPN - Smooth Browsing, VPN Inf, Melon VPN - Secure Proxy VPN)
Re: Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a happy Mullvad customer for years now, except a lot of their IPs seem to have been flagged (presumably due to scraping or similar) meaning that some sites are close to unusable when behind the VPN. Reddit is a prime example. (I read somewhere a while back that they don't refresh their IPs (unlike some other VPNs?) but I have no special insight into this.)
This is the reality of VPNs, they’re going to end up with a short shelf life because major sites block them. Australians think that VPN will save them with the upcoming age restriction and verification for social media sites in coming months, and I’m quite sure that most VPN providers will be ineffective.
They'll work to hide you from Australia.
Re: Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
Times Square at one point was practically half full of Mullvad ads. I already distrusted it but the sheer amount of money they spent to do that made it shadier to me
Mullvad is rather principled on privacy. You can't even make a real account, you can only generate an account number that you can charge, and I assume they do some sort of clever tricks to keep themselves as blind as possible to who uses the account number. Firefox Relay is also just whitelabeled Mullvad, so they have Mozilla's stamp of approval. Of the big VPNs, the only one's that have ever felt shady to me are Nor…
>Mullvad is rather principled on privacy.
no their not. protonvpn spends money to offer free account as form of advertisment. mullvd spend money on weird billboards.
protonvpn provide free privacy even for those from 3rld world country. you can create proton email anonymousley thats also protonvpn account
protonvpn is principled on privacy.
Re: Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the reality of VPNs, they’re going to end up with a short shelf life because major sites block them. Australians think that VPN will save them with the upcoming age restriction and verification for social media sites in coming months, and I’m quite sure that most VPN providers will be ineffective.
They'll work to hide you from Australia.
Not helpful to circumvent age restrictions when the major social sites block them outright.