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Pornhub launches VPNhub, its own virtual private network app
- amelius 8y agoMy boss will totally believe I'm doing job-related stuff while I'm connected to Pornhub's VPN ... /s
- akerro 8y agoNo one should care as long as you do your job.
- zulln 8y agoUsing a VPN for everything they have right to care though. All job-related traffic goes through it as well, hence potentially leaking sensitive stuff?
- NickLamp 8y agoI can think of many things one might do on a VPN that an employer might and probably should care about
- admax88q 8y agoI can also think of many things a bad employee might do that the employer should probably care about. But if you hired someone you've given them a tremendous amount of responsibility and power, if you can't trust them to do their job without monitoring everything they do then you should just fire them and hire someone more trustworthy.
- draugadrotten 8y ago> But if you hired someone you've given them a tremendous amount of responsibility and power, if you can't trust them to do their job without monitoring everything they do then you should just fire them and hire someone more trustworthy. Trust but verify, as Reagan used to say. We give even more power to the presidents and senators, but imagine what would happen in there was not plenty of people around to monitor what they did with that power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust,_but_verify https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust,_but_verify
- tptacek 8y agoThere is basically no IT shop at a large company that operates this way, and there's a reason for that.
- jeena 8y agoI would be interested of the reason because we've been fighting this successfully for a number of years with our clients IT departments (while we were smaller). They hired us to make the developement process better and one of the things we always found problematic was that when the software developers didn't have normal internet access (but instead tunneled everything through some bottleneck http proxy) they both lost the good developers because they were fed up with not being able to do their job efficently and thus the quality of their software went down. A year ago we've been bought by a big company to help them do what we did untill then but on a much bigger scale. The first thing we did was to get rid of the restricted internet. And now we again help our customers (big car manufacturers) to make their processes better. And even for here every developer has free access to the Internet to be able to work efficiently. But as I said in the beginning, I'm really interested in the reasons for this behaviour of those large companies. My suspission is that it's just easier for the IT department to work against the developers instead of helping them to do their job.
- gesman 8y agoSort of like when Amazon entered cloud space. For PH it makes sense due to them already have infra to support it especially video streaming. The challenge with privacy VPNs is a matter of trust.
- chii 8y agoI think if more peopled used TOR, and also ran public exit nodes and/or relays, it will work better than private VPN companies.
- berbec 8y agoAfaik, Tor is not recommended for high bandwidth activities like bittorrent and streaming. I'm sure it works, but probably would break the network if too much of it went on. I'd be happy to know this never was the case or changed. Its the reason I never got on the tor bandwagon.
- jrs95 8y agobittorrent as a protocol isn't even any more secure over Tor, so you're just taking up bandwidth on the network by using it. Direct downloads and streaming may be less of a concern, but it's probably too slow right now to really do streaming effectively.
- skrowl 8y agoTrying to stream video over tor is a terrible experience, even if you stay within tor onion sites and don't rely on the too-few-and-too-overloaded exit nodes
- gnode 8y agoThe fundamental problem with this is that it's charity / freeloading. I don't mean this as an ethical complaint, just that the economic incentive isn't there. I could imagine cryptocurrency potentially offering a solution to this which solves both issues of trust and economics, but it would be a challenge to guarantee its security.
- fredley 8y ago> “VPNhub is free and unlimited, anonymous and easy to use, [...] a good number of [people] use [VPNs] to circumvent and bypass restrictions to access adult content. It only makes sense that they use Pornhub’s.” So wait, as a UK citizen I can use Pornhub's VPN to circumvent the UK Government's "Porn Filter", a system that's run by..... Pornhub.
- mtgx 8y agoWasn't the porn filter supposed to be enabled by default, but optional for adults? As in the adults could change whether or not they could see the porn, at will? I believe there was some bureaucracy involved and maybe a "porn tax" you had to pay to disable the filter, but maybe this VPN service effectively solves both of those problems.
- pavel_lishin 8y ago> maybe this VPN service effectively solves both of those problems. Sure, for the low, low price of $12/month.
- w0m 8y ago> VPNhub is free and unlimited, anonymous and easy to use, ... Though I didn't actually RTFM, was posted elsewhere here.
