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VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies
- duxup 7y agoNearly as disturbing as the number of people who tell me they use free VPNs. It is a bit mind boggling that folks are concerned about something and use a VPN...but choose a free one...
- oil25 7y agoYes, a more secure and practical alternative to "VPN services" is the Tor network, which externalizes the cost of infrastructure to volunteers and thus reduces the risk inherent with centralized control. While Tor is also not without risk, I really wish more privacy oriented services and software had decentralization as a core tenet of their design.
- lighthazard 7y agoTor has a terrible user experience though. You can't just browse without bandwidth woes.
- metildaa 7y agoI can load YouTube just fine over Tor
- colemickens 7y agoWhy is this downvoted? It took less than 30 seconds to fire up Orbot, connect, open YouTube and start streaming a video without any issue or fuss. Sometimes when people talk about Tor, it reminds me of how people talked about Linux up until a couple years ago - often touting very out-dated impressions as if they were current observations. Tor bandwidth is very different than it was 5-10 years ago.
- viraptor 7y agoIt's not very consistent. Sometimes you get a gateway which is great, sometimes one which is limited to 10kbps, sometimes one running some monitoring experiments which doesn't care if you get any bandwidth (I was running one for a while).
- colemickens 7y agoMy understanding is that bad/poor gateways are penalized. In my own experience, I've only ever needed to change circuits manually once (but I'm primarily using Tor to NAT punch to hidden services, not sure if that matters ).
- bauerd 7y agoDidn't downvote, still >30 seconds for getting a video playing isn't super convincing. That's far too slow for everyday use, at least for me
- colemickens 7y agoWhile I said less than 30 seconds, it really was about 10 seconds but I didn't want to sound like I was exaggerating. And that was of course including switching apps, the initial Tor connection, switching apps back, waiting for my feed to load, clicking a video. I just tried again, it took 6 seconds to open Orbot and completely connect to Tor. The rest was business as usual. Maybe a 1, 1.5 second delay getting to YouTube and for the video to start playback. For what Tor offers, that is impressive, and I don't know what could possibly be convincing beyond that point. Not to mention that one can just leave Orbot running as well. And since I'm on Android, I can opt to have specific app traffic sent through Tor, or Orbot can act as a system-wide VPN. I'd make a video showing how painless it is, but setting it up, recording and uploading would take a hundredfold more time than just trying it out. edit: I know that it's purely anecdotal, but I just enabled Orbot VPN mode and fired up "Speedtest". It is reporting 7Mbps and 3.65Mbps up. It's not great, but to me that is usable if your privacy needs outweigh need for speed. And a screenshot if it's of interest, you can see that it's in VPN mode and Orbot is running: https://i.imgur.com/UZu4aJs.png https://i.imgur.com/UZu4aJs.png edit2: yikes, I actually just backed up 29 full-resolution screenshots to my Google Photos account without even realizing Orbot was still connected. Convinces me!
- jammygit 7y agoI just get captchas
- tootahe45 7y agoWhy does it need to be one or the other? why not both?
- badrabbit 7y agoYou trust Tor exit nodes over vpn providers?
- ubercow13 7y agoIs there any need to trust Tor exit nodes at all?
- detaro 7y agoIs all traffic you send across them secured in a way that the exit node can't do anything bad to it? (Tor exit nodes have been caught injecting malware into binaries downloaded over HTTP through them, for one possible problem if it isn't)
- oil25 7y ago> Tor exit nodes have been caught injecting malware into binaries downloaded over HTTP through them It's more accurate to say bad actors have been injecting malware into HTTP-downloaded binaries. Some of these bad actors use Tor exit nodes, some use free WiFi hotspots, and some run their own VPN services. Framing this as a Tor problem is like blaming violence on weapons instead of the perpetrators.
- badrabbit 7y agoIf you block non-tls traffic period and you never click through on invalid cert sites the only concern is 0day exploits. As much as https is popupar there is still alot of plain http sites and sites that upgrade to https after the first request. Data collection and running JS in your browser aside,there are clever tricks used to track and possibly deanonymize youand obviously they are hostile when it comes to exploutation. At least VPN providers need your money and their reputation and you can chain them for tor like privacy without the poor performance and anonymity.
