Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters

Long ago, in the era of Firesheep and exploding prevalence of coffee-shop Wi-Fi, consumer VPN services were definitely valuable.

But that was long ago. Now, HTTPS is the norm. The only use cases for consumer VPNs today seem to be (1) "pretend I'm in a different geography so I can stream that show I wanted to see" and (2) "torrent with slightly greater impunity".

I live in Seattle and Mullvad VPN seems to have bought approximately all of the ad space on public transit over the past couple months. Their messaging is all about "freeing the internet" and fighting the power. It's deeply silly and, I worry, probably quite good at attracting new customers who have no need for (or understanding of) VPNs whatsoever.

Also (3) work around overbroad restrictions on public Wi-Fi, which still sometimes do things like block Reddit or HN or SSH. But I guess more typical consumers than those of us here are less likely to experience those obstacles.

What about (3) "bypass government censorship"? UK and China are examples of where this is desirable. This is different from (1) because it's broader than just streaming shows and is about authoritarian rather than capitalist restrictions.

I think the general discussion is conflating censorship with age restrictions. Lumping the UK with China is very disingenuous.

The UK law is stipulating adult content can only be viewed if you are provably over 18. They are putting all of that responsibility onto the websites/platforms to enforce that.

If a child goes to a shop and tries to buy a pornographic magazine and they are denied, is that censorship?

If a child tries to see an 18 film at the Cinema and is denied, is that censorship?

The fact is both of these were freely and easily done on the Internet as most websites do not verify a users age.

I do not like the online safety act as it is, but it is not "censorship".

Apparently, weaklings censor, so fighting them doesn't raise above the silly level

(3) The fare aggregator that sold you a ticket to visit BFE conveniently also geoblock that very place.

Do you feel safer now?

What about a malicious DNS (on a public spoofed or hacked WiFi) that forwards you to a lookalike domain? Unfortunately many times public WiFi doesn’t work with Google’s or Cloudflare’s DNS servers (I think the Deutsche Bahn’s WiFi was such a case, if I remember correctly, but I know I came across a few on the last few years while traveling). I don’t think there’s anything protecting against that when you’re using a browser.

Sometimes circumstances force one to connect to a public WiFi (e.g. airports, where WiFi is always super dodgy).

That assumes that the user isn't connecting to a hotspot he doesn't know is compromised.

HSTS solves this to some extent. If you've visited the domain in the past (or the site operator submitted to the HSTS preload list), a different certificate presented would be flagged by your browser.

I don't think a malicous DNS Server can redirect your request to a domain that does not result in a certificate warning when using HTTPS.

With browsers adopting DoH, a public WiFi should not be able to interfere with DNS much.

Your better websites use "HSTS Preloading" to ensure users always get sent to the https version of the site - in which case even if the attacker redirected the DNS resolution, you'd just get an SSL error as the attacker wouldn't have a valid certificate.

Of course, an astonishing number of (even important, high-profile) websites don't bother with HSTS preloading ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What about all the websites that either shut down or fully blocked the UK? Is that censorship?

Times Square at one point was practically half full of Mullvad ads. I already distrusted it but the sheer amount of money they spent to do that made it shadier to me

Might I ask, what made you distrust them prior to that?

Not a different certificate, but one signed by an untrusted authority. HSTS won't let you bypass it.

There used to be a Firefox addon that could warn you if the actual certificate changed, but it died with manifest addons.

The way I see it there's four use cases:

- protecting your privacy from your local ISP, WiFi, school, government etc

- protecting your privacy from some forms of online tracking

- circumventing censorship

- circumventing geographical restrictions

If you combine masking of your IP address with a web browser that protects you from various types of browser-based fingerprinting, you are more in control of your privacy online. You get to decide, to a greater extent, who you share very personal information with. That doesn't seem very silly.

(disclosure: I'm one of the deeply silly cofounders of Mullvad)

Yup, when you're not using a VPN, even with encrypted DNS and HTTPS, you're still sending hostnames (e.g. wikileaks.org) over plaintext in TLS SNI for every HTTPS connection. I believe most firewall appliances now even prefer to use SNI for deep-packet-inspection since it's so reliable.

what constitutes just the right amount of advertising to make it not shady to you?