- pavel_lishin 8y agoWhoops, how'd I miss that :/
- zrobotics 8y agoFrom the article: "there is a premium subscription available that gets rid of the ads and promises faster speeds. In the U.S., this will cost between $12 and $14 per month, depending on the platform." So unlimited free use, but restricted speed and injected ads. Not horrible, but I'd definitely read the T&C very carefully, I didn't see any mention of what logs they keep.
- philip1209 8y agoThis is hilarious. Is PornHub still one of the largest Google Cloud customers?
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoA company of that size who's core product is video streaming is (or should) have some way of abstracting the CDN(s) away from most other stuff so that they can shuffle things around in real time or close to real time.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dguido 8y agoIt might be a good time to mention that Algo VPN now supports Ubuntu 18.04, many new cloud providers, and soon (days) will have Wireguard support. https://github.com/trailofbits/algo https://github.com/trailofbits/algo
- antihero 8y agoWhat advantages does this have over something like OpenVPN Road Warrior installer? https://github.com/Nyr/openvpn-install https://github.com/Nyr/openvpn-install
- tptacek 8y agoIt's packaged and maintained by security experts, and doesn't use OpenVPN.
- antihero 8y agoI see a lot of technologies being talked about that I've not heard of - what's the difference between WireGuard and StrongSwan - do they fulfil different purposes? Or did Algo use StrongSwan and now uses Wireguard?!
- tptacek 8y agostrongSwan is a mainstream IPSEC implementation. OpenVPN is its own protocol, using TLS as a control channel. WireGuard is also its own protocol, based on Noise. strongSwan has cryptography designed in the 1990s. OpenVPN relies on TLS, which for all intents and purposes is also 15-20 years old. WireGuard is modern, with a design that comes from Signal Protocol's cryptographer. strongSwan and OpenVPN have gigantic C codebases. WireGuard's kernel implementation is just 4500 lines of carefully designed code. You should use WireGuard if you can.
- antihero 8y agoCan we use WireGuard on iOS yet? Thanks for the clarifications, by the way.
- awat 8y agoInteresting, I totally understand that this is adult entertainment and that it carries it’s own implications. But I hope this isn’t the way of the future, direct tunneling to get through restrictions, snooping, and regulations.
- globuous 8y agoMy parents live in Dubai and had a VPN for VoIPing, but recently the VPN stopped working. I'm terrible at networking and don't really know how all of this works, but is it possible for ISPs to block particular VPNs ?
- aaomidi 8y agoYes it is. Either just blocking the IP or using DPI.
- gnode 8y agoYes, as long as they can recognise them. It's possible to selectively reveal IPs to customers, so an attacking ISP would need the perspective of multiple users to find all VPN hosts. At an extreme, ISPs could run a whitelist instead of a blacklist (allowing connections only to approved hosts; denying by default). It's possible for services to be run on the same IPs / ports as legitimate services, forcing an ISP to choose between blocking both or none. An example of this is Telegram's use of AWS IPs, which when blocked by Russian ISPs caused disruption to other services. ( https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/17/russia_blocks_google_aws_ip_addresses_to_get_telegram/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/17/russia_blocks_googl... )
- rocgf 8y agoPerfectly possible. If it's possible for China to ban Google and for Turkey to ban Wikipedia, you can be sure that an ISP can block a VPN. :) All they have to do is bad a certain range of IP addresses that correspond to that VPN provider.
- Chardok 8y agoYes, but most paid VPNs have several different servers and ports to choose from for this very reason. Its been a while but Private Internet Access' chat support was very helpful in troubleshooting my ISP throttling my VPN connections.
- gruez 8y ago>but is it possible for ISPs to block particular VPNs ? yes, at both the network level (by blocking IP ranges belonging to VPN services) and protocol level (ie. known handshake sequences for VPN software). but both can be easily bypassed with a few google searches.
- AndrewKemendo 8y agoAssuming that people were using a VPN to browse pornography, doesn't the ownership of this VPN by a Porn hosting company kind of eliminate the anonymity benefits of using it? I'm also confused by why the gentleman in the ad was going to browse PornHub in a crowded coffee shop while waiting on his coffee.
