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I think his evidence for being a honeypot is speculative at best. The more likely explanation is that it's simply a mediocre VPN service bolstered by fake revie

I think his evidence for being a honeypot is speculative at best. The more likely explanation is that it's simply a mediocre VPN service bolstered by fake reviews and marketing money. Snake oil is so much cheaper to produce than something actually nefarious.

guitarbill 8y ago
In my limited experience, they have added a lot of servers in the last year. I've stopped using it, but my friends who still have it for streaming seem very happy with the speeds. With the right marketing, I think VPN businesses are kinda like gyms. That would be a more innocent reason why marketing spend is high.
jsoc815 8y ago
While you are correct that the "evidence" is speculative, I've long thought that the seemingly coordinated push to get avg. people to use VPNs was suspicious. Additionally, when I articles and comments rationalizing why one company is better than another, I see a lot of holes in what's said. For example, people don't seem to understand that registering (basing) a company in one place doesn't preclude it from operating elsewhere. Another thing, most people, including me, don't know who the owners and operators of these companies are. I see lots of comments about wanting to avoid gov't surveillance and the like, but w/o knowing the deets on the owners and operators, people could be just making the surveillance easier; same is to be said for those trying to avoid giving the data to their ISP (maybe the ISP owns all or a stake in one's VPN). So, I think that RR's advice in one of his/her articles about avoiding all of them is probably fair, although considered impractical for the average person @ this point.
- dagenix 8y ago
  Genuinely curious - how is it hard to avoid a VPN? Can't you just not use one?
  - jsoc815 8y ago
    Well, to clarify, I'm referring to RR's advice not to use any of the consumer-level services. And since, as far as I know, they are all fee-based 'tools', I don't see why one can't not use them. As always, I'm happy to have someone correct any flaws in either of my posts here.

guitarbill 8y ago

In my limited experience, they have added a lot of servers in the last year. I've stopped using it, but my friends who still have it for streaming seem very happy with the speeds. With the right marketing, I think VPN businesses are kinda like gyms. That would be a more innocent reason why marketing spend is high.

jsoc815 8y ago

While you are correct that the "evidence" is speculative, I've long thought that the seemingly coordinated push to get avg. people to use VPNs was suspicious. Additionally, when I articles and comments rationalizing why one company is better than another, I see a lot of holes in what's said. For example, people don't seem to understand that registering (basing) a company in one place doesn't preclude it from operating elsewhere. Another thing, most people, including me, don't know who the owners and operators of these companies are. I see lots of comments about wanting to avoid gov't surveillance and the like, but w/o knowing the deets on the owners and operators, people could be just making the surveillance easier; same is to be said for those trying to avoid giving the data to their ISP (maybe the ISP owns all or a stake in one's VPN). So, I think that RR's advice in one of his/her articles about avoiding all of them is probably fair, although considered impractical for the average person @ this point.

dagenix 8y ago
Genuinely curious - how is it hard to avoid a VPN? Can't you just not use one?
- jsoc815 8y ago
  Well, to clarify, I'm referring to RR's advice not to use any of the consumer-level services. And since, as far as I know, they are all fee-based 'tools', I don't see why one can't not use them. As always, I'm happy to have someone correct any flaws in either of my posts here.