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2023 Paid VPN Relationship and Corporate VPN Ownership Map
21–30 of 102 posts
Re: 2023 Paid VPN Relationship and Corporate VPN Ownership Map
#22> However, the worst case situation is that they lie about not tracking users and then they get hit with a LEO request they bow down to.
That's within reason though. A VPN is another ISP afterall, so they have to 'bow down' to law enforcement requests. What LEAs can get depends on how zero knowledge the VPN setup is. OVPN[0] for example has been 'court tested' and Mullvad had nothing to give to authorities[1] since they don't collect it in the first place (apart from payment metadata).
I'm not affiliated with OVPN or Mullvad, just a happy paying customer.
[0] https://www.ovpn.com/en/blog/ovpn-wins-court-order
[1] https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/4/20/mullvad-vpn-was-subjec...
Re: 2023 Paid VPN Relationship and Corporate VPN Ownership Map
#23Very interesting! I'm curious why there is there is a typical relationship between vpn companies and media companies, by common subsidiary ownership or otherwise. I don't really follow the logic here, is it just because the media company can promote their partnered vpn? Or is there some other reason?
Affiliate campaigns! So basically you'll see in review articles for everything a link with a ton of fluff and tracking in it.
Say you want a new pair of headphones. You'll probably do something like this.
1. Search Google & look for forum/reddit threads talking about specific brands.
2. Look for those brands for further reviews, feedback, and price comparisons.
3. You will come across a review that has links to the "best price".
4. By clicking that link if you purchase that product then, or within 15-30 days (depends on the affiliate agreement) the affiliate will earn commission.
That's why big corps work with media companies. They make hundreds of thousands per month via affiliate commissions alone.
This induces a large amount of biases as media sites always recommend their affiliates over non-affiliates.
Re: 2023 Paid VPN Relationship and Corporate VPN Ownership Map
#24I'm getting a cert error, anyone else?
Your network probably intercepts TLS, are you on a work/school network?
Re: 2023 Paid VPN Relationship and Corporate VPN Ownership Map
#25> However, the worst case situation is that they lie about not tracking users and then they get hit with a LEO request they bow down to. That's within reason though. A VPN is another ISP afterall, so they have to 'bow down' to law enforcement requests. What LEAs can get depends on how zero knowledge the VPN setup is. OVPN[0] for example has been 'court tested' and Mullvad had nothing to give to authorities[1] since t…
A VPN is not an ISP, at least as Canadian law (currently) is concerned. ISPs are required to store IP assignment logs, VPNs are not. Additionally, VPNs (in Canada) cannot be compelled to log users.
Source: Our law firm (I'm from Windscribe), and first hand experience with RCMP.
Re: 2023 Paid VPN Relationship and Corporate VPN Ownership Map
#26Anyone want to tl;dr what the best one is? The map doesn't load for me and the full map isn't the greatest thing to navigate... Would much prefer just text.
It depends what you want. The chart doesn't really say which are the best, just which are undisputedly shady.
#1 undisputed champion for security, privacy, and anonymity is almost certainly Mullvad. Note however that Mullvad servers tend to get flagged and blocked by services pretty quickly.
Mozilla VPN (which you can turn on easily in Firefox) is just a thin shell around Mullvad. The ease of use could make it worth it for some people but you'll generally be better off just using Mullvad directly.
Windscribe (the publishers of this list) have their own VPN. I can't speak to how good it is but they of course don't list anything bad about themselves.
ProtonVPN is pretty decent (I can get 150mbps up/down on most servers) especially if you already use their email service. This chart links over to a discussion of some allegations made against Proton by a rival VPN company. The TLDR of that discussion was that those allegations don't really hold any water (which is further influenced by the fact all those allegations now run to dead links).
So my personal experience would lead me to say to use Mullvad if you need to be truly and certainly private & anonymous but to use ProtonVPN if you want to be "safe enough" but also still get access to streaming sites, etc
Re: 2023 Paid VPN Relationship and Corporate VPN Ownership Map
#27Very interesting! I'm curious why there is there is a typical relationship between vpn companies and media companies, by common subsidiary ownership or otherwise. I don't really follow the logic here, is it just because the media company can promote their partnered vpn? Or is there some other reason?
It is /exactly/ because the media company can promote its partnered VPN. A huge driver of user signups in the commodity personal VPN space is affiliate referrals, and usually those affiliate sites are "review" or "how-to" sites. While the affiliate relationship is usually stated, it implies that the site makes money off the referral. In a lot of cases, the site actually makes its money by preferred placement of the VPN provider on their site. A VPN company often even writes or edits the content for the site.
If you're a VPN company, it's actually cheaper for you to own the sites and populate them with your own product than it is to pay a site for placement, especially if you own four or five VPN brands. Heck, sometimes, they don't even acquire sites. They just start them and spend money to get them to rank well.
I don't trust review sites in general (even if they don't contain paid recommendations, they still rank by which affiliate will net them more money), but I /really/ don't trust sites that cover or rank VPN providers. Personal VPNs as they are pitched to consumers are just shy of snake-oil, and almost all the content written that touts them is revenue driven.
Background: I previously helped start and worked for a VPN provider.
Re: 2023 Paid VPN Relationship and Corporate VPN Ownership Map
#28Very interesting! I'm curious why there is there is a typical relationship between vpn companies and media companies, by common subsidiary ownership or otherwise. I don't really follow the logic here, is it just because the media company can promote their partnered vpn? Or is there some other reason?
Affiliate campaigns! So basically you'll see in review articles for everything a link with a ton of fluff and tracking in it. Say you want a new pair of headphones. You'll probably do something like this. 1. Search Google & look for forum/reddit threads talking about specific brands. 2. Look for those brands for further reviews, feedback, and price comparisons. 3. You will come across a review that has links to the "…
This is a major reason why I don't do affiliate links outside of Amazon for anything I mention (I add tracking links sometimes if a company sponsors a video and requests I use one of their tracked URLs, but I won't do affiliate links for any entity I work with). It creates perverse incentives, especially if one of the services generates a lot of revenue for a channel/publication.
If there's a relationship with a vendor—especially in articles that review and compare different services—it should be obvious what that relationship is. Online tech publications and review websites are some of the worst offenders these days.
Re: 2023 Paid VPN Relationship and Corporate VPN Ownership Map
#29Can you do the same for politicians?
all paths lead to Kevin Bacon
Re: 2023 Paid VPN Relationship and Corporate VPN Ownership Map
#30Very interesting! I'm curious why there is there is a typical relationship between vpn companies and media companies, by common subsidiary ownership or otherwise. I don't really follow the logic here, is it just because the media company can promote their partnered vpn? Or is there some other reason?
VPNmentor, a VPN review site, was acquired by Kape "Technologies" for 150M.
PrivateInternetAccess, a major VPN service was acquired by the same company for 95M.
A VPN review site is worth more than most VPN services it promotes due to insane $CPA they pay to these types of sites, that masquerade as "security exports" while in reality ran by marketing people.
Look at their staff: https://www.vpnmentor.com/about-us/
Every "favorite" VPN is a property they own, except for the sole NordVPN guy.