- DanBC 8y agoSome people don't care about anonymity, but only need to evade ISP filters. For example, I use tor to access torrent sites that have been blocked by ISPs after high court orders in the UK. I have no interests in the privacy aspects of tor for that use. I just want to get around the filter.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoI suppose people (at least those targeted by this ad) worry about snooping in transit, not about endpoints. A porn site you visit will have plenty of data on you from your browser anyway - and compromised public Wi-Fi spots are a real risk.
- Coding_Cat 8y agoPeople use a VPN for much more than browsing porn. Jsut because Pornhub is behind it doesn't mean it's limited to that. And I care less about a Pornhub knowing what I watch - if anything ;) - than the Government, ISP, or anyone in a position of power. With browser/cookie fingerprinting PH probably already can id people reasonably accurately, VPN or not, if they wanted to.
- AndrewKemendo 8y agoCertainly, however I have to assume Pornhub is jumping into the VPN game because they realize a substantial number of their users use VPNs for exactly that. It's not about anonymizing to PornHub, but about anonymizing to your ISP or AP.
- cgh 8y agoI imagine this service would appeal to people who want to remain anonymous to local law enforcement. Pornhub realises there is a huge untapped market in eg Islamic countries, for example. Regarding the coffee shop thing: I was walking past a place some time back and I saw a woman staring thoughtfully at her laptop. She was sitting with her back to the wall. Behind her was a glass-covered painting, allowing me to see a reflection of her laptop screen. She was browsing porn. I guess it's not that uncommon.
- deadmetheny 8y agoIt seems strange to me that PornHub would be entering the VPN space - it's already got pretty stiff competition as it is, it'll be tough to beat off the exiting players if they wanna get a firm handhold. Though with various governments banning any VPNs they come across, maybe it's not so bad to get some fresh meat.
- fencepost 8y agoThe pricing on this seems out of line with other VPN providers unless I'm missing something. $12-14/month = $144/year give or take. Even if they do a "2 months free if you pay annually" it's still $120/year while something like privateinternetaccess is $7/mo, $40/year or $70/2 years. Unfortunately the vpnhub site appears to have been hammered into the ground as of time of posting.
- brettz 8y agoThe yearly price for now is $69.99 in the US. Site is back up.
- gexla 8y agoWell, consider that it's enabling you to watch porn, that has to be worth some of the premium. ;)
- godzillabrennus 8y agoWow that’s a lot to pay for this kind of thing. Maybe I’m the minority on here but I watch Tech shows on YouTube. Linus Sebastian is quite popular on there. He has been recommending https://www.privateinternetaccess.com https://www.privateinternetaccess.com and their prices are lower.
- anderber 8y agoKeep in mind that his show is sometimes sponsored by PIA. But on that note, I've used them and have no complaints. Their speeds aren't as good as Mullvad though. Actually, no VPN that I've ever tried is as fast as Mullvad.
- bdcravens 8y agoI've been using PIA for years. They even take Bitcoin if you want some additional anonymity.
- enieslobby 8y agoDoes he still recommend it? PIA recently hired former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles as it's CTO which received some backlash on the forums: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/921994-pia-hires-man-who-lost-473m-from-security-flaw-as-technology-officer/ https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/921994-pia-hires-man-wh...
- choward 8y agoIs this going to be the new trend? This is worse than Facebook with Onavo.
- KenanSulayman 8y agoInterestingly, the VPN clients connect to https://wlvpn.com https://wlvpn.com and the whole service seems to actually be run by WLVPN, a white label VPN service, and not actually MindGeek (the company running PornHub).
- ComodoHacker 8y agoSo their VP must be lying: >“It’s also developed by us, the leading adult entertainment platform in the world".
- qu4z-2 8y agoBased on my experience, that means they "developed the solution" out of entirely off-the-shelf existing software/infrastructure.
- felipemesquita 8y agoCan anyone who tried this elaborate on what are the ads on the free tier? Are they only in the iOS app or is the service intercepting unsecured traffic to insert ads?
- willstrafach 8y agoThese appear to be in app ads. Not injected into actual browsing activity.
- Escapado 8y agoWait can I use US netflix from Germany for free then? Oh gawd pls
- Greycht 8y agoFree version is very limited and monthly model costs a fortune. Why not stick to well-known brands that keep your data secure for a fraction of that cost? I'll stick to NordVPN or ProtonVPN or any other more known brand thank you very much.