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ExpressVPN employees complain about ex-spy's top role at company

reuters.com

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Re: ExpressVPN employees complain about ex-spy's top role at company

#61

Post by joconde »

qw3rty01 wrote: post #52
elagost wrote: post #2

It's been clear for a long time that every single commercial VPN service is a waste of money. At best, you replace trusting your ISP with trusting a different group of unknown people with similar motivations. At worst, it's a government agency honeypot or someone like Facebook. If you think you want a VPN for "privacy", use Tor Browser. If you want a VPN for any other reason that "normal people" think they want a VPN…

> If you think you want a VPN for "privacy", use Tor Browser so replace a vpn, which might be logging your traffic, for a service which absolutely is logging your traffic? Tor is an anonymity service, not a privacy service.

What traffic does it log exactly, and who logs it? As I understand Tor:

- the exit node knows the second-to-last node, the cleartext data and the destination,

- each intermediate node knows the previous and next nodes,

- the entry node knows the sender and the second node.

And using HTTPS prevents the exit node from knowing the cleartext data.

This doesn't enable any individual node to know who sent what to whom, assuming that the whole path isn't entirely controlled by one person.

Re: ExpressVPN employees complain about ex-spy's top role at company

#62

Post by stronglikedan »

Pick-A-Hill2019 wrote: post #32

It [ExpressVPN] said it had not known of the federal investigation or the details of Gericke's work in UAE Seriously? So either he lied or they are lying. I'm not an expert in American employment laws but would have assumed that one of the conditions of employment would be disclosing/reporting being under a federal investigation.

You don't have a legal duty to tell a prospective employer anything. The burden is on them to perform any background checks, if they want.

Re: ExpressVPN employees complain about ex-spy's top role at company

#63

Post by weinzierl »

elagost wrote: post #18
lemoncookiechip wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's far from a waste of money. They help with things such as skipping geoblocking, able to deceive ISPs that send mail warning users about pirated content, can in some cases help with gaming ping, allow users to trick sites that rely on IP logging and many other applications besides cybersecurity and privacy. The main issue is that they all seem to advertise themselves as these privacy and cybersecurity services fir…

Browser fingerprinting works much better than checking IPs. With multiple devices being behind the same IP, it's necessary to distinguish between users. I'm not saying VPNs are worthless - I'm on one right now for work. Commercial VPNs, for most people who purchase them, are completely worthless. And I very much doubt that tunneling your connection through a VPN can improve ping.

Just for a moment close your eyes and imagine a world where you have to fill-in a mildly complicated form before you visit a website (or blindly sign away whatever rights you might have had).

A world where every second funny video you might have found on Reddit leaves you with a cryptic message that some "rights holder" doesn't permit you to see it (and denies you from joining the fun everyone else seems to be having in the thread).

A world where you cannot buy half of the cool stuff you want (and everyone else seems to be having) because you cannot even see the online store where it is sold.

A world where you're even denied access to old and seemingly public domain e-books.

Open your eyes. This is the world most of us live in.

We're not on commercial VPNs because we love to, but because often there is no other way. They are in a sense invaluable when it comes to geo-restrictions, even though I agree with you that they are worthless for many of the reasons they claim to exist.

Re: ExpressVPN employees complain about ex-spy's top role at company

#64

Post by trutannus »

Raed667 wrote: post #3
elagost wrote: post #2

It's been clear for a long time that every single commercial VPN service is a waste of money. At best, you replace trusting your ISP with trusting a different group of unknown people with similar motivations. At worst, it's a government agency honeypot or someone like Facebook. If you think you want a VPN for "privacy", use Tor Browser. If you want a VPN for any other reason that "normal people" think they want a VPN…

What if you want a VPN to unlock location based content?

Essentially the only valid use of a VPN. That, or masking your location from other users online.

I find YouTube in my country is just filled with content being pushed because it's local to my country. Some VPN exit points have less local content pushing, which gives me more options. Eastern European content is really good, but also completely missing from American YouTube suggestions.

Re: ExpressVPN employees complain about ex-spy's top role at company

#66

Post by StevenRayOrr »

gizdan wrote: post #58
adamdusty wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never in my life met anyone that has an iPhone or a Mac because Apple is processing everything on the device itself. People have iPhone and macs for 2 reasons. iMessage and because Apple is a premium brand that even that richest of richest people use. The money Apple would lose if they started mining your data like Facebook would be indistinguishable from random noise.

They're not at the level of Facebook and Google, but they still mine your data. You've gained nothing.

I'm more comfortable with Apple's decisions than some on Hackers News, so take this with a grain of salt... but the difference between what Google/Facebook does and Apple does is a difference. It may not be as vast a difference as Apple claims, but it's also not nothing.

Re: ExpressVPN employees complain about ex-spy's top role at company

#67

Post by netflixandkill »

elagost wrote: post #18
lemoncookiechip wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's far from a waste of money. They help with things such as skipping geoblocking, able to deceive ISPs that send mail warning users about pirated content, can in some cases help with gaming ping, allow users to trick sites that rely on IP logging and many other applications besides cybersecurity and privacy. The main issue is that they all seem to advertise themselves as these privacy and cybersecurity services fir…

Browser fingerprinting works much better than checking IPs. With multiple devices being behind the same IP, it's necessary to distinguish between users. I'm not saying VPNs are worthless - I'm on one right now for work. Commercial VPNs, for most people who purchase them, are completely worthless. And I very much doubt that tunneling your connection through a VPN can improve ping.

As a frequent international traveler, using VPNs as a method to change routing absolutely can improve the results. Routing is not always done to get your specific packets someplace as fast as possible, particularly when submarine cables are involved.

Re: ExpressVPN employees complain about ex-spy's top role at company

#68

Post by marderfarker2 »

garyrob wrote: post #35
elagost wrote: post #2

It's been clear for a long time that every single commercial VPN service is a waste of money. At best, you replace trusting your ISP with trusting a different group of unknown people with similar motivations. At worst, it's a government agency honeypot or someone like Facebook. If you think you want a VPN for "privacy", use Tor Browser. If you want a VPN for any other reason that "normal people" think they want a VPN…

Honest question: it's still a consensus that they do have value in situations such as airport Wi-Fi, correct? Separately from that, I still do wonder whether, if you subscribe to a VPN that has well-examined security practices and whose reputation depends on such practices, whether it still may have value over relying on the security over a local ISP which may not have as much expertise or reputation investment with…

Most public wifi block all the ports necessary for VPN except 80 and 443. Even then DPI will stop most VPN protocol right in its track.

I’ve never had reliable VPN working over public wifi/mobile network, unless I roll my own custom protocol that masquerades as HTTP traffic.

Re: ExpressVPN employees complain about ex-spy's top role at company

#70

Post by darthvoldemort »

antegamisou wrote: post #56
z3c0 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is - they know their market and they serve them well. One of the few VPNs that actually don't log traffic. That said, I've had websites flat-out refuse me because of using Mullvad (not just because it's a VPN, but a supposedly "disreputable" VPN). Meaning blackhats love it. Meaning it works.

> One of the few VPNs that actually don't log traffic. How can one be so certain that this is the case? The only thing that's for sure is the claim they do not keep any evidence. I don't have anything against this VPN, it's really just an inherent trust problem with any provider. You take their word for it and be smart/ethical enough not to have any sketchy activity when you use it because there's a pretty good chanc…

The only ones you can trust are the ones that have actively fought court orders. That is a reasonable show of certainty that they do what they say otherwise there are real legal consequences.
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