- oil25 7y agoSure, I do. TLS provides end-to-end encryption and sites which don't support it are not allowed to run Javascript in my browser.
- secfirstmd 7y agoAgreed. With the possible exception of Psiphon which is built by and for activists. https://www.psiphon3.com https://www.psiphon3.com Tor is obviously another option but I don't strictly speaking categorise that as a VPN.
- badrabbit 7y agoThe intelligence community has a record of infiltrating activist orgs to direct their ideas. I wouldn't trust anything made specifically for activism unless some other valuable merit is presented.
- aorth 7y agoFor what it's worth, Cure53 did a pentest report on the Psiphon client, server, and iOS app in 2017: https://cure53.de/pentest-report_psiphon.pdf https://cure53.de/pentest-report_psiphon.pdf
- bhouston 7y agoOne of the most popular paid ones, NordVON, is super mysterious anyhow.
- Chilinot 7y agoHow so?
- tmh88j 7y ago> Nearly as disturbing as the number of people who tell me they use free VPNs. This is absolutely not an apples to apples comparison, but why is it outrageous to believe there couldn't be a free VPN that focuses on privacy when there are search engines like Duckduckgo and browsers like Firefox that are completely free and are pro-privacy? I haven't done the research, so consider it a rhetorical question.
- pcr0 7y agoA browser is just an application with some minimal services provided such as sync, extensions hosting, auto-updates. A VPN on the other hand consists of an application and usually unmetered usage of the company's bandwidth, which costs money.
- nordsieck 7y ago> A VPN on the other hand consists of an application and usually unmetered usage of the company's bandwidth, which costs money. Precisely. I imagine one of the more popular uses of VPNs is Bittorrent.
- luckylion 7y agoThough if you're in the right DCs, that traffic will be mostly internal, I suppose, since VPN providers and seedboxes aren't that spread out (for price and TOS reasons).
- 7y ago
- tootahe45 7y agoOr those who think they can use unlimited bandwidth on 5 devices and have all of it decrypted on the other end for just $3 a month, with no string attached.
- ubercow13 7y agoWhy not? You can run your own VPS with unlimited bandwidth on Scaleway for €3/mo and run your own VPN on that, and other stuff
- kspp 7y agoA lot of people I know are using free VPNs to circumvent the state censorship. It has nothing to do with privacy, only with the fact that when you search for something, about 20-80% of links end with "connection timed out" (depends on what you're looking for, obviously). Most of those sites don't have any "ungood" information and are basically just collateral damage.
- duxup 7y agoI wonder if with a free vpn ... would state pressure even be needed? Maybe just a wad of cash? Considering their costs / questionable ownership / ability to just roll out repeated new "free vpns" that nobody knows who is behind or took the money for the other one?
- rootw0rm 7y agowhen I was at a halfway house in San Diego (corecivic) I used a crappy free VPN a few times. they have their uses.
- Nullabillity 7y agoPaying for it means losing any semblance of anonymity, without any guarantee that they won't just keep on logging everything that passes through.
- AlexandrB 7y agoNot true. Good VPN providers accept anonymous payment in cash. E.g. IVPN[1]. [1] https://www.ivpn.net/knowledgebase/91/How-can-I-pay-with-cash.html https://www.ivpn.net/knowledgebase/91/How-can-I-pay-with-cas...
- Fnoord 7y agoAnonymous from who though? Copyright infringement is civil law.
- arkadiyt 7y agoHere's the research they're summarizing (never linked directly in the computerweekly article): https://vpnpro.com/blog/hidden-vpn-owners-unveiled-97-vpns-23-companies/ https://vpnpro.com/blog/hidden-vpn-owners-unveiled-97-vpns-2...
- dang 7y agoOk, we changed to that from https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252466203/Top-VPNs-secretly-owned-by-Chinese-firms https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252466203/Top-VPNs-secre.... Thanks!
- legionof7 7y agoHow safe is it to setup a VPN (via Wireguard or something) with AWS?
- notatoad 7y agoi can't speak to the safety, but i think you'll find browsing with an AWS IP to be a frustrating experience. Many sites block traffic from known AWS IP ranges in an attempt to prevent scraping or abuse.