I feel like other VPNs sponsoring YouTubers or others to talk wonders about them while not really using their product makes me trust them less, especially if they are based in some opaque jurisdiction like NordVPN (Panama) or ExpressVPN (British Virgin Islands) among others

It isn't too useful nowadays, is it? With most websites' certificates being from Let's Encrypt or similar CAs automated via ACME and up to 90-day certs; and this getting reduced in the future to only 47 days. Every month you'd need to accept any website's new certificate.

Also, does HSTS have something to do with the authority? AFAIK it only forces the browser to use HTTPS and never plain HTTP for that domain, but if you switch from a legit Let's Encrypt to a legit ZeroSSL cert, HSTS won't care about it; only the browser if you have a not-trusted certificate from another CA (or self-signed).

Hi! Thanks for your deeply non-silly reply; it's nice to (virtually) meet a cofounder.

If you have time, I'd love to hear your thoughts on Mullvad's campaign here in Seattle.

For what it's worth, I suppose my perspective boils down to: the first three issues aren't issues here in town, or can be addressed in more direct ways (we have a wide choice of providers; 1st party browsers and services cover the gamut of tracking concerns; etc). Circumventing geographical restrictions is useful, but -- perhaps understandably! -- doesn't appear to be what Mullvad is advertising on the trains I ride.

Mullvad is rather principled on privacy. You can't even make a real account, you can only generate an account number that you can charge, and I assume they do some sort of clever tricks to keep themselves as blind as possible to who uses the account number. Firefox Relay is also just whitelabeled Mullvad, so they have Mozilla's stamp of approval.

Of the big VPNs, the only one's that have ever felt shady to me are NordVPN and Private Internet Access. NordVPN because of the sheer amount of false advertising they pay YouTubers to do, and Private Internet Access because of how cheap they are and how poorly they maintain their infrastructure. Their .ovpn generated files haven't worked for 2+ years now because they include certificates with malformed revocation dates, and refuse to pay the certificate authority to update them.

There's a niche fifth reason. Roaming between upstreams while not having open TCP connections drop. I use multiple ISP's and on mullvad I can swap which wifi/ethernet I'm on and all my connections stay up since wireguard is stateless.

>Mullvad is rather principled on privacy. You can't even make a real account, you can only generate an account number that you can charge, and I assume they do some sort of clever tricks to keep themselves as blind as possible to who uses the account number. Firefox Relay is also just whitelabeled Mullvad, so they have Mozilla's stamp of approval.

Yep. And I use the VPN connection (and/or TOR) to re-up my Mullvad VPN when I run low.

Mostly I use the VPN to protect my privacy when posting with a throwaway account here and/or other sites. And of course for torrenting.

What's more, I had some monero (XMR) left over from some other transactions, so I use that to pay for the VPN connection.

As such, unless Mullvad is storing the IP address from which I connect (and they claim they do not), it would be difficult (but not impossible -- I don't always use VPN when posting anonymously/throwaway -- that isn't a challenge!) to identify me through my VPN connections.

At this point I'm reminded of Tom Scott's honest VPN advertisement, contrasting how VPNs are advertised (on YouTube, at least) with the main features that they really provide.

* https://youtube.com/watch?v=WVDQEoe6ZWY

Good point. That is indeed a distinct fifth reason.

Here's a sixth one: for some users it can improve latency, bandwidth and/or even cost.

latency/bandwidth: because of weird peering agreements between ISPs / ASes.

cost: there are networks where consumers pay per MB for international traffic, but not local traffic. Consumers can sometimes establish a VPN tunnel to the local data center and get an unmetered international connection, because the data center has a different agreement with the monopolistic consumer ISP.

Sure!

Regarding tracking concerns, masking your IP address is a necessary but insufficient first step to improving your privacy online. ISPs typically don't allow their users to do that per-device in a UX-friendly way. Protecting against browser fingerprinting is something that Mullvad Browser does quite well, thanks to it being a fork of Tor Browser.

As for circumventing geo restrictions, you're absolutely right. We make an effort to get it to work, but ultimately privacy and censorship is much more of a priority for us. That's why we don't advertise it.

