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NordVPN disables features when you turn off auto-renew
- dcormier 6y agohttps://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29#file-vpn-md https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29#file-v...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bitcharmer 6y agoAlthough not entirely false, this post is a bit too defeatist. "Don't use a VPN because they may be lying about not logging connections" is the same as saying "Don't get on an airplane because the pilot may be suicidal". I'm not going to stop using vpns nor flying on airplanes because of that.
- Nextgrid 6y agoYou typically get on an airplane because you have to travel someplace. With VPNs I fail to see a reason beyond circumventing geo-blocking.
- yoz-y 6y agoWhereas the VPN provider might do something with your data, your ISP most definitely does.
- midasuni 6y agoDoes it? I don’t recall giving A&A permission to deal with my data in any nefarious way, i’d doubt they would anyway. https://www.aa.net.uk/ https://www.aa.net.uk/
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hellcow 6y agoISPs monitor and modify your internet traffic in America (perhaps that's different in the UK?). My American ISP absolutely spies on me. So rather than accept that guarantee, I can use a VPN like Mullvad who at least promise not to do this, and whose entire business relies on keeping that promise.
- Nextgrid 6y ago> whose entire business relies on keeping that promise. That "you should not use a VPN" link someone posted elsewhere explicitly disproves that claim, saying that HideMyAss were caught breaking their privacy promises and have yet to go out of business. The prices of VPN services also don't make sense and potentially suggest something nefarious is going on (not saying Mullvad is doing this, but any VPN advertised on YouTube is very likely to do so). It's difficult to imagine that they can afford such bandwidth/hardware and the amount of support/abuse cases (remember that VPN services will attract scum as a side-effect of their privacy/anonymity claims) for such a low price.
- eptcyka 6y agoVirgin, who are the only ones who can provide decent speeds at my address most definitely spoof DNS and record traffic.
- rasguanabana 6y agoThis may be very different in countries different than yours.
- midasuni 6y agoI wasn’t making a blanket claim. Op told me my isp is bad. My isp is not bad. I’m certain that a vpn provider would be less trustworthy than my isp.
- judge2020 6y ago
- glenneroo 6y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26050877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26050877 TL;DR: My bank wouldn't let me use their online banking because I had run a Tor service sometime in the past.
- karaterobot 6y agoThis isn't a persuasive argument for not using a VPN, it's a strongly-worded reminder that using a VPN means you're trusting your VPN provider. That's a big difference.
- isoprophlex 6y agoBy now these VPN providers are like toothpaste, diapers or soft drinks: completely undifferentiated between competitors, and so only able to maintain their market share by spending loads on marketing. Of course the company with most egregious dark patterns and aggressive churn dampening wins. Thankfully a tube of toothpaste doesn't allow implementing dark patterns like this... yet.
- xxs 6y ago>doesn't allow implementing dark patterns like this. or does it? Call from the past "3D" tooth paste marketing, whitening agents, microplastics, multi-color squirts, same FUD "brush like a pro only with XXX". Those are just few (top of my head) of the levels marketing goes to attempt and sell toothpaste.
- isoprophlex 6y agoYou are right of course... the "analogue dark patterns" are as old as advertising. But there's more! since posting my comment, I've noticed Amazon dark-patterning a "monthly subscription on diapers" into a product description page. Gotta chase that sweet sweet MRR
- uzakov 6y agoI would strongly disagree for the following reasons: You can and should differentiate VPN providers. Ways to differentiate them: Have they shared logs in the past, where companies are headquartered, reputation.
- isoprophlex 6y agoFair point, agreed. I have noticed personally, however, that all people i know that have purchased a vpn subscription don't do this. They simply buy into the FUD. N=1 of course... Maybe the market size has become so large that less savvy users propel the unscrupulous companies to the top?
- 6y ago
- notRobot 6y agoHonestly, nothing holds up to Mullvad [1]. They don't even take an email address while creating accounts, and you can pay easily with Bitcoin or even with cash mailed to them. I'm not affiliated, just a very happy customer. Mullvad is also who Mozilla trusts for the Mozilla VPN [2]. You can sign up with that if you'd like Mozilla to get a cut. [1]: https://mullvad.net/ https://mullvad.net/ [2]: https://vpn.mozilla.org/ https://vpn.mozilla.org/
- soulofmischief 6y agoSeconding Mullvad. Their service cannot be beat.
- BelenusMordred 6y agoHave massive respect for all the open source code Mullvad pumps out. https://github.com/mullvad https://github.com/mullvad Don't use their service but they do really come across as one of most trustworthy out there. Have a Protonvpn account for getting around a geoblock once in a blue moon, personally don't have much use for commercial vpns.
