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Hey, Vykintas from NordVPN here. Hackernews looks to be a tough crowd, so I wanted to add a few things. Today as you correctly spotted we released a Linux app as well as Libtelio and Libdrop open source - a step towards more transparency. Can see quite a few conspiracy theories there, happy to address them. While no service out there is perfect, we are aiming to create the best VPN service. Nord isn't keeping any log…
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".
The idea was never that NordVPN was reselling the network connections of NordVPN customers; it was always that they were, on their backend, originating NordVPN customers traffic from maybe-sketchily-sourced IP addresses.
Here is a paragraph I wrote a couple years ago on the topic of how centralized VPN companies manage to bypass blocks by content providers (such as Netflix).
> One VPN company that actually seems to do "well" at this is NordVPN: they've even managed to provide access to Disney+! Someone did a deep analysis of how this worked a while back (an article which has since been deleted, weirdly, but a copy can be found on the Internet Archive). They are "linked closely with a Lithuanian data mining company called Tesonet" which also runs Oxynet, which in turn advertises itself to have "32M+ residential proxies…100% anonymous proxies from all over the globe with zero IP blocking", which the author of that analysis believes is how NordVPN is originating their traffic... and how did they get all of those IP addresses? The contention was that they seem to be stealing them, convincing random products to embed malware that attaches them to the Oxynet essentially-a-botnet.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21664692
http://web.archive.org/web/20191128170008/https://medium.com...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't he now doing a lot of NordVPN ads himself in recent videos too? Turns out everyone has their price.
Thats not selling out. If he keeps the old video up and doesn't make the claim that NordVPN does things it doesn't actually do, then he's just advertising. There are legitimate uses for VPNs, they're just not the reasons these VPNs advertise (the the parent comment says).
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".
Hey, Vykintas from NordVPN here. By going open source we are trying to be more open. NordVPN customers aren't used as botnets to resell traffic and you can easily check it using Wireshark as well as look through the code. As you can see majority of it is open source. If you have any questions - shoot them and I can try and answer them. Otherwise - please don't spread information without proper investigation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey, Vykintas from NordVPN here. By going open source we are trying to be more open. NordVPN customers aren't used as botnets to resell traffic and you can easily check it using Wireshark as well as look through the code. As you can see majority of it is open source. If you have any questions - shoot them and I can try and answer them. Otherwise - please don't spread information without proper investigation.
Why should we trust you?
NordVPN, eh? I'll never forget there was a reddit thread on /r/vpn where a NordVPN customer complained about a billing issue or something. NordVPN's official response was to get defensive; they proceeded to actually publicly post a screenshot which included the customer's email address . I couldn't believe it. That tells you all you need to know about NordVPN's terrible attitude towards privacy.
We should judge people and companies (which are ultimately also people) not by whether they make mistakes, but by whether they learn from them.
NordVPN, eh? I'll never forget there was a reddit thread on /r/vpn where a NordVPN customer complained about a billing issue or something. NordVPN's official response was to get defensive; they proceeded to actually publicly post a screenshot which included the customer's email address . I couldn't believe it. That tells you all you need to know about NordVPN's terrible attitude towards privacy.
> terrible attitude towards privacy A VPN is inherently not a privacy tool. It is perceived that way because of the acronym Virtual 'Private' Network but privacy is not in the design specs at all. It's just for tunneling over untrusted networks like Starbucks Wi-Fi and spoofing your geo-location. That's it. You can't verify the no-logs claims by providers unless you're physically in their building and auditing the se…
Maybe not, but NordVPN and similar services do heavily market themselves as essential privacy tools.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey, Vykintas from NordVPN here. By going open source we are trying to be more open. NordVPN customers aren't used as botnets to resell traffic and you can easily check it using Wireshark as well as look through the code. As you can see majority of it is open source. If you have any questions - shoot them and I can try and answer them. Otherwise - please don't spread information without proper investigation.
Why should we trust you?
If you Google "NordVPN port mapping" you get an article from them, which explains port mapping, what it is, and then at the end "We don't support it". Really annoying that every service has like a whole essay on what functionality is and then 1 one liner saying they don't support it.
Their "articles" largely seem to be SEO/content farm pieces without any meaningful content. For example, their article on SOCKS vs. HTTP proxies vs. VPNs is factually nonsensical (by e.g. describing HTTP proxies as "always unencrypted", or SOCKS as having higher performance due to "not rewriting packet headers"): https://nordvpn.com/blog/socks5-proxy/
Somewhere there is a FULL article on how to do this on the website or partitionwizard...
WHY?
You see 20 websites with the same info re-hashed. And none of them mention the particular edge case that I'm running into.
I really wish Google goes back to preferring bullet points over prose.
Another example:
Search for 'squirrel bite rabies'. You only get pest control companies telling you how you can get rabies.
Except there have never been any reported cases in the USA.
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 am the top comment on that post and you got the whole situation backwards and are thereby just spewing FUD with the implication in your comment :/. The idea was never that NordVPN was reselling the network connections of NordVPN customers; it was always that they were, on their backend, originating NordVPN customers traffic from maybe-sketchily-sourced IP addresses. Here is a paragraph I wrote a couple years ago on…
I am basing the second part on this research: https://www.docdroid.net/kOP3JAh/tesonet-web-of-lies-pdf
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but the relations of Tesonet, NordVPN and Oxylab is creepy at best.
People make the allegation that NordVPN is routing some of Oxylabs' traffic, because that's exactly what HolaVPN and Bright Data (previously known as "Luminati") does. (See https://archive.is/aJY0F ) And Luminati Networks sued Tesonet for patent infringement on this.
Just the corporate structure of Tensonet in itself should make people stay away from any of their VPN products.