- scurvy 7y agoYep plus 1000 to this. I tried doing this 4 years ago and it was a miserable experience. And rightly so to be honest. For every privacy focused nerd, there are 1000 lowlife hackers and spammers trying to use something as a bounce proxy.
- cf498 7y agoAny experience with using classical VPS as a proxy? Same problem?
- scurvy 7y agoThat's what I started out with. Pretty useless. Blocking the entire ASN is pretty easy and most won't care what is what.
- jstarfish 7y agoFWIW, most modern VPN providers spread their infrastructure around to evade ASN bans so there is some value added in paying a service to manage that for you.
- eknkc 7y agoUse Google Cloud VMs. Nobody blocks Google IPs (they might even lift paywalls etc)
- yardstick 7y agoTinfoil hats aside, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if the NSA and other intelligence agencies around the world operated VPN service providers as a way to spy on users.
- swinglock 7y agoIt would surprise me if they didn't.
- harshvladha 7y agoand so 97 VPN products may fall under single digit organizations, big one being NSA!
- luckylion 7y agoNow you just need to figure out which one owns which and then chain them cross vendor, and hope that "he's connecting to a chinese spy vpn" doesn't put you on any list ;)
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoMost people on HN are probably on several lists. If I mention "The Anarchist Cookbook" then I imagine every username on this page will be added to a GCHQ list, I'll probably have my internet traffic mined to establish if I downloaded it (which they arrest people for in the UK -- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-41802493 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-41802493). Presumably they have my online purchase history that relates to reagents, etc.. I also expect to be on lists for being critical of the establishment, doing online web security courses, buying remote connectable electronics, etc.. The difficulty I expect is profiling to reduce those lists to meaningful actions that have indicative value.
- trollied 7y agoHad it on a floppy for my Amiga. Brings back memories. Jolly Rogers cookbook :)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- _nalply 7y agoThis list seems to be incomplete. NordVPN is not included.
- Youden 7y agoCan you elaborate, preferably with evidence?
- NetOpWibby 7y agoDo you see Nord in the list?
- acd 7y agoThis smells fake news by countries not interested in citizens using encrypted communication. I encourage you to checkout the background of the security "main researcher".
- duskwuff 7y agoWhat are you trying to imply here? These research findings aren't hard to validate.
- INTPenis 7y agoA bit misleading to me because I read products as softwares but dismissed it because I knew there weren't 97 VPN softwares on the market. This should say 97 VPN services instead. Just nitpicking but it did made me look twice. This type of development is not unusual. Web hosting companies have been buying each other up since the 90s.
- ehsankia 7y agoI do think it's still true that the VPN market is teeming, even if a lot of the smaller services are owned by the same company. I keep seeing ads for ExpressVPN and NordVPN everywhere these days, some of these really trying to sell the idea that you can't ever browse the web without VPN. It seems like they're having a lot of success and growing very quickly these days, hence all these duplicate ones too.
- guaka 7y agoNot sure if it really helps when making a choice but here's an extensive overview of 185 VPN services over 30+ factors: https://thatoneprivacysite.net/#simple-vpn-comparison https://thatoneprivacysite.net/#simple-vpn-comparison
- nurettin 7y agoThe point is not to make a choice but to be informed about how the industry is somehow tied together in interesting ways. I would also add that many of these VPN services turn your machine into a drone where you knowingly or unknowingly enter into a contract so that they can sell your bandwidth to paying customers to provide them with randomized IP pools so that they can scrape amazon and alibaba.
- atmosx 7y agoInteresting. Given that scraping Amazon is illegal, shouldn't these companies pinpointed and sued?
- kpU8efre7r 7y agoIs it illegal or against terms?
- atmosx 7y agoAgainst terms indeed.
- grepthisab 7y agoIt's not illegal, it's against their TOS, bug difference. In any case, if there's money to be made, you'll find even more reputable entities will operate at the margins of ethics and legality. In any case, probably more cost effective to come up with a technical solution rather than suing every pop up scraper of Amazon. Or just sue the VPN provider itself?
- 7y ago
- MindTooth 7y agoI usually (maybe I should not) use this source[1] for my choosing. [1]: https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymous-in-2019/ https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymo...