- kevincox 6y agoIt is interesting to me that the Mozilla option is cheaper. (5 USD vs 5 EUR) Also it bugs me that there are 5 "Try" buttons on the Mozilla site before they even show you the price. To be fair it does show you the price on the credit card page after you log in but still feels a bit scummy to me. Mullvad puts it in your face above the fold.
- vmception 6y agoHow do they take bitcoin? I’ve seen various invoicing systems that completely break in Tor+JS and in all noJS environments. If they shoehorned bitpay in, its probably not tapping into the utility of having bitcoin payment options. I like paying invoices with Monero over Tor, while the merchant receives bitcoin that a third party pushed to them. I’ve been doing that for at least half a decade. But if I can’t access their invoice they just lose a customer.
- 6y ago
- LordHeini 6y agoWhy are these VPNs even a thing? The only reason i would use one is to get cheaper steam keys from brasil and for that i can get a free one. From a security standpoint it is awful because you increase the number of providers you have to trust. Apart from your ISP and the server you connect to, you got a third party involved for no reason. And VPNs can not that trustworhty as shown by the leaks of logs and what not. Maybe someone can enlighten me why these services exist and what usecase they have?
- kevincox 6y agoMostly because of their FUD marketing. Almost all of the VPN ads imply, if not outright state that accessing your bank account is unsafe without a VPN. I mean sure, if you want to sell Netflix access sure, but their security claims are way off.
- Ekaros 6y agoIf your ISP is realistic vector for your bank details, anyway you have much bigger problems. Geoblocking I see, but other stuff without knowing exactly who you get VPN from and who is your ISP is extremely murky... And I think there is very few who can make educated decision on these. And they are running their own or using tor...
- LiberatedLlama 6y agoTheir marketing is the sketchiest shit ever. Any VPN that advertises like that is dead as far as I'm concerned, particularly NordVPN. They are the worst offender; listening to a few different jackasses on youtube pitching their product and hearing each one repeat the same talking points, it's obvious the FUD comes from NordVPN themselves, telling people to say it.
- s1rech 6y agoIf you are using the network of a hotel or a train station, for instance. Assumption is that you trust that VPN provider of course.
- 6y ago
- dhdc 6y agoThe amount of astroturfing in the reddit thread is just awful. VPN hosters market in the most aggressive ways possible, probably due to the fact that its usually impossible to verify a VPN hoster's claims (without a breach), so assuming they did most of the VPN stuff right, any new users they lured in are gonna stick, at least for a while.
- database_lost 6y agoFor me, Nordvpn was much much slower than Expressvpn, and with this, its a no-brainer
- blindm 6y agoI personally never liked the whole Nord ecosystem. I tried NordPass and encountered bug after bug and had to stop using it. The software seems kind of thrown together / shoddily made just to make a quick buck. They don't nearly put in as much passion and effort as better offerings like ProtonVPN and Mullvad (no affiliation, just really love their services).
- rochak 6y agoCan confirm. I used to use ProtonVPN and it was worth every penny. I switched to NordVPN to save a few bucks and it was one of the worst decisions I have ever made. NordVPN couldn’t hold a candle to what ProtonVPN offered in terms of reliability, ease of use, transparency and support. ProtonVPN was costlier, but I think it justified its cost.
- cedricgle 6y agoIs that legal ?: because you pay the same yet you don't receive the same set of features.
- HelloNurse 6y agoThis seems the work of some market-oblivious marketing "expert": we want more autorenewals, let's figure out some stick and carrot. Trust doesn't appear to be a consideration.
- aswerty 6y agoI've used NordVPN previously and thought they were fine as a VPN service. In fact I went back to use them earlier today before seeing this submission. But yeah, on reflection, they really do go out of their way to scare/screw their customers into auto-renewing with various dark patterns. So maybe next time round I'll check out something less evil. I use a VPN for geo blocked free-to-air sport(6 nations <3) from my home country so VPNs work well for my needs. Ironically it's not even possible to pay for access to view the sport in a legitimate way since everything is region locked.
- myrandomcomment 6y agoWhich channel is streaming it? I have seen some on the BBC over the years but not every match.
- myrandomcomment 6y agoJust found it on ITV.
- aswerty 6y agoITV was what I used today, I originally planned on using Virgin Media Ireland but had login issues there.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoFrom the thread: >The secret to not dealing with crapty company practices is to avoid ones that advertise literally everywhere 24/7 nonstop around every single corner you look. This is so true it nearly qualifies as physics.
- lebaux 6y ago* This is so true it nearly qualifies as physics. I am going to (over)use this phrase from now on. Thank you.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoOh nice. I wasn't sure how it would land.
- fasicle 6y agoAudible might be the exception, I'm very happy with it.
- iFreilicht 6y agoVery crappy if you want to cancel after you forgot to get new audiobooks for a few months. You lose all your credit, and they don’t say that during the cancellation process. I gifted 6 months of payment to Audible just because they avoided to inform me about that.
