←back to thread

Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters

(www.opentech.fund)
201 points sdsantos | 5 comments | 03 Sep 25 16:51 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
fujigawa ◴[03 Sep 25 17:28 UTC] No.45118394[source]▶
Commercial VPNs will go down as one of the greatest money-making schemes of the last decade. Outside of a few specific use cases their sales often rely on leveraging non-technical users' fear of what they don't fully understand.

I have non-technical friends and relatives that have fully bought into this and when I asked why they use a VPN I got non-specific answers like "you need it for security", "to prevent identity theft", or my personal favorite: "to protect my bank accounts".

Not a single person has said "I pay to route my traffic through an unknown intermediary to obscure its origin" or "I installed new root certificates to increase my security."

replies(16): >>45118443 #>>45118486 #>>45118558 #>>45118644 #>>45118672 #>>45118693 #>>45119064 #>>45119252 #>>45119261 #>>45119717 #>>45119817 #>>45119936 #>>45120136 #>>45120782 #>>45124630 #>>45126517 #
some-guy ◴[03 Sep 25 17:38 UTC] No.45118486[source]▶
Mine is simple: avoid my ISP complaining about torrents.
replies(4): >>45118552 #>>45118646 #>>45118933 #>>45118941 #
2OEH8eoCRo0 ◴[03 Sep 25 17:54 UTC] No.45118646[source]▶
Which provider? How do you forward ports?
replies(2): >>45118712 #>>45118724 #
timpera ◴[03 Sep 25 18:02 UTC] No.45118724[source]▶
Port forwarding is really easy with PIA's client. I had to switch to them because Mullvad doesn't offer port forwarding anymore unfortunately.
replies(1): >>45118751 #
1. leptons ◴[03 Sep 25 18:04 UTC] No.45118751[source]▶
Damn! I was thinking about switching to Mullvad from PIA, but now I guess I won't.
replies(1): >>45118919 #
2. freedomben ◴[03 Sep 25 18:22 UTC] No.45118919[source]▶
Yeah, PIA is great. You can even use regular wireguard with it if you don't want to use their client. Been a happy use for many years
replies(3): >>45119281 #>>45119659 #>>45128053 #
3. gchamonlive ◴[03 Sep 25 18:59 UTC] No.45119281[source]▶
Being able to use wg-quick to create a tunnel is also something mullvad supports, just fyi
4. leptons ◴[03 Sep 25 19:39 UTC] No.45119659[source]▶
I'm a happy PIA user for many years, but I probably won't really trust any US-based VPN with what the Republicans are going to be doing in the next couple of years. They will absolutely destroy all privacy for the "save the children" boogeyman. A VPN not based in the US is the only workaround I can see, and that's if we're even allowed to use them.
5. NoGravitas ◴[04 Sep 25 14:59 UTC] No.45128053[source]▶
Reminder: PIA is owned (was bought in 2019) by a company with ties to Israeli intelligence, and which started out producing advertising malware.

https://hackread.com/private-internet-access-pia-vpn-sold-is...