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Every single time I start researching VPN services I end up more confused and with more questions than before because basically every vouched service has the sa
by haunter 6y ago
Every single time I start researching VPN services I end up more confused and with more questions than before because basically every vouched service has the same amount of negative comments too. Like feels like the whole sector is a honeypot (lol) of shady stuff and also they figthing against each other (or not?). So I just wait until when turns out Mullvad is also one of the bad guys.
- pipermerriam 6y agoI use ProtonVPN. Same company as ProtonMail. Highly reputable with a business model around doing privacy and encryption well.
- helloooooooo 6y agoNordVPN shares offices in Estonia with ProtonVPN. For that reason I find it sketchy.
- gzer0 6y agoI would like to read more about this, do you have a source? I cannot find anything reliable that suggests this! Thanks.
- E5JBK7UJPT 6y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonVPN/comments/8ww4h2/protonvpn_and_tesonet/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonVPN/comments/8ww4h2/protonvpn...
- gzer0 6y agoThis suggests the opposite of what you say in your original comment.
- krn 6y agohttps://vpnscam.com/tesonet-data-mining-company-owns-nordvpn-protonmail-protonvpn/ https://vpnscam.com/tesonet-data-mining-company-owns-nordvpn...
- rmrfstar 6y agoYou should also link the HN thread where proton categorically denies the claims. In particular, the claim that tesonet controls protonvpn's release signing key. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17258203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17258203
- krn 6y agoThey clearly put a lot of effort in cleaning the mess, as I later discovered myself by being from the same city: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18611863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18611863 It seems very likely now, that ProtonMail just decided to use NordVPN's white-label solution to bootstrap its ProtonVPN business: https://nordvpn.com/white-label/ https://nordvpn.com/white-label/
- E5JBK7UJPT 6y agoI was not the original person that replied to you. I was just providing with you with information on the incident they were referring to. Proton denied the claim but it is up to you whether you believe them or not.
- rmrfstar 6y agoLink. Please.
- nix23 6y ago>NordVPN shares offices in Estonia with ProtonVPN What really? Some proof for that? ProtonVPN and ProtonMail is located in Switzerland Genève, i dont see any open positions for estonia https://careers.protonmail.com/ https://careers.protonmail.com/
- raxxorrax 6y agoI don't think NordVPN is sketchy, even with their latest hic-ups. They are however located in Panama as far as I know, which probably gives the US access for "drug trafficing".
- jorge-d 6y agoIMHO ProtonVPN (and Mail) are the perfect honeypots
- _threads 6y agoHow/why?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gzer0 6y agoProtonVPN provides the source code for their desktop and mobile clients in their GitHub organization [1]. Yes open source != safe; however this level of transparency is at least a step in the right direction. They also have regularly been audited by independent organizations that are openly available for the public to see their compliance [2][3][4][5][6]. Do you have any evidence to suggest that they are honeypots? [1] https://github.com/ProtonVPN https://github.com/ProtonVPN [2] https://protonvpn.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/ProtonVPN-Android-app-audit-report-2020.pdf https://protonvpn.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Proton... [3] https://protonvpn.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/ProtonVPN-iOS-app-audit-report-2020.pdf https://protonvpn.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Proton... [4] https://protonvpn.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/ProtonVPN-macOS-app-audit-report-2020.pdf https://protonvpn.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Proton... [5] https://protonvpn.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/ProtonVPN-Windows-app-audit-report-2020.pdf https://protonvpn.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Proton... [6] https://protonvpn.com/blog/open-source/ https://protonvpn.com/blog/open-source/
- 29athrowaway 6y agoAnd how do you know if what they built is exactly what's in that source?
- cambalache 6y agoHehe, exactly, oldest trick in the trade
- Jonnax 6y agoAsk yourself why you want a VPN. Is it to avoid your ISP collecting browsing data off you and selling it? Perhaps using 8.8.8.8 or 1.1.1.1 as your DNS might be good enough. Is it to watch geo region blocked videos? Then pretty much any service will work for you. Except that video streaming sites have caught on and blocked hosting provider IP blocks. So that might require you to shop around. Do you want the most privacy or want to get around blocking? Then get a VM from a provider and configure a VPN to it. Wireguard works fine. Want to do something illegal? Don't expect a VPN to save you.
