11 ms·

TunnelBear VPN app

52 points by plg 13y ago

jmspring 13y ago
Curious what logs and other personal information is kept on their servers. Haven't read through the blogs yet, but one thing a number of people consider when using a VPN service like this is the type of information that the provider keeps.
- MikeKusold 13y ago
  They claim that they keep no logs. http://help.tunnelbear.com/customer/portal/articles/1469449-information-on-logging-encryption-and-legal-stuff http://help.tunnelbear.com/customer/portal/articles/1469449-...
  - jmspring 13y ago
    Thanks, I had missed the FAQ while browsing the site on a mobile browser.
  - svintus 13y ago
    Yes this is correct. I am sorry that this is not made more apparent on our site.
    - intopieces 13y ago
      Hi Ivan, I wonder how it is possible that you keep no logs of customer IP addresses. It seems that, from a technical standpoint, you must log some IPs for troubleshooting connection issues and being sure that your system is not being used for nefarious purposes (i.e., ones that cause harm to your own system, not necessarily copyright infringement or spam). Furthermore, wouldn't you need to log IPs to track how much data one user transfers? Or even to determine who has an account and who doesn't? This data must reside somewhere on your system.
sairamkunala 13y ago
This was featured 2 years ago. http://hola.org/ http://hola.org/ is an easier alternative for web browsing.
- Cless 13y ago
  Note that you can't use hola for anything except the browsers it supports. (As far as I know.) So it's good if you want privacy only in the browser.
dexcs 13y ago
I would like to see this kind of software open source.... Most of the VPN Clients are to complicated...
- azdle 13y ago
  It's not quite as "on-off switch", but: http://www.tinc-vpn.org/ http://www.tinc-vpn.org/
- dewey 13y ago
  http://www.sparklabs.com/viscosity/ http://www.sparklabs.com/viscosity/ is also pretty simple.
impostervt 13y ago
Would love to see a bitcoin purchase option.
- eps 13y ago
  Yes, and please add an option to pay in bacon while you are at it.
  - svintus 13y ago
    We don't currently accept BTC, but you can pay for TunnelBear with honey. Contact us for our mailing address. (I am quite serious, we've actually received some delicious organic honey in the mail a couple of months ago). We wouldn't mind accepting bacon, but you will have to make the payment in person, I am afraid bacon would spoil during shipping.
rafaelm 13y ago
I want to thank the Tunnelbear guys, they've made their service free for everyone in Venezuela during the protests, to avoid government internet censorship (which is about to get worse since they are now meeting with the ISPs to implement more strict website filtering). I know they cannot offer this indefinitely but I want to thank them for their help.
- svintus 13y ago
  Thank you for your kind words! We are doing our best to stay on top of the situation, despite the government's attempts to block us. If you read this and tunnelbear.com is blocked for you, try tuneloso.com. It's a static mirror we've put up on S3, it has not been blocked yet, to the best of our knowledge.
Nk26 13y ago
Tried them about a year ago, Service was pretty slow. Never heard from CS after 3 attempts. Ended up needing to go through PayPal to get my money back. Private internet access has been my goto ever since.
- z92 13y ago
  Now I use DigitalOcean's $5/month box running CentOS.
  - ctlaltdefeat 13y ago
    Is the 1TB of data transfer enough for you?
  - popotamonga 13y ago
    Is there a 1-click deploy for a VPN on DigitalOcean that just works? SSTP prefered.
    - shubb 13y ago
      I'm interested in any howto for setting up a VPN server - the ones I found online usually assume you want to VPN into a buisness network, not channel access to the internet. For most things though, you can just use ssh, no setup on the server required. You just need putty, or another ssh client on your local computer. Nice guide for putty here: http://www.bestvpnservice.com/blog/how-to-setup-putty-for-ssh-vpn/ http://www.bestvpnservice.com/blog/how-to-setup-putty-for-ss... For command line ssh clients, things are much easier. Just go: ssh yourhost.com -D 8080 and then set up firefox to use a 'socks proxy' at localhost:8080, like the firefox part of that putty guide.
ssully 13y ago
Seems really cool and easy to use. I love how it's as simple as an on/off switch. Still though I would like to know more about what is actually going on. As others have said, being open source would be neat.
jerguismi 13y ago
I have been using https://mullvad.net/en/ https://mullvad.net/en/ for some time. It can also be paid with bitcoin. I don't see what's so special about tunnelbear, except better branding. VPN provider market has been quite flooded for some time.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
