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Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

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Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#281

Post by Thystler »

dongcarl wrote: post #95

We should really be moving towards a world of Multi-Party Relays rather than Single-Party VPN operators: https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2024/11/17/where-are-... With Multi-Party Relays you no longer have a trust a single entity not being malicious or compromised. Disclaimer: I run obscura.net, which does exactly this with Mullvad (our partner) as the Exit Hop.

Hey,

This is is what i wrote my master thesis on. I ended up not turning it into something proper. Thank you! i love that you did this!

Its awesome! OMG good job!

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#282

Post by InsideOutSanta »

danw1979 wrote: post #279
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been part of a European startup that added offices in Asia and the US, and we initially always partnered with local companies to do this. It's mutually beneficial. It allowed us to grow more quickly, and it allowed them to make relatively easy money (and, in our case, to dump some of their shittier employees on us without us knowing). In Proton's case, they already knew each other because Tesonet had previously…

You know an awful lot of detail about the inner workings of two separate private companies though.

LOL, now I'm part of the conspiracy. This is all public knowledge.

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#283

Post by hshdhdhehd »

msp26 wrote: post #51
justapassenger wrote: post #8

Is there any other real world usecases for VPN nowadays other than: 1. Getting access to geolocked data 2. Torrenting "Linux ISOs" ?

Accessing services from the UK without handing over your personal ID to a service that will inevitably get hacked. This happened to discord literally a few days ago.

Underrated comment. And why do we need to justify privacy? Justify our non-privacy!

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#284

Post by mnw21cam »

true_religion wrote: post #226
jojobas wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes perfect cover though? "He was only a conscript changing printer cartridges"

People who don't live in countries with mandatory conscription for all don't really understand: everyone is connected to the military but it means nothing. Judging an Israeli citizen on their IDF ties is like judging a US citizen on the fact that they went to public school.

According to google, 87% of Americans go to a state-funded school, so yes judging an American based on the fact that they could afford to be in the top 13% and go to a public school instead is legitimate. This doesn't seem to match what you're trying to say.

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#285

Post by hshdhdhehd »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #53
justapassenger wrote: post #8

Is there any other real world usecases for VPN nowadays other than: 1. Getting access to geolocked data 2. Torrenting "Linux ISOs" ?

> Getting access to geolocked data I use VPNs when I'm trying to ferret out the scope of an outage. I have VPN servers on local ISP which moves me around different routing. I use a commercial service to move me further out and to other countries.

So you are doing a manual version of what uptime monitors do.

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#286

Post by crossroadsguy »

dartharva wrote: post #180
hansvm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What idiot signed that bullshit into law?

This is actually not uncommon in most of the world. American 1A is actually an extremely novel concept most other countries still haven't caught up on.

American 1A is as strong as it's proving to be right now and increasingly proving to be stronger and stronger by the day, since January this year!

Many other countries have protections like that, "on paper" (!!!) - but the point is in how it is used or misused, or rather completely ignored - directly or indirectly, like in the USA currently and many other countries in the world.

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#287

Post by goodpoint »

mjbale116 wrote: post #172

Can someone explain to me why should I use a VPN when Tor is out there? It just seems to me odd that one would pipe their communications through a private company, that operates over a jurisdiction when said jurisdiction can compel the company in actions that may compromise my anonymity. From my perspective, its like shifting my trust from my ISP (an entity with way more oversight) to a pvt ltd. Isn't Tor as safe as…

If anything, Tor Browser is much safer.

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#288

Post by netsharc »

TZubiri wrote: post #115
baby_souffle wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original use for a VPN - getting access to private resources - is still very much in play. I don't just mean being able to access some private web interface you have on a private server in your at home, I mean connecting a satellite office to the main corporate office. But for all of these consumer marketed VPNs, I think your list has 90%+ covered...

Interesting that we use the same word to describe both technologies, but semantically and technically they are very different. Perhaps we use the same word to describe them because initially they did use the same technologies, but they have branched out ever since? Maybe IPSec would be a common tech used. But the algorithms are not the same anymore since they serve different purposes (Personal privacy vs corporate/sy…

As you've written, the proxy services are called VPN because they used the same technology, e.g. OpenVPN.

"Crypto" in the 90s meant secret keys and message encryption, nowadays it's the term for the numerous ponzi scheme "investments"...

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#289

Post by kawsper »

lxgr wrote: post #241
idatum wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the way: SOCKS5 via SSH You do need some minimal technical understanding and some scripting. Pick any cloud provider that can give you a VM with SSH access. Read up on doing this on your local device or another device on your LAN: ssh -NT -g -D 10001 -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o ConnectTimeout=5 -i your_ssh_private_key your_cloud_login@any_cloud_provider_ip Change 10001 to whatever. Now read up on how y…

> For Firefox, I create a separate profile. Firefox supports per-container (and as such per-tab) SOCKS proxies, which I find really useful. So useful, in fact, that I've come full circle and I am now running a userspace Wireguard to SOCKS proxy [1] in order to have that convenience for a VPN which does not have any host I could SSH to. [1] https://github.com/whyvl/wireproxy

If you're using Tailscale you can install it on your Apple TV (if you also happen to have one of those devices).

Now you can use your home connection as a proxy through wireguard when traveling.

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#290

Post by konart »

crossroadsguy wrote: post #256
konart wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JetBrains was russian (as in were most people initially actually worked). They were smart enough (like any business in russia not wanting to be trapped) to have registration outside of the country. Some part of management were in CZ. Most of the technical team were in three buildings in St.Petersburg.

Wow. Didn’t know. As an Android developer I find it specially interesting. Not for any nefarious reasons, for I so far believe that JetBrains is one of those companies that has been a net positive on tech ecosystem in general (touchwood!) — be their dev tools or the Kotlin itself. I also follow these people and tools, partly out of professional needs/curiosities.

FYI Kotlin language is named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotlin_Island
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