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  • 1 Post By GeoTommy

VPN Apps: Chinese Ownership, Secretive Companies & Weak Privacy

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  1. #1

    Join Date
    Jan 2011
    Posts
    2,254

    VPN Apps: Chinese Ownership, Secretive Companies & Weak Privacy

    Very in-depth:

    https://www.top10vpn.com/free-vpn-app-investigation/

    • Over half (52%) of customer support emails were personal accounts, ie Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo etc
    • 83% of app customer support email requests for assistance were ignored
    Furthermore, we found the majority of free VPN apps had little-to-no formal privacy protections and non-existent user support.
    Apple and Google have let down consumers by failing to properly vet these app publishers, many of whom lack any sort of credible web presence and whose app store listings are riddled with misinformation.
    Mefisto likes this.

  2. #2

    Join Date
    May 2009
    Posts
    6,181
    Quote Originally Posted by Shen.Tseng:
    Nobody is running a public service here. They need money somehow. Free VPN services are a best way to sell information to data intelligence companies who wants it the most. But when people see 'Free' they just head on to start using it ASAP without thinking it twice.
    Have you used a free VPN? Free is only a certain amount of data, after that you are throttled. SaturnVPN is free for 5 Minutes, Lantern is free for 500Mb per month. There is not a single one free forever. IMHO that is totally legit.

    I use Lantern from time to time and the free version works perfectly for me.

  3. #3

    Join Date
    Mar 2013
    Location
    Sin bin
    Posts
    1,896

    ProtonVPN Free review
    Fast, free and unlimited bandwidth – where's the catch?

    These guys are actually offering a free public VPN service (see the review), but if you can afford the few dollars a month for your privacy then consider their paid tiers which include servers in HK and help subsidize the free service tier. Even when connecting to or from overseas it's good to have a local hop.

    All companies should operate their own secure networks almost by definition, especially in an interesting place like Hong Kong, but it's not very hard for somewhat tech-savvy individuals to roll their own for personal or family use either.

    There are loads of packages and services built around OpenVPN that are fairly easy to get up and running, but over the next year the adoption of a new protocol called Wireguard can be expected to make things easier and more efficient yet, enabling even more DIY solutions.

    I would rather not install any app that I don't trust implicitly on my main mobile phone or any other devices to that matter. Using a VPN with PRC-based ownership operating under CCP's rules and attitude towards privacy? Not something I would recommend to a friend.


  4. #4

    Join Date
    Oct 2018
    Posts
    6

    I use Nord VPN and I really like it. it costs around 320hk$ per year. It has great reviews and is trustworthy in my opinion.