- Maximus9000 6y ago> Is it to avoid your ISP collecting browsing data off you and selling it? Perhaps using 8.8.8.8 or 1.1.1.1 as your DNS might be good enough. Wouldn't your ISP still see what IP's you are visiting? Then, your ISP could just reverse DNS that IP to get the domain name, right?
- vocatus_gate 6y agoNot necessarily, many sites are hosted on the same VPS, or the IP could just be one of 5000 CloudFlare servers serving up the page you requested.
- offmycloud 6y agoMaybe, but most ISPs are lazy/cheap and can't do a full-take packet capture of all customers data at the same time. The ones that I have seen usually have a custom or logging DNS server that associates each domain request with a customer account. So yes, in many cases, changing your DNS server is enough to avoid the larger DNS sniffing operations. You should also use an IP check query to make sure that you are really using the DNS server you think, and that you're not being DNATed back to your ISP's DNS server.
- Skunkleton 6y agoDNS is super trivial to redirect. I've been on ISPs that redirect _all_ DNS traffic to their servers regardless of where it was sent. The best solution here is to switch to DoH. Of course then your DoH provider gets to log all of that sweet info instead.
- badRNG 6y agoI regularly think that claims of astroturfing are overblown, but it is common in the "privacy" focused industry to FUD competitors to gain market share. I'm immediately reminded of some shady search engine CEO going on OAN and other fringe shows posing as a security researcher to spread FUD about DDG to drive traffic to his site (can't find the link for it now.) That OAN video even went around the security industry (among compliance and less technical folk) who were persuaded DDG was now worse than Google for consumer privacy.
- leokennis 6y agoVPN’s just mean you’re trusting someone else than your ISP. Instead of your ISP seeing you go to site.com, now your ISP sees you connecting to a VPN and the VPN sees you connecting to site.com. For this reason I am highly suspicious of any VPN service that markets itself as some “magical privacy wormhole”, which is 99% of VPN providers. Honest ones I know of are Encrypt.me and Mullvad, who both tell you they should be mainly used to secure yourself on open WiFi and to circumvent geo blocks. If you want a private internet connection, use TOR.
- neilv 6y agoSome reasons you might get some negative vibes from looking into consumer VPN services: * Some consumer VPN services have been found to be doing sketchy things. And you can imagine the business is attractive to people intending to do sketchy things, since it's a powerful/lucrative position to be in right now. (In addition to the business possibly being attractive to people just wanting to provide a useful and honest service for a fair price.) * There seem to have long been referral kickbacks by some consumer VPN services, which I assume is the cause of some of the huge amounts of noise on the Web and such about them (e.g., search hits on some non-VPN topics, such as some home theatre search terms, overwhelmed by SEO articles, the purpose of which is to then herd the reader towards particular VPN services with a kickback). Even some endorsements by organizations might essentially be more about revenue than about merits. * I speculate that it doesn't help if one of the main historical uses of consumer VPNs has been for activity that would be considered copyright-violating in the US (e.g., unauthorized trading of video files, or circumventing region restrictions). Without making any moral judgments, I think it's fair to say that constitutes "conscious rule-breaking" for some, so I wouldn't be surprised if there's an disproportionate culture of rule-breaking around the whole space.
- raxxorrax 6y agoThe hypothetical culture of rule-breaking might not be convinced by a culture of rule-breaking surveillance. Seriously, I think government has gone to far with surveillance and that just means that I want to minimize my data collection on a domestic level.
- miniyarov 6y agoPublic VPN services should not be trusted blindly. Online anonymity is very hard. However, you can still create your own VPN server on cloud providers for at least have some privacy while you are on an untrusted network. Because of this reason, I created https://zudvpn.com https://zudvpn.com - It is a free and open-source mobile application that's used to deploy a private VPN server on major Cloud Providers! Github repo: https://github.com/zudvpn/ZudVPN https://github.com/zudvpn/ZudVPN