That's within reason though. A VPN is another ISP afterall, so they have to 'bow down' to law enforcement requests. What LEAs can get depends on how zero knowledge the VPN setup is. OVPN[0] for example has been 'court tested' and Mullvad had nothing to give to authorities[1] since they don't collect it in the first place (apart from payment metadata).
I'm not affiliated with OVPN or Mullvad, just a happy paying customer.
[0] https://www.ovpn.com/en/blog/ovpn-wins-court-order
[1] https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/4/20/mullvad-vpn-was-subjec...
Source: Our law firm (I'm from Windscribe), and first hand experience with RCMP.
https://alternativeto.net/news/2023/5/ovpn-acquired-by-pango...
Article updated 2023 https://blog.windscribe.com/the-vpn-relationship-map-2023/
I think something that is missing in the network of connections is Mozilla VPN. From what I understand, they are just a re-brand of Mullvad.
There are other providers not listed, but finding a good VPN provider is kind of like finding a good watering hole--you don't want to spread the word too widely, else bad-actors come and pollute it.
I didn't realize how many media companies own VPN companies.
If you have any other suggestions I'm more than happy to look into them and start getting them updated. This has been a passion project of my own for the past few years so I'm really grateful for any other feedback.
The reference article for the map itself with key updates & findings: https://blog.windscribe.com/the-vpn-relationship-map-2023/
The GFW is extremely sophisticated in what it blocks and how it blocks it. I have seen it block otherwise random traffic based on packet sizes, packet patterns, stream concurrency, stream duration. It will allow connections, then probe the remote endpoint and disconnect if the probe detects banned services. It will track relationships between endpoints (e.g. blocking one resulting in traffic to another). Traffic that looks off /looks off/ and the GFW will block it -- and looking off may not be the kind of encryption or protocol, but simply how many people are using it from where and for how long.
The toughest part about working around the GFW is its consistency. Its effectiveness can vary by hour, day, political wind, etc. It can vary by what network you are on or the route your traffic takes to leave the country. The GFW isn't perfect, but it is just good enough that you give up trying.
And then every once in a while you get a news report about some VPN user getting arrested, so you get that level of paranoia, too.
There is of course times like when the Two Sessions are in order and nothing worked.
~1-2 years ago: yes Currently: I don't know.
I worked for a web company and we were getting reports that our websites looked wrong/bad/messed up from within China.
So we needed an IP within China to confirm.
1st attempt: SOCKS proxy = worked, and confirmed that GFW or something was screwing up our content. (simple SSH tunnel)
2nd attempt: Wireguard = could not establish a connection to wireguard server hosted on same ISP/co-lo in China as the socks proxy.
3rd attempt: Windows RDS = worked
We ended up using RDS as that was easier for our testers to use. (despite the training I offered)
It doesn’t. At least on few tests I did
Is this a thing? I recall hearing about it around two years ago.
Something along the lines of "ISPs Give 'Netflow Data' To Third Parties, Who Sell It Without User Awareness Or Consent" [0] or "How Data Brokers Sell Access to the Backbone of the Internet" [1]
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/pbdvp3/isps_give_n...
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg84yy/data-brokers-netflow-...
If you're a VPN company, it's actually cheaper for you to own the sites and populate them with your own product than it is to pay a site for placement, especially if you own four or five VPN brands. Heck, sometimes, they don't even acquire sites. They just start them and spend money to get them to rank well.
I don't trust review sites in general (even if they don't contain paid recommendations, they still rank by which affiliate will net them more money), but I /really/ don't trust sites that cover or rank VPN providers. Personal VPNs as they are pitched to consumers are just shy of snake-oil, and almost all the content written that touts them is revenue driven.
Background: I previously helped start and worked for a VPN provider.
Say you want a new pair of headphones. You'll probably do something like this.
1. Search Google & look for forum/reddit threads talking about specific brands.
2. Look for those brands for further reviews, feedback, and price comparisons.
3. You will come across a review that has links to the "best price".
4. By clicking that link if you purchase that product then, or within 15-30 days (depends on the affiliate agreement) the affiliate will earn commission.
That's why big corps work with media companies. They make hundreds of thousands per month via affiliate commissions alone.
This induces a large amount of biases as media sites always recommend their affiliates over non-affiliates.
If there's a relationship with a vendor—especially in articles that review and compare different services—it should be obvious what that relationship is. Online tech publications and review websites are some of the worst offenders these days.
PrivateInternetAccess, a major VPN service was acquired by the same company for 95M.
A VPN review site is worth more than most VPN services it promotes due to insane $CPA they pay to these types of sites, that masquerade as "security exports" while in reality ran by marketing people.
Look at their staff: https://www.vpnmentor.com/about-us/
Every "favorite" VPN is a property they own, except for the sole NordVPN guy.
I also could not find their name on the map. It doesn't mean that it's not there, I just couldn't find them. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
The only thing I find a VPN useful for is torrenting w/o your ISP knowing. In my case, I use Surfshark for torrenting so that Comcast can't send me any of those pesky letters.