- SifJar 6y agoFWIW last time I tried to cancel & still had credits, Audible did warn me I'd lose them if I cancelled (so I quickly used the credits before cancelling - thanks to their generous return policy, shouldn't be an issue if I change my mind about one of the books I chose hastily before cancelling)
- that_guy_iain 6y agoThey also have a limit on the number of active credits you can have. I luckily found this out via someone else. But yea that part of Audible sucks massively. But I wouldn't be shocked if you emailed customer support they would just give you the credits, it's Amazon after all. Also, if you sign up and the system doesn't say you're eligble for a 30 free trial, customer support will give it to you. I found that one out when my payment method wouldn't work and I cheekily asked and they hooked me up.
- jorblumesea 6y agoWhat's the argument for VPNs in 2021? Can't ISP just use metadata patterns and DPI/analytics to tell what you're up to anyways? For example if I want to hide by torrenting, it's not like VPN is going to really help that. ISP should be able to figure that out right? Or am I wrong here? edit: this is a serious question I am not trying to troll anyone here
- AlexandrB 6y agoUsing DPI an ISP might be able to figure out that you're torrenting but not what you're torrenting. In some jurisdictions this is a big improvement.
- ev1 6y agoA correct VPN will make it look like you're just sending garbage traffic to/from one destination, the outside looking in traffic pattern is completely different than a torrent directly (which is many to one + one to many)
- pdimitar 6y agoWhat do you mean by a "correct VPN" here? The traffic analysis obfuscation angle is also interesting, do you have links?
- jorblumesea 6y agoDoes it really look like garbage from the outside? My impression or understanding was that you could tease out those details (they are torrenting) but not inspect the packets directly (what are they torrenting?)
- ev1 6y agoA proper VPN will completely encapsulate your layer 7 data, so you should not be able to tease out the fact that they are torrenting - it should more or less be an opaque stream. With some protocols you can identify that they are sending VPN traffic to and from a destination, but that should be it, otherwise something has gone horribly wrong in a dangerous way.
- respli 6y agoHas anyone actually been able to reproduce this? This annoyed me enough that I cancelled my NordVPN renewal, and I never got this screen - and all the adblock/anti-malware stuff still works fine.
- robinhood 6y agoHappy Private Internet Access user, for years, and I don’t have to deal with this kind of practices.
- kilroy123 6y agoI've used them for years as well and it seems like they have really gone down hill the last year or so. The iOS app is now unusable for me. Lot's of slow or unresponsive servers now. Just heaps of issues for me.
- pault 6y agoThey were recently partially or wholly purchased. There was a big stink about it because the other company had ties to Israeli intelligence or something. I may be misremembering the details, but I'm to lazy to look it up on my phone. I recently switched from PIA to mullvad and I can definitely recommend it. It feels more transparent to me, and the client app is well done.
- kahlonel 6y agoAnd now their login page is "crashing". They knew I was coming to uncheck that crap.
- m3kw9 6y agoDid they initially say we will give you extra features if you enable auto renew? Still feels a bit slimy even if that is the case
- MikeDelta 6y agoHonestly, if you are worried about privacy and use a VPN for those reasons, then you should check out the principle of browser fingerprinting [0]. The conclusion is that servers/websites can check so many parameters of your browser that they can produce a (unique) fingerprint based on the settings and drivers on your phone. No VPN or Tor will cover that, only burner phones or pen and paper. [0] https://coveryourtracks.eff.org https://coveryourtracks.eff.org
- jonny_eh 6y agohttps://blog.mozilla.org/security/2021/01/26/supercookie-protections/ https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2021/01/26/supercookie-pro...
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y agoquestion for those privacy conscious peeps: When you use multiple browsers, with 1 (FF) used for general browsing setup to blocks fingerprintin, all cookies, js, etc... will the other (Brave, Opera) browsers leak info to web sites, when using FF ?
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoNot an expert, but: It depends if the browsers have matching characteristics. If you're not using a VPN, then they can be matched by IP. If you are, then it's down to side-channels which are a pain but usually differ by browser (and perhaps even profile) - but I do wonder if ex. font availability and possibly GPU-based fingerprints wouldn't match. Of course, if your locked-down browser blocks enough then you can solve that.
- miniyarov 6y agoRather than depending on VPN services, I use Cloud Providers because, at least, I know that my server isn't logging me for sure. However, it is hard to deploy a VPN server on cloud providers right from your phone. That's why I developed zudvpn.com Completely open-source with DNS Ad blocking features and even a terminal to connect to the server. Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zudvpn-personal-vpn-on-cloud/id1517610454 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zudvpn-personal-vpn-on-cloud/i... Github: https://github.com/zudvpn/zudvpn https://github.com/zudvpn/zudvpn
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]