- spassbold23 7y agoThat is why the future is with decentralized vpns, where the blockchain is used to bring sellers and buyers of bandwidth together. Projects like mysterium.network, sentinel.co, privatix.io,...
- krn 7y agoThis post is almost surely funded by affiliate commissions paid by ExpressVPN, NordVPN, and Astrill VPN, all of which are listed as "Top VPN providers" before the article even begins. Therefore, there are some serious omissions[1] in this list. [1] https://i0.wp.com/vpnscam.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/2018-08-24-09_09_14-Window.png https://i0.wp.com/vpnscam.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/201...
- icelancer 7y agoProbably. So what? Doesn't make the facts of the article any less true. Just need to do research on those three companies as well independently if you want to know more.
- grepthisab 7y agoIt's important to know where one's information is coming from, even if that information is "technically" accurate. Mere facts can be misleading through context, and it's important to know where biases are.
- gchamonlive 7y agoThere are many ways to lie using facts and statistics (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51291.How_to_Lie_with_Statistics https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51291.How_to_Lie_with_St... ) If you extrapolate a bit, apply some basic correlation twisting you can infer a lot of wrongful conclusion that is useful to specific agendas. We see this a lot in politics
- jjakque 7y agoSerious question: What's the context of the provided diagram? Is it to imply that the named companies are closely associated with each other? ie/ Tesonet, NordVPN, HolaVPN, ProtonMail/ProtonVPN (and other named company I missed) are proven to have common interest and the common interest involve/include putting customers' privacy in danger?
- krn 7y ago
- jen729w 7y agoExpressVPN are on a podcast advertising spree, so I thought I’d give them a look. I tried to pay using Bitcoin and got a generic “There was an error” error. And when I say generic, I mean ‘I recognise the Semantic UI React default error block’ generic. I used their live chat support. “Is this normal,” I asked. “No,” I was told. I tried again a day later. Same. I tried them on Twitter. Nothing. So, it seems that ExpressVPN have a good marketing budget and little else. I shan’t be bothering to try again.
- oceankid 7y agoGood observation.
- Renaud 7y agoPIA accept bitcoin fine, as a counter example.
- ru999gol 7y ago> So, it seems that ExpressVPN have a good marketing budget and little else. you don't happen to work for any one of the competition do you? anyhow I have been very happy with them, their servers tend to be pretty fast. So add that positive anecdote to his negative anecdote, how useless.
- jen729w 7y agoI do not.
- jstarfish 7y agoPodcasts/Youtubers attract the shadiest of sponsors. If an amateur content producer is pushing something its almost always a subpar product paid for by an obscene marketing budget. (They also have no discretion-- no problems at all shilling Bang energy drinks to an audience of children...)
- Traster 7y agoPeople should take this list with a serious health warning. Firstly, a lot of this is just 'internet sleuth'ing and innuendo. Plenty of companies want to operate multiple services to be able to use different marketing and differentiation strategies. Secondly, the fact that the site is funded by affiliate links to a coupole of the big VPN services should really ring alarm bells. I trust we all learned from the Mattress review debacles? [1] Thirdly, the companies who are funding this site through affiliate links, despite not being investigated in this article are arguably more worth of some serious suspicion. For example: NordVPN, one of their "Top VPN providers" is run by the same guy who runs a Lithuanian data harvesting company[2], but don't worry, lots of websites who make money from affiliate links to NordVPN (Sign up Now! 75% off when you use the code "SCAM" at checkout!) Now, maybe I'm being cynical - but I suspect if NordVPN weren't lining the pockets of all these referral websites their reviews of NordVPN would involve a lot more of the faux concern they show about other VPN companies in this hit piece, rather than the credulous write-ups about how it's totally not a problem that this shifty Panamanian company has suspicious links to data harvesters. [1]:https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-bloggers-lawsuits-underside-of-the-mattress-wars https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-blogg... [2]:https://www.vpnmentor.com/blog/is-nordvpn-operated-by-tesonet/ https://www.vpnmentor.com/blog/is-nordvpn-operated-by-tesone...
- homero 7y agoVPNs are the best data mining solution out there. You're literally giving them all traffic plus using their DNS. TLS helps a lot now but DNS hurts.
