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Same, I made the poor judgement of subscription to Nord vpn years ago that I ended up not really using because many streaming sites blocked the vpn ips. Then I

Same, I made the poor judgement of subscription to Nord vpn years ago that I ended up not really using because many streaming sites blocked the vpn ips. Then I hear of the behavior of the company claiming they don’t take logs but they definitely take browsing logs. I felt like I was duped into a 2 or 3 year subscription upfront and didn’t really understand the product space or how to evaluate the different companies. Like are there any objective news sources to rank these services and what internet comments to trust at face value? I listened to a youtube ad in the first place, so I’m unsure what I was expecting. Mozilla gained good will over the years and I like the browser. The vpn is fairly seamless and permissive for number of devices. I understand it is a wrapper on Mullvad and we are paying a healthy overhead. Still, it is worth it because I’d trust that if the vpn service provider behaves in bad faith that Mozilla will be able to quickly respond and adopt another provider. Whereas if it were up to me I may hear of it years later and not necessarily know what service to adopt instead. My use is merely hoping to reduce tracking based on ip. I wouldn’t trust it to be subpoena proof. I’m not into pirating music anyway.

hutzlibu 3y ago
"Mozilla gained good will over the years" Actually, they rather lost a lot over the last years, with various shady things, like tracking for advertisement enabled from the browser by default (called studys). So sadly, I also would not trust them as a VPN. Way more than some random VPN service, sure, but not completely. But I also do not know of a better alternative.
- Ugohcet 3y ago
  At that point, I believe Mullvad (who is actually behind Mozilla VPN service) is more trustworthy than Mozilla themselves. And if that is true, why don't just use Mullvad directly?
  - midasuni 3y ago
    My understanding if you given money to Mozilla who then give it to mullvad All Mozilla know is the mullvad username. Mullvad don’t know the credit card details of the purchaser. To link a given vpn ip to a specific credit card would require compromising mullvad and Mozilla. (Or of course the normal way of fingerprinting which doesn’t rely on IPs) Now sure you can buy mullvad via cash, but that’s far more work. Using Mozilla as a reseller feels like one more step in the chain
- kbenson 3y ago
  Eh, only if you accept the hype and hyperbole of those that not only hold them to a standard that nobody achieves (which is fine, it gets them closer to that standard) and then use that as a reason to tell people that they should products that are far inferior by those same standards (which is stupid). I've lost track of the times a Mozilla misstep has resulted in people here saying that's the reason they're switching back to chrome, which I find frankly ridiculous. Also, the whole damn thing is open source, so it's not like they're really hiding anything, people just don't care until someone makes a stink and then all of a sudden everyone cares a lot. No browser is perfect, but Mozilla is definitely one of the better ones for anyone privacy conscious.
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    Here we are talking about trust. And a company (Mozilla) that talks a lot about trust and ideals and privacy and then sneaks in tracking by default with a innocent sounding name (studies) is simply not trustworthy to me. They are hiding bad behavior in nice sounding words. We technical folks get it and can deactivate it. Every non technical person I know, who still uses firefox does not know and has all the defaults activated, until I change it for them. So sure, they are still better than google and microsoft, where I just assume that they track everything, but that is a really low standard.
  - jeltz 3y ago
    I do not think it is hyperbole. The Cliqz thing where they just handed user browsing behavior to a third party which they had invested in is inexcusable. Google does a ot more tracking but on the flip side I trust their security more than that of some small German startup. Some of the other incidents were overblown but the Cliqz thing shows of a company culture where user data is something which can be sold to make a profit, which is essentially what they did, and not something which is vital to protect. Yes, it was many years ago now but I have no reason to think that they cleaned up their company culture.
robrtsql 3y ago
> Like are there any objective news sources to rank these services and what internet comments to trust at face value? This might be useful: https://thatoneprivacysite.xyz/ https://thatoneprivacysite.xyz/
- gregd 3y ago
  I had a look at this site and something stood out to me. The Google Docs Spreadsheet of VPN providers, hasn't been updated since 12/19/2019.
trogdor 3y ago
Why do you think NordVPN maintains browsing logs? According to them, “NordVPN does not log any of your activity online,” and the company states that PWC and Deloitte have audited and verified that claim. If you have evidence to the contrary, I am very interested in seeing it. I am also familiar with a recent police investigation where law enforcement subpoenaed NordVPN and the company replied, essentially, that they had no information connecting a particular IP address, at a specific date and time, to any specific user.
- ok_computer 3y ago
  Hi, I was mistaken. I think i confused a separate security compromised server incident and this walking back law enforcement cooperation https://www.pcmag.com/news/nordvpn-actually-we-do-comply-with-law-enforcement-data-requests https://www.pcmag.com/news/nordvpn-actually-we-do-comply-wit... They don’t keep traffic logs