thejerz 13y ago
I'll be sticking with iPredator, and here's why: I don't care what my VPN client looks like -- I care about how secure it is. I have immense trust for Peter Sunde & Friends. They are not in this business to Get Rich Quick™. They are in it for deeply held moral, social reasons; reasons, so deeply held, they have put their own personal safety and freedom at risk. I feel very safe knowing they will NEVER comply with NSA, Interpol, etc., and that they are always one step ahead of BigBrother. I'm sure the Tunnel Bear people are cool and all, but no one can touch the Pirate Bay team. End of conversation.
- intslack 13y ago
  Despite their best intentions, cooperation on part of the service provider might not be needed: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/03/how_the_nsa_exp.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/03/how_the_nsa_e... http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/jul/31/nsa-xkeyscore-program-full-presentation http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/jul/31/nsa... (page 17)
- svintus 13y ago
  Hi, I'm Ivan Sergeyenko, also known as iBear. I am one of the engineers on the TunnelBear team. We all hold deep respect for Peter Sunde and his team. iPredator is definitely one of the most trustworthy VPN services out there. Our goal, however, is different. We aim to bring VPN/privacy protection to people who have never heard of VPN (notice that we don't have "VPN" anywhere on our site, except for in a quote from TNW and in the help section). Despite there being 100's (if not 1000's) of VPN services out there, very few of them, sadly, care about the non-tech-savvy audience.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - ris 13y ago
    "We aim to bring VPN/privacy protection to people who have never heard of VPN" Will such people understand the subtle ways in which using a VPN will make your communications less secure, though?
fenesiistvan 13y ago
Is there any VPN client API/SDK/lib which can be easily embedded in apps? (C++/Java/other?). Something with a free plan would be even better
TrainedMonkey 13y ago
Is this openvpn based solution? I am looking for something that could bypass bluecoat...
- svintus 13y ago
  Our PC/Mac/Android clients are using OpenVPN.
bitsteak 13y ago
Why anyone would voluntarily MITM their own data and hand ALL of it over to a single company (and a single point of failure) is totally beyond me. It's a market failure that services like these continue to exist.
- dmix 13y ago
  A single point of failure...such as sending unencrypted traffic to an ISP? The difference is I can buy a VPN with BTC, not be required to provide details of my identity, and make 99% of the traffic out of my machine encrypted (which prevents significant amount of local MITM attacks, for ex at coffeeshops).
borski 13y ago
We built a really simple one-click solution for building this that walks you through how to do it, without having to trust an outside party with your web traffic: https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com/vpn https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com/vpn
raingrove 13y ago
SSH doesn't work over Tunnelbear. That's really a deal breaker.
- agf 13y ago
  Pretty sure that's not true. I believe I've used SSH over TunnelBear, and this page specifically calls out SSH as supported: http://help.tunnelbear.com/customer/portal/articles/1470869-what-applications-work-with-tunnelbear- http://help.tunnelbear.com/customer/portal/articles/1470869-...
  - naland 13y ago
    what I can't bear right now is their help web pages, bad responding to zoom and cut right display... brr. Is 'care about the non-tech-savvy audience' too ? or bearing down on them.
- paulgb 13y ago
  I've been using Tunnelbear for several months and never had a problem with SSH. Just SSHed to a couple servers to verify and had no problem.
thisiswrong 13y ago
> " All you have to do is turn the knob to “ON” and you are protected. " The Wall Street Journal. Haha - No thanks. The fact that TunnelBear rely on reviews from the MSM, who are gvt mouthpieces defending the NSA spying through sneaky wording techniques, this just puts me off. I mean come-on, they're getting Yahoo to vouch for them? With the amount of hacks Yahoo have had recently! Yahoo didn't even use SSL between their severs for christ's sakes... and not to mention the NSA are all over their users' data! I like the idea, and the interface is attractive. But only a solid review from the likes of TorrentFreak (or a similar 'forward-thinking' media outlet) would reassure me enough. Does TunnelBear even accept cryptocurrency?
evertonfuller 13y ago
How do you guys fund this?