Finally, the campaign isn't just about getting more customers. We started Mullvad for political reasons, and now we have the resources to spread that message further. Governments around the world are warming up to the idea of mandatory device-side mass surveillance and backdooring E2E encryption. We're trying to build public opinion against that.

I’m surely happy to not live in the UK at the moment. And Indonesia of course. If I would live in one of these countries I’d be using VPN. And maybe in the (not so distant) future this is preferable in the US too.

> We're trying to build public opinion against that.

Good on you!

But to be honest; it seems that it would be in Mullvads interest if the US starts requiring “open encryption” for internet services! Then more people would feel the need for VPNs

How about a seventh: in solidarity with people who are facing censorship or oppression.

Like, if only dissidents and malcontents use a VPN (or TOR or HTTPS or E2E encrypted messaging apps) then if you want to reduce dissent, you can just round up all the VPN users and have them shot. If everyone uses VPNs for normal internet use, that becomes impractical.

>It's deeply silly

Why? In almost all countries ISPs are at the very least legally required to block websites and even surveil there customers. I trust mullvad about 100 times more than any ISP beholden to governments and profit incentive.

They also allow cash and monero payments over a onion site.

> my privacy when posting with a throwaway account here

What's the data/IP/etc retention logging situation of HN? Do they have a page on it?

Actually, no. Our goal is to make mass surveillance and censorship ineffective, not maximizing profit to our shareholders. If there was a big red button we could push that accomplishes our goal and makes Mullvad obsolete in the process, we'd push it. There's an abundance of problems to solve in the world. It'd be nice if we could figure out how to get rid of some and move on to other problems.

If you're willing to shoot people, you can just make VPNs illegal and wait 30 days.

> I'm one of the deeply silly cofounders of Mullvad

Cool.

Also funny, but it would be nice if you addressed the specific objection. Here are some of the new ads: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/advertising-that-targets-everyon... . Do you think they appeal more to consumers who are seeking "it keeps me vaguely secure", or it helps me watch Venezuelan Netflix and avoid some kinds of targeted advertising personalisation?

You forgot 'connectivity from my home ISP to my favorite online game is temporarily degraded' but yeah ;)

Advertisement targeting is a risk. Even just leaking your IP to various services introduces risks and being able to build profiles on your activities online introduces risk.

Usually the risk is you spend money you wouldn't have otherwise spend, but those profiles can also be used for future nefarious reasons. You're basically just relying on everyone running analytics to be good people, forever. Remember, anything on the internet is forever. And, even if they are, you're still relying on them having perfect security, forever. If a database breach happens and people now know everything data brokers and analytics services know... that's a problem.

IMO, nobody should browse the web without a reliable and trustworthy VPN, at all.

Thanks for running the service guys, I appreciate it

Add at least 18 US states to your examples if you consider age verification for porn to be government censorship.

> Here's a sixth one: for some users it can improve latency, bandwidth and/or even cost.

I find that using a VPN over starlink is quite a different experience than terrestrial. I can VPN through another country and the speed isn't affected nearly as much. My guess is that the route is satellite to satellite, so it is much faster.

> it would be nice if you addressed the specific objection

I'm pretty sure I did. I'll happily answer yours as well.

> Do you think they appeal more to consumers who are seeking "it keeps me vaguely secure", or it helps me watch Venezuelan Netflix and avoid some kinds of targeted advertising personalisation?

Between those two options, definitely "it keeps me vaguely secure". None of the ads you link to are intended for customers that want to circumvent geographical restrictions. We don't market to that customer segment.

>Mullvad is rather principled on privacy.

no their not. protonvpn spends money to offer free account as form of advertisment. mullvd spend money on weird billboards.

protonvpn provide free privacy even for those from 3rld world country. you can create proton email anonymousley thats also protonvpn account

protonvpn is principled on privacy.

ProtonVPN is so principled they use a company providing datamining services (Tesonet) to run their VPN.

That doesn't mean they're datamining their customers, but it is terrible optics.

Proton is great, and in many ways they're doing great stuff. But in this case I wouldn't call them principled.

In practice the UK law is covering far more than explicit porn, but rather anything even slightly taboo or that acknowledges sex. Furthermore, many adults won't hand over government ID to the Internet like that. Taking these together, you get de-facto censorship.