hutzlibu 3y ago

"Mozilla gained good will over the years" Actually, they rather lost a lot over the last years, with various shady things, like tracking for advertisement enabled from the browser by default (called studys). So sadly, I also would not trust them as a VPN. Way more than some random VPN service, sure, but not completely. But I also do not know of a better alternative.

Ugohcet 3y ago
At that point, I believe Mullvad (who is actually behind Mozilla VPN service) is more trustworthy than Mozilla themselves. And if that is true, why don't just use Mullvad directly?
- midasuni 3y ago
  My understanding if you given money to Mozilla who then give it to mullvad All Mozilla know is the mullvad username. Mullvad don’t know the credit card details of the purchaser. To link a given vpn ip to a specific credit card would require compromising mullvad and Mozilla. (Or of course the normal way of fingerprinting which doesn’t rely on IPs) Now sure you can buy mullvad via cash, but that’s far more work. Using Mozilla as a reseller feels like one more step in the chain
kbenson 3y ago
Eh, only if you accept the hype and hyperbole of those that not only hold them to a standard that nobody achieves (which is fine, it gets them closer to that standard) and then use that as a reason to tell people that they should products that are far inferior by those same standards (which is stupid). I've lost track of the times a Mozilla misstep has resulted in people here saying that's the reason they're switching back to chrome, which I find frankly ridiculous. Also, the whole damn thing is open source, so it's not like they're really hiding anything, people just don't care until someone makes a stink and then all of a sudden everyone cares a lot. No browser is perfect, but Mozilla is definitely one of the better ones for anyone privacy conscious.
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  Here we are talking about trust. And a company (Mozilla) that talks a lot about trust and ideals and privacy and then sneaks in tracking by default with a innocent sounding name (studies) is simply not trustworthy to me. They are hiding bad behavior in nice sounding words. We technical folks get it and can deactivate it. Every non technical person I know, who still uses firefox does not know and has all the defaults activated, until I change it for them. So sure, they are still better than google and microsoft, where I just assume that they track everything, but that is a really low standard.
- jeltz 3y ago
  I do not think it is hyperbole. The Cliqz thing where they just handed user browsing behavior to a third party which they had invested in is inexcusable. Google does a ot more tracking but on the flip side I trust their security more than that of some small German startup. Some of the other incidents were overblown but the Cliqz thing shows of a company culture where user data is something which can be sold to make a profit, which is essentially what they did, and not something which is vital to protect. Yes, it was many years ago now but I have no reason to think that they cleaned up their company culture.

robrtsql 3y ago

> Like are there any objective news sources to rank these services and what internet comments to trust at face value? This might be useful: https://thatoneprivacysite.xyz/ https://thatoneprivacysite.xyz/

gregd 3y ago
I had a look at this site and something stood out to me. The Google Docs Spreadsheet of VPN providers, hasn't been updated since 12/19/2019.

trogdor 3y ago

Why do you think NordVPN maintains browsing logs? According to them, “NordVPN does not log any of your activity online,” and the company states that PWC and Deloitte have audited and verified that claim. If you have evidence to the contrary, I am very interested in seeing it. I am also familiar with a recent police investigation where law enforcement subpoenaed NordVPN and the company replied, essentially, that they had no information connecting a particular IP address, at a specific date and time, to any specific user.

ok_computer 3y ago
Hi, I was mistaken. I think i confused a separate security compromised server incident and this walking back law enforcement cooperation https://www.pcmag.com/news/nordvpn-actually-we-do-comply-with-law-enforcement-data-requests https://www.pcmag.com/news/nordvpn-actually-we-do-comply-wit... They don’t keep traffic logs