52 points by plg 13y ago

Curious what logs and other personal information is kept on their servers. Haven't read through the blogs yet, but one thing a number of people consider when using a VPN service like this is the type of information that the provider keeps.

MikeKusold 13y ago
They claim that they keep no logs. http://help.tunnelbear.com/customer/portal/articles/1469449-information-on-logging-encryption-and-legal-stuff http://help.tunnelbear.com/customer/portal/articles/1469449-...
- jmspring 13y ago
  Thanks, I had missed the FAQ while browsing the site on a mobile browser.
- svintus 13y ago
  Yes this is correct. I am sorry that this is not made more apparent on our site.
  - intopieces 13y ago
    Hi Ivan, I wonder how it is possible that you keep no logs of customer IP addresses. It seems that, from a technical standpoint, you must log some IPs for troubleshooting connection issues and being sure that your system is not being used for nefarious purposes (i.e., ones that cause harm to your own system, not necessarily copyright infringement or spam). Furthermore, wouldn't you need to log IPs to track how much data one user transfers? Or even to determine who has an account and who doesn't? This data must reside somewhere on your system.

sairamkunala 13y ago

This was featured 2 years ago. http://hola.org/ http://hola.org/ is an easier alternative for web browsing.

Cless 13y ago
Note that you can't use hola for anything except the browsers it supports. (As far as I know.) So it's good if you want privacy only in the browser.

dexcs 13y ago

I would like to see this kind of software open source.... Most of the VPN Clients are to complicated...

azdle 13y ago
It's not quite as "on-off switch", but: http://www.tinc-vpn.org/ http://www.tinc-vpn.org/
dewey 13y ago
http://www.sparklabs.com/viscosity/ http://www.sparklabs.com/viscosity/ is also pretty simple.

impostervt 13y ago

Would love to see a bitcoin purchase option.

eps 13y ago
Yes, and please add an option to pay in bacon while you are at it.
- svintus 13y ago
  We don't currently accept BTC, but you can pay for TunnelBear with honey. Contact us for our mailing address. (I am quite serious, we've actually received some delicious organic honey in the mail a couple of months ago). We wouldn't mind accepting bacon, but you will have to make the payment in person, I am afraid bacon would spoil during shipping.

rafaelm 13y ago

I want to thank the Tunnelbear guys, they've made their service free for everyone in Venezuela during the protests, to avoid government internet censorship (which is about to get worse since they are now meeting with the ISPs to implement more strict website filtering). I know they cannot offer this indefinitely but I want to thank them for their help.

svintus 13y ago
Thank you for your kind words! We are doing our best to stay on top of the situation, despite the government's attempts to block us. If you read this and tunnelbear.com is blocked for you, try tuneloso.com. It's a static mirror we've put up on S3, it has not been blocked yet, to the best of our knowledge.

Nk26 13y ago

Tried them about a year ago, Service was pretty slow. Never heard from CS after 3 attempts. Ended up needing to go through PayPal to get my money back. Private internet access has been my goto ever since.

z92 13y ago
Now I use DigitalOcean's $5/month box running CentOS.
- ctlaltdefeat 13y ago
  Is the 1TB of data transfer enough for you?
- popotamonga 13y ago
  Is there a 1-click deploy for a VPN on DigitalOcean that just works? SSTP prefered.
  - shubb 13y ago
    I'm interested in any howto for setting up a VPN server - the ones I found online usually assume you want to VPN into a buisness network, not channel access to the internet. For most things though, you can just use ssh, no setup on the server required. You just need putty, or another ssh client on your local computer. Nice guide for putty here: http://www.bestvpnservice.com/blog/how-to-setup-putty-for-ssh-vpn/ http://www.bestvpnservice.com/blog/how-to-setup-putty-for-ss... For command line ssh clients, things are much easier. Just go: ssh yourhost.com -D 8080 and then set up firefox to use a 'socks proxy' at localhost:8080, like the firefox part of that putty guide.

ssully 13y ago

Seems really cool and easy to use. I love how it's as simple as an on/off switch. Still though I would like to know more about what is actually going on. As others have said, being open source would be neat.