- mercora 7y agobetter yet it makes it really easy to pinpoint traffic to a single person despite all other measurements to make this harder. I would guess being an IP transit provider would be a lot more beneficial for them otherwise with regards to the amount of traffic they would handle....
- Fnoord 7y agoIf you tunnel 0.0.0.0/0 or equiv through it, sure. You don't have to, though. I just run my own VPN server on my cable internet. It allows all my roaming devices Pi-Hole access, and the same privacy as my cable internet.
- mirimir 7y agoNone of these are seriously privacy-centric VPNs. I was very pleased to not see any of my old favorites (AirVPN, IVPN, Mullvad and PIA). Although it's not easy to find them on their site, I believe that the https://cure53.de/ https://cure53.de/ vulnerability assessments are more interesting. Google "vpn site:cure53.de".
- dpacmittal 7y agoMullvad is great! They don't require email, and they accept crypto for payment.
- Fnoord 7y agoAnd together with AzireVPN one of the few working with WireGuard!
- mirimir 7y agoAlso IVPN, and they posted about issues with using WireGuard in privacy-friendly ways: https://www.ivpn.net/knowledgebase/254/Using-WireGuard-for-Privacy-Protection.html https://www.ivpn.net/knowledgebase/254/Using-WireGuard-for-P...
- klingonopera 7y agoAirVPN user since 2015 here, and happy since. Glad I chose one of the better ones, their mission list, that they have a status page, that their servers are named after stars and my subjective opinion, that "AirVPN" is actually a bad name (a transparent privacy tunnel?), all pointed me towards believing there are actual nerds behind that one, and in this topic, I consider that very important...
- mirimir 7y agoThey started as a collective, somewhat like Autistici/Inventati and Riseup, in France. And moved to Italy after the French police took one of their servers.
- 7y ago
- EastSmith 7y agoWhy would I need a VPN for browsing if all my traffic is https and I use HTTPS DNS?
- friedegg 7y agoThey can also be used to avoid some geographic restrictions, although some services now actively look to block people on VPN. I used to watch new episodes of certain show about a time traveler live via the BBC website despite being in the US.
- ru999gol 7y agoYour ISP could still see the servers you connect to and how much data is transferred, they don't need to look in any packets to know you browse YouTube or PornHub, and when, and for how long. But its also about hiding your identity from the sites you visit (dependent on how well your browser protects your privacy).
- oil25 7y ago> Why would I need a VPN for browsing if all my traffic is https and I use HTTPS DNS? Until TLS 1.4 is deployed, each HTTPS-protected site you visit will still reveal the domain name in its certificate, giving your ISP a pretty good idea of your browsing patterns, which it will in turn sell or turn over to authorities when asked.
- 7y ago
- auslander 7y agoMy research into VPNs led me to a strange thing: VPN Gate [0]. It is community run VPN servers, by University of Tsukuba, Japan (6953 Public VPN Relay Servers) with free public access, Username: 'vpn', Password: 'vpn'. Still trying to grasp what it is :) [0] https://www.vpngate.net/en/ https://www.vpngate.net/en/
- Renaud 7y agoIt looks interesting and probably without gotcha, but it’s rather naive as it seems to rely on volunteers to act as relay/exit node. I wonder how many ran into trouble due to dubious anonymous traffic exiting their IP...
- auslander 7y agoWhy naive? What is wrong relying on volunteers? Goal is to hide your traffic from ISP and your real IP from internet. Volunteer's VPN do just fine :) > dubious anonymous traffic price of freedom from corps and govs.
- Renaud 7y agoNaive in the sense that they only address issues such as blocking LAN networks and email spam traffic and there is zero mention of what happens when someone anonymously abuse the service. The volunteer effort is laudable and quite refreshing but can a VPN relying on volunteers be ignorant of the risks those volunteers incur when they open their connection to anonymous traffic? I understand that this is an issue that every VPN has to face but there should at least be some mention of how that particular VPN service handles law enforcement and abuse requests, or do they expect the volunteers to face the consequences? Maybe I’m missing that point and it’s clarified somewhere?
- effie 7y agoThe relation to the university seems pretty thin. I can find no mention of this on the official pages of that uni.