[0] https://windscribe.com/ethics (audits and other general sources over YouTube and privacy forums confirm this)
They're there, in the top-right next to Mullvad, as they're also self-funded. Seemingly connected to "Control D" as it's a DNS service with focus on privacy built by them.
Also, from their "Ethics" page:
> Windscribe is entirely self funded. We don't have any VC's breathing down our necks and telling us what to do.
I'd be more concerned about everyone else: https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com
edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/qBittorrent/comments/14bzdct/psa_qb...
There's 100% a difference between a billion dollar corporate owner vs indies. As well as the amount of spend that goes into affiliate marketing.
Also, does anyone know of a privacy conscious VPN provider that currently supports port forwarding? One of the only provider's I know of right now is ovpn.com and I cannot vouch for their privacy practices.
because the VPN concept has limitations. It doesn't matter if the favorite VPN has proof of stonewalling a court case at some point in time, any other point in time it can be undermined and you wouldn't know until its too late....
it relies purely on trust and your use case. but if your use case ever expands to something law enforcement would be interested in, the VPN concept relies on too much trust
and speedtest vpn == ipvanish
mozilla/firefox vpn == mullvad
I remember going down the rabbit hole and people online were skeptical unless the company had a proven FBI raid with no logs taken, haha.
There are several reasons to have a VPN, and the VPN logging connections is a detriment to some of those.
Reasons include:
* Evading geo-blocking to appear from one country or another
* Evading profiling by websites by laundering your public IP address with others
* Evading privacy invasion by ISPs that most definitely use data for ad/tracking purposes and definitely have logs for law enforcement
* Doing things that could attract interest from law enforcement
The last bullet is the only one affected by logging at the VPN. In this case, the question is which entity do you want to have your traffic? Someone with a reputation for privacy to uphold, or ATT?
They couldn't care less about logs, they spend their time on instagram, whatsapp, tiktok, discord...
That's basically saying that every VPN is "much less useful" as there is no 100% way of proving that it's no-log.
#1 undisputed champion for security, privacy, and anonymity is almost certainly Mullvad. Note however that Mullvad servers tend to get flagged and blocked by services pretty quickly.
Mozilla VPN (which you can turn on easily in Firefox) is just a thin shell around Mullvad. The ease of use could make it worth it for some people but you'll generally be better off just using Mullvad directly.
Windscribe (the publishers of this list) have their own VPN. I can't speak to how good it is but they of course don't list anything bad about themselves.
ProtonVPN is pretty decent (I can get 150mbps up/down on most servers) especially if you already use their email service. This chart links over to a discussion of some allegations made against Proton by a rival VPN company. The TLDR of that discussion was that those allegations don't really hold any water (which is further influenced by the fact all those allegations now run to dead links).
So my personal experience would lead me to say to use Mullvad if you need to be truly and certainly private & anonymous but to use ProtonVPN if you want to be "safe enough" but also still get access to streaming sites, etc
Source: Me, as a co-founder.
If you want dirt on us, you can find it on our blog, written by me. https://blog.windscribe.com/ukrainian-server-seizure-a-comme...
Back then they had a free tier where you could use a certain amount of data free of charge, and "create your own plan" tiers where you could mix and match various features at various prices. They might still have them now.
"SentinelLabs researchers have discovered that a Chinese APT group known as Bronze Starlight has been signing off malware with a valid certificate. This certificate is used by Ivacy VPN, and the hackers' target is the gambling industry in Southeast Asia."
Honestly, what's your use case?
I did this for years (OpenVPN then Wireguard, run from a simple Docker container), but it's increasingly a losing battle - so many services, especially in the streaming video space, just blacklist all requests from IP ranges associated with VPS providers such as AWS.
Depends on your usecases, but accessing streaming services in another country is a big one for a lot of people. I've since given up self hosting a VPN for accessing region blocked video content.
If its just to secure access when using untrusted connections while traveling, self hosting a VPN such as Wireguard at home is a nice option as you get the benefit of your own domestic IP, as well secure access to your own LAN. Good use for a Raspberry Pi or similar, total lifetime spend will likely be less than 6-8 months of a paid VPN subscription.
Also, Azerbaijanian Netflix is real hot these days.
To everyone who shrugs, and says they have nothing to hide, Would you feel comfortable wearing a T shirt in public that went into grim detail about everything you'd rather keep private, are insecure about, or might open you up to discrimination? Would you be willing to wear that to a job interview? To your bank when getting a loan?
That is unlikely in the EU. It would be a gross GDPR violation.
1. To pirate content without getting sent threat letters or being sued
2. To prevent your ISP or the wifi access point or anyone else from seeing which domains you are connecting to and selling that data
3. To prevent government surveillance or blocking
4. To bypass corporate or institutional firewall rules
5. To prevent packet sniffers from snooping on public wifi
6. To prevent your parents, spouse, or relatives from seeing your browsing habbits in router logs
7. To access geo-locked content on streaming services