jerguismi 13y ago

I have been using https://mullvad.net/en/ https://mullvad.net/en/ for some time. It can also be paid with bitcoin. I don't see what's so special about tunnelbear, except better branding. VPN provider market has been quite flooded for some time.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

thejerz 13y ago

I'll be sticking with iPredator, and here's why: I don't care what my VPN client looks like -- I care about how secure it is. I have immense trust for Peter Sunde & Friends. They are not in this business to Get Rich Quick™. They are in it for deeply held moral, social reasons; reasons, so deeply held, they have put their own personal safety and freedom at risk. I feel very safe knowing they will NEVER comply with NSA, Interpol, etc., and that they are always one step ahead of BigBrother. I'm sure the Tunnel Bear people are cool and all, but no one can touch the Pirate Bay team. End of conversation.

intslack 13y ago
Despite their best intentions, cooperation on part of the service provider might not be needed: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/03/how_the_nsa_exp.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/03/how_the_nsa_e... http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/jul/31/nsa-xkeyscore-program-full-presentation http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/jul/31/nsa... (page 17)
svintus 13y ago
Hi, I'm Ivan Sergeyenko, also known as iBear. I am one of the engineers on the TunnelBear team. We all hold deep respect for Peter Sunde and his team. iPredator is definitely one of the most trustworthy VPN services out there. Our goal, however, is different. We aim to bring VPN/privacy protection to people who have never heard of VPN (notice that we don't have "VPN" anywhere on our site, except for in a quote from TNW and in the help section). Despite there being 100's (if not 1000's) of VPN services out there, very few of them, sadly, care about the non-tech-savvy audience.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- ris 13y ago
  "We aim to bring VPN/privacy protection to people who have never heard of VPN" Will such people understand the subtle ways in which using a VPN will make your communications less secure, though?

fenesiistvan 13y ago

Is there any VPN client API/SDK/lib which can be easily embedded in apps? (C++/Java/other?). Something with a free plan would be even better

TrainedMonkey 13y ago

Is this openvpn based solution? I am looking for something that could bypass bluecoat...

svintus 13y ago
Our PC/Mac/Android clients are using OpenVPN.

bitsteak 13y ago

Why anyone would voluntarily MITM their own data and hand ALL of it over to a single company (and a single point of failure) is totally beyond me. It's a market failure that services like these continue to exist.

dmix 13y ago
A single point of failure...such as sending unencrypted traffic to an ISP? The difference is I can buy a VPN with BTC, not be required to provide details of my identity, and make 99% of the traffic out of my machine encrypted (which prevents significant amount of local MITM attacks, for ex at coffeeshops).

borski 13y ago

We built a really simple one-click solution for building this that walks you through how to do it, without having to trust an outside party with your web traffic: https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com/vpn https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com/vpn

raingrove 13y ago

SSH doesn't work over Tunnelbear. That's really a deal breaker.

agf 13y ago
Pretty sure that's not true. I believe I've used SSH over TunnelBear, and this page specifically calls out SSH as supported: http://help.tunnelbear.com/customer/portal/articles/1470869-what-applications-work-with-tunnelbear- http://help.tunnelbear.com/customer/portal/articles/1470869-...
- naland 13y ago
  what I can't bear right now is their help web pages, bad responding to zoom and cut right display... brr. Is 'care about the non-tech-savvy audience' too ? or bearing down on them.
paulgb 13y ago
I've been using Tunnelbear for several months and never had a problem with SSH. Just SSHed to a couple servers to verify and had no problem.

thisiswrong 13y ago

> " All you have to do is turn the knob to “ON” and you are protected. " The Wall Street Journal. Haha - No thanks. The fact that TunnelBear rely on reviews from the MSM, who are gvt mouthpieces defending the NSA spying through sneaky wording techniques, this just puts me off. I mean come-on, they're getting Yahoo to vouch for them? With the amount of hacks Yahoo have had recently! Yahoo didn't even use SSL between their severs for christ's sakes... and not to mention the NSA are all over their users' data! I like the idea, and the interface is attractive. But only a solid review from the likes of TorrentFreak (or a similar 'forward-thinking' media outlet) would reassure me enough. Does TunnelBear even accept cryptocurrency?

evertonfuller 13y ago

How do you guys fund this?