Over 15 free VPN apps on Google Play were found using a malicious software development kit that turned Android devices into unwitting residential proxies, likely used for cybercrime and shopping bots.
Proton is unfortunately using wireguard and openvpn protocols, both of which can be blocked with relative ease.
I used them before moving to China, and within 3 months of arriving, the service was permanently interrupted, and their support acknowledged the outage, said they can’t do anything about it, and ghosted me on the refund request since I had an annual subscription.
Mullvad is generally considered the industry leader btw., though for China there’s hardly anyone but Astrill that actually works.
Does this cover Proton’s new(ish) Stealth protocol too? They made a big deal about it being unblockable, and I (in my relatively light usage) haven’t had any problems with it.
So far so good, I have to say. I’ve got a subscription for Astrill until November, but will keep the free proton running in parallel as a long term test and then consider switching. Thanks a lot!
@viking@infosec.pub@Mikufan@ani.social
In China there are lot of home brewed solutions like openclash, passwall, vmess…etc. Traditional commercial VPNs are too expensive or suck in China.
Yeah the problem I have with those is that they are mostly run by Chinese, be it on- or offshore, and they can be compromised or extorted. And any service that accepts payment via alipay is sketchy in my books.
@viking@infosec.pub
SS on AWS is easy to be found and blocked, try Trojan, Hysteria v2, V2Ray…, I had one of V2Ray on GCP hong kong, and it lasted for a very long time.
Usually GCP and Azure has the best connection to CN.
I mean i don’t want to be in China in general. Proton worked fine last time i was there (10 years ago) and they are working on a stealth protocol to circumvent blocks of wireguard and openvpn protocols.
Initially maybe, but they use a Algorithm to detect VPNs and other holes in their filter and they will block you eventually, or they just scan your traffic regardless of a VPN (yes that’s possible, although very Costly)
Have you ever been to China? I have been lived in China for many years, actually no much complains of my very own experience so far.
And I’d been to US, Indonesia, Thailand…and the worst experience I had is in US, each time I visited there, there were gunshot incidents happened nearby, and homeless people, bad smell on subway…I am not saying all US places are like this, I only visited CA, some places are cool, but I definitely won’t go out alone after 8pm in the dark.
What makes them a “troll”? Their comment was exactly the same as yours - subjective opinion based on their claimed experiences living there. Neither of you provided any factual evidence. You sound like someone who wants to live in a bubble where anyone who disagrees with their world view is a “troll” and instantly blocked. Ironically, quite a similar outlook to the Chinese government you so despise.
Unfortunately vpn (and vps) providers are very wary about providing service that specifically target customers in china because when their service inevitable got ip-blocked by the gfw, those customers would immediately issuing chargeback, which is much more expensive to process than refund. The only providers that are still in the market for circumventing gfw now price their service accordingly (i.e. much more expensive than the usual vpn marketrate) to absorb this risk.
Mullvad doesn’t have port forwarding, otherwise its good. There are some good providers along Proton, but not many and most are not reputable, Nord for example…
No…? Do you not understand the meaning of “open source” and “independently audited by third parties”? Or maybe you just didn’t actually click through to the link I shared (what a surprise).
So, did you read the article? A rented server was breached because it didn’t belong to Nord and the company that it belonged to was at fault. I personally have had no problems with the service. They didn’t lose passwords, user data or any credit card information. At worst someone may have been able to monitor some user data and internet traffic. This also happened before I started using them (I had another VPN before that).
How is it exactly that you think large VPN’s work? Because I gotta say, no large VPN isn’t using some independent vendor. Can you prove they still do business with that vender?
I’m not well versed in the machinations of the Chinese government, but if a relatively “normie” VPN like Nord works in China… it’s probably controlled opposition (i.e. they’re logging everything to a government server.)
I mean what do you expect…
Also im pretty darn skeptical of all not Proton VPNs.
Proton is unfortunately using wireguard and openvpn protocols, both of which can be blocked with relative ease.
I used them before moving to China, and within 3 months of arriving, the service was permanently interrupted, and their support acknowledged the outage, said they can’t do anything about it, and ghosted me on the refund request since I had an annual subscription.
Mullvad is generally considered the industry leader btw., though for China there’s hardly anyone but Astrill that actually works.
Does this cover Proton’s new(ish) Stealth protocol too? They made a big deal about it being unblockable, and I (in my relatively light usage) haven’t had any problems with it.
I’m not sure, haven’t read about that yet. But I’m testing it as we speak, since they make it available in the free version as well, which is nice.
Will report back after some more testing (Lemmy isn’t blocked [yet]).
So far so good, I have to say. I’ve got a subscription for Astrill until November, but will keep the free proton running in parallel as a long term test and then consider switching. Thanks a lot!
@viking@infosec.pub @Mikufan@ani.social
In China there are lot of home brewed solutions like openclash, passwall, vmess…etc. Traditional commercial VPNs are too expensive or suck in China.
Yeah the problem I have with those is that they are mostly run by Chinese, be it on- or offshore, and they can be compromised or extorted. And any service that accepts payment via alipay is sketchy in my books.
It’s opensource, You can get a vps and run your own, very easy and the speed is enough to watch 4k youtube.
I had a shadowsocks server on a vps, was dead after a few weeks. Hosted on AWS Hong Kong (before China took over). They blacklist IPs very quickly.
@viking@infosec.pub
SS on AWS is easy to be found and blocked, try Trojan, Hysteria v2, V2Ray…, I had one of V2Ray on GCP hong kong, and it lasted for a very long time.
Usually GCP and Azure has the