Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024) • Hacker News Board

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

#431

Post by smileybarry » Wed, Oct 08, 2025, 8:47 AM UTC

oefrha wrote: post #428

smileybarry wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I work for a fully remote company with employees from all over the world, including Eastern Europe, and we didn't need to partner with any local company Because your company already has considerable experience in working remotely in another territory, of course they didn't need any help. Or potentially, they were already contracting a firm for local bureaucratic matters. > Plus it was never mentioned what these "lo…

> Because your company already has considerable experience in working remotely in another territory, of course they didn't need any help. What are you talking about, my company was fully remote with global employees from day one. And no, our CEO/CFO haven’t founded or worked for another fully remote company before that. This is not a radical concept at all, especially not here on HN.

A company operating fully remote with global employees still has to do some bureaucratic work with the countries of their employees for payroll purposes. That's what I meant by the experience they had with this.

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

#432

Post by InsideOutSanta » Wed, Oct 08, 2025, 8:48 AM UTC

IAmBroom wrote: post #384

squigz wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really that shocking that someone on HN would have worked at as many as 2 private companies?

Nor is it shocking that a company with a PR issue would be astroturfing our forum. The point is: we don't know.

I would assume that if they were astroturfing, they would be smart enough to use more than one account. Given that, I'm inclined to believe that you are part of an astroturfing campaign.

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

#433

Post by rich66man » Wed, Oct 08, 2025, 9:02 AM UTC

vonbullshit wrote: post #422

IAmBroom wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nor is it shocking that a company with a PR issue would be astroturfing our forum. The point is: we don't know.

The summary is: if you use someone’s VPN, Tor, etc. you’re just setting yourself up. There is no privacy, and if you act like you want privacy, they’re going to pay more attention to you.

That's what they want you to think.

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

#434

Post by miroljub » Wed, Oct 08, 2025, 10:25 AM UTC

bilekas wrote: post #302

miroljub wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> How are all Russians in Lithuania or Estonia responsible for the deeds of the Russian government? Or Russians in England? It's not about Russian people, you assumed that. There are well known connections between any company doing business in or with Russia who are basically extorted to hand over all information about customers or financials to the government. This is no secret. If any company is working from or wit…

> It's not about Russian people, you assumed that.

I assumed that because it's what has been said.

>> ... but they're lovely people that would 100% walk out if there were some real Russian ties involved.

> If any company is working from or with Russian ties, you can assume the government will have access to that data. Given the sensitive nature of VPN's, antivirus software, deployed software in general, its completely fair to say you don't want to work with people with ties in Russia.

Many major VPN companies have Israeli ties. Now, tell me, how is that better than having Russian ties? You trust Netanyahu's government more than Putin's?

> You're conflating things, and then throwing in some 'what-about-ism' for good measure.

No, I'm just exposing your hatred of Russians and your double standards.

> Nothing but an argument will come from this discussion so it's not welcome here.

Who are you to say that? You started with the racist remarks and got called out. If you don't want to discuss it anymore, you are free to stop, but I won't let your racism go unanswered.

> You could try your hand on Twitter.

Not sure about Twitter, but there are many platforms that would welcome your racism and your hatred. You would have a much better time somewhere else, so feel free to act upon your advice.

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

#435

Post by InsideOutSanta » Wed, Oct 08, 2025, 1:29 PM UTC

rasengan wrote: post #371

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who couldn't handle their keys were at Nord. The people you trust are at Proton. > worked so hard to try to delete all of the evidence The cert is still there. Apparently, they didn't work nearly hard enough.

They worked pretty hard as detailed in an archived article changing names and any records they could [1], but you're right - not good enough [2]. As pointed out on this reddit post [3], Proton's appears to contradict itself a number of times. It's a good thing trust based VPN's are obsolete. After all, trust isn't constant [4] as seen in this article showing how Proton supplied IP addresses to "authorities." [1] http…

> Created by supposed MIT and CERN scientists

This is a hilarious way to start an ostensibly serious investigation. It's not as if you could easily figure out the answer to that.

At some point, you have to acknowledge that you're a clown.

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

#436

Post by sporkxrocket » Wed, Oct 08, 2025, 2:03 PM UTC

tguvot wrote: post #424

sporkxrocket wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I avoid it whenever possible, especially when we're talking about VPNs of all things. It's funny that you mention medicine because we all use Nazi technology and medical advancements too. Having zero ethical boundaries does indeed mean you can make technological progress.

did you switch to state of art chinese products in order to avoid using israeli tech ? or you just avoid things that you don't use anyway

This is exactly what I've done when possible. I have no problem with China.

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

#437

Post by sporkxrocket » Wed, Oct 08, 2025, 2:05 PM UTC

smileybarry wrote: post #425

sporkxrocket wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better analogy would be: would you use Nazi technology? There were roughly 8.5 million Nazis.