- Kaveren 7y agoif a VPN is right for your use case, ProtonVPN is the best possible solution if you want a moderate degree of herd anonymity from endpoints you visit. if you don't care about that, run your own VPN. those are the only two answers. ProtonVPN is the only VPN company to own any of their own hardware (they own one physical data center in Switzerland). "SecureCore" = route through switzerland data center to destination country, also useful. CEO is a public figure. free service is surprisingly good. company is ideological. could it all be fake? yes, but it is far less likely than any other company's VPN service to be. if there's one VPN in the world that would go lavabit, it'd be them. as others have said vpnpro.com and any VPN review websites are all untrustworthy and paid off by VPN companies.
- nathan-io 7y agohttps://github.com/angristan/openvpn-install https://github.com/angristan/openvpn-install
- mancuso5 7y agoCan anyone recommend some really privacy-focused VPNs?
- broth 7y agoYou should really do some due diligence on finding the right VPN for your needs. I recommend you read this https://thatoneprivacysite.net/choosing-the-best-vpn-for-you/ https://thatoneprivacysite.net/choosing-the-best-vpn-for-you...
- hnsocks 7y agoDo not trust your government or they associated partners. Google, Facebook, Twitter all same organisation. Same with VPN providers
- joyjoyjoy 7y agoComparison of VPNs https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn-comparison-chart/ https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn-comparison-chart/ I made bad experience with NordVPN based on reliability but they gave my my money back after 3 months with no questions asked. Astrill is good but pricey. Astill will work in countries that try to block VPNs. CON: Astrill leaks DNS like a mother...er. I can get it under controll with ufw ufw default deny outgoing && ufw allow out on tun0 && ufw allow out on tun0 to [IP of your DNS] port 53 You may want to use Softether instead of OpenVPN or the provided client of your VPN. I am only awar of two VPNs that provide Softether access: https://www.rapidvpn.com/setup-vpn-softether-ubuntu https://www.rapidvpn.com/setup-vpn-softether-ubuntu https://proxy.sh/panel/knowledgebase/1893/Securely-connect-to-Proxysh-VPN-network-through-SoftEther-VPN.html https://proxy.sh/panel/knowledgebase/1893/Securely-connect-t...
- peterwwillis 7y agoI hope nobody tells them about the products at the grocery store...
- JustSomeNobody 7y agoI use a vpn for certain traffic, but I treat it more of just one more layer of BS someone has to jump through to see what I’m doing and so maybe they’ll pick an easier someone to watch. I don’t have to run faster than the bear...
- novaleaf 7y agoPrivate Internet Access (PIA) doesn't seem to be mentioned in the article nor HN posts. I think that must be good then. I've been a happy PIA customer for about 5 years. They probably arn't the fastest (I get aprox 3.5mbit/sec on them) but so far none of the mud slung against them sticks. There's a lot of shady shit in the VPN industry, so glad they are above it.
- typenil 7y agoI used PIA for a long time, but at some point it seemed like every single site I visited triggered that Cloudflare protection page that forces you to fill out Google Recaptcha before proceeding. Hopefully that's not the case now.
- hellofunk 7y agoI haven't seen a Cloudflare page in ages and I use them often. I honestly cannot recall the last time when browsing the web I saw a Cloudflare page, with any ISP or VPN.
- novaleaf 7y agoi also never see cloudflare problems. however some sites refuse to do business with you if you are on a vpn (craigslist, BoA, etc) probably due to abuse from the same IP
- duskwuff 7y ago> at some point it seemed like every single site I visited triggered that Cloudflare protection page that forces you to fill out Google Recaptcha before proceeding That's kind of par for the course on a public VPN -- your traffic is being aggregated with a lot of other users, some of whom will be behaving in unusual ways.
- hellofunk 7y agoI get exactly double the bandwidth with them that you do, so I suspect there are other factors.
- kerng 7y agoThis analysis seems to be missing the big VPN players. What's the point of a half hearted analysis?
- dfee 7y agoI’ll say what I’ve said before: making a VPN purchase is non-trivial. The best I’ve been able to do was use Mozilla as a proxy (because I trust ‘em), and thus bought ProtonVPN (which admittedly has been imperfect).