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VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies

vpnpro.com

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Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies

#21

Post by nordsieck »

pcr0 wrote: post #20
tmh88j wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nearly as disturbing as the number of people who tell me they use free VPNs. This is absolutely not an apples to apples comparison, but why is it outrageous to believe there couldn't be a free VPN that focuses on privacy when there are search engines like Duckduckgo and browsers like Firefox that are completely free and are pro-privacy? I haven't done the research, so consider it a rhetorical question.

A browser is just an application with some minimal services provided such as sync, extensions hosting, auto-updates. A VPN on the other hand consists of an application and usually unmetered usage of the company's bandwidth, which costs money.

> A VPN on the other hand consists of an application and usually unmetered usage of the company's bandwidth, which costs money.

Precisely. I imagine one of the more popular uses of VPNs is Bittorrent.

Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies

#23

Post by tmh88j »

pcr0 wrote: post #20
tmh88j wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nearly as disturbing as the number of people who tell me they use free VPNs. This is absolutely not an apples to apples comparison, but why is it outrageous to believe there couldn't be a free VPN that focuses on privacy when there are search engines like Duckduckgo and browsers like Firefox that are completely free and are pro-privacy? I haven't done the research, so consider it a rhetorical question.

A browser is just an application with some minimal services provided such as sync, extensions hosting, auto-updates. A VPN on the other hand consists of an application and usually unmetered usage of the company's bandwidth, which costs money.

Maybe "browser" was too specific. Replace that with an "organization" and that's Mozilla. They make firefox, but they're more than just an application, they're a group of applications developers that are pro privacy.

Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies

#24

Post by cf498 »

scurvy wrote: post #12
notatoad wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i can't speak to the safety, but i think you'll find browsing with an AWS IP to be a frustrating experience. Many sites block traffic from known AWS IP ranges in an attempt to prevent scraping or abuse.

Yep plus 1000 to this. I tried doing this 4 years ago and it was a miserable experience. And rightly so to be honest. For every privacy focused nerd, there are 1000 lowlife hackers and spammers trying to use something as a bounce proxy.

Any experience with using classical VPS as a proxy? Same problem?

Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies

#26

Post by [deleted] »

tmh88j wrote: post #14
duxup wrote: post #2

Nearly as disturbing as the number of people who tell me they use free VPNs. It is a bit mind boggling that folks are concerned about something and use a VPN...but choose a free one...

> Nearly as disturbing as the number of people who tell me they use free VPNs. This is absolutely not an apples to apples comparison, but why is it outrageous to believe there couldn't be a free VPN that focuses on privacy when there are search engines like Duckduckgo and browsers like Firefox that are completely free and are pro-privacy? I haven't done the research, so consider it a rhetorical question.

[deleted]

Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies

#27

Post by fock »

tmh88j wrote: post #14
duxup wrote: post #2

Nearly as disturbing as the number of people who tell me they use free VPNs. It is a bit mind boggling that folks are concerned about something and use a VPN...but choose a free one...

> Nearly as disturbing as the number of people who tell me they use free VPNs. This is absolutely not an apples to apples comparison, but why is it outrageous to believe there couldn't be a free VPN that focuses on privacy when there are search engines like Duckduckgo and browsers like Firefox that are completely free and are pro-privacy? I haven't done the research, so consider it a rhetorical question.

Firefox and its pro-privacy push bundling a VPN, a user account, telemetry and DNS-over-https (I think, Mozilla is very much informed about every! installation). It's the same sort of privacy most greedy monopolists offer...

Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies

#28

Post by eknkc »

notatoad wrote: post #11
legionof7 wrote: post #9

How safe is it to setup a VPN (via Wireguard or something) with AWS?

i can't speak to the safety, but i think you'll find browsing with an AWS IP to be a frustrating experience. Many sites block traffic from known AWS IP ranges in an attempt to prevent scraping or abuse.

Use Google Cloud VMs. Nobody blocks Google IPs (they might even lift paywalls etc)

Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies

#29

Post by fock »

bsamuels wrote: post #17
harshreality wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safe? Against what? - Preventing websites from seeing your true IP? (you'll want to disable webrtc as well[1].) Mostly yes. - preventing your ISP from spying on your traffic? (allowing Amazon to spy on your traffic in exchange...) Yes. - Avoiding risk of legal threats if you engage in copyright infringement? Mostly no. They can subpoena Amazon instead of your ISP, and your lightsail/EC2 ip isn't shared. Routing throu…

I would be fascinated to hear about how Amazon is spying on EC2 traffic in the same ways ISPs want to spy on/monetize customer traffic

except for long forgotten http-tricks inserting scripts: what do ISPs do today? I guess they log a lot of connection data (which AWS certainly does too)
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