No, a better analogy would be Germany. You can't count the entirety of Israel on one hand and ~10% of 1940s Germany on the other. But that's beside the point and still doesn't match what you said, as you considered any company with an Israeli employee to be compromised, essentially. Do you consider companies with Chinese employees just as "compromised"? We've known of Chinese state surveillance for decades.

I don't see China as my adversary so that's not an issue for me. If anything they provide a much welcome alternative to both Israeli spy tech and US spy tech.

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

#438

Post by lagniappe » Wed, Oct 08, 2025, 2:15 PM UTC

eloisant wrote: post #339

crossroadsguy wrote: post #198

At this point, the VPN industry is so rife with shady dealings, suspicious ownership structures, weird exits, questionable marketing/PR practices/pushes, and rumours that waters have been muddied sufficiently for every provider out there. It might have been by design as well. Who knows. I now believe that you know your use case and use VPN only for that, and decide whether you really need to pay with parts of your ki…

Not saying that this is what I do, but a VPN is useful for things that are illegal but not serious. For example, France is spying torrent downloads of copyrighted content but they only look at the domestic consumer ISP IP addresses. They ignore all foreign IPs, so if you're using a VPN it doesn't matter if the VPN keeps all the logs they won't bother. Of course if you're doing things that will get you personally targ…

>it doesn't matter if the VPN keeps all the logs they won't bother

For now. The surveillance apparatus must feed from time to time.

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

#439

Post by TZubiri » Wed, Oct 08, 2025, 9:38 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #417

TZubiri wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you have to trust the one company, as well as everyone you were trusting before. You are still using the router, and now you are also trusting the VPN provider, as well as the nodes in between the VPN provider and your original destination. Also, you are just switching up the "unprotected stretch" between your local wifi, and, say, Google's servers, whereas now that "unprotected stretch" lies between the VPN prov…

> No, you have to trust the one company, as well as everyone you were trusting before. You are still using the router, and now you are also trusting the VPN provider, as well as the nodes in between the VPN provider and your original destination. As long as the VPN is up, the worst the wifi can do is cut you off. It can't alter your connections. It's far fewer trust points. > Also, you are just switching up the "unpr…

>For most wifi networks, there is no encryption between users. And it's quite likely that the neglected router got hacked over the internet and is part of a botnet.

WPA2? Sure it can be broken, but you still would have to break HTTPS on top of that.

I don't deny that a third layer adds security in that scenario, as 3 layers is more than 2 layers. But you necessarily weaken some other stretch in a zero-sum fashion, as mentioned. I'll concede that the server can be in your own country if you so choose to. But these datacenters are not necessarily controlled by the VPN provider, and they may be highly heterogeneous, in addition there will be many routers in the VPN DC to destination stretch that can still be hacked. Although again I'll grant that endpoint routers are probably weaker targets than ISP routers.

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

#440

Post by TZubiri » Wed, Oct 08, 2025, 9:45 PM UTC

IAmBroom wrote: post #392

TZubiri wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because something is called with the same name, doesn't mean it's the same thing. Especially if the naming is done on a product by a company that wants to sell the product, and especially if the name is not a protected trademark. Express VPN, NordVPN and Surfshark belong to another category of software than the VPNs used by companies. Some differences are: 1- One is used by consumers, the other is used by busine…

1- If we both use a hammer, and you use it for business while I use it for DIY, the tool is still the same thing. 2- The hammer doesn't care where the nail is; local carpentry or third-party furniture still require the same tool. 3- Both sides of the VPN are encrypted to each other, and anonymous to anyone else. No difference that I can see.

I don't think it's a great metaphor.

First, a hammer is a build (compile time) tool, while VPN is a runtime tech. Closer to a nail if you will.

Additionally, millions of products use hammers, while there's two product categories that use VPNs.

The product distribution of VPN products is bimodal, there's no inbetweens it's either a privacy oriented consumer VPN, or it's a security oriented corporate product.

Regarding the specific technology, there is no technical definition of what a VPN is, it's not an industry term, it's a marketing term. Similar to "Web", it's not HTTP, it's not TCP. This is in stark contrast to Internet (as in Internet Protocol).

Related technologies are IPSec, IKev2, WireGuard, but VPN is one of those trademarkless industry buzzword terms that companies are can latch onto for free and participate of a commodity market.

On an unrelated note, this is not unlike the term AI, which can somehow apply to fake images and conversational software. And coincidentally, modern AI is also bimodal, it's either text or syntethic images, the common ancestor might have been that the textual product originally was also synthetic generated text, but with agents and text as thought (in a Sappir-Whorf fashion) have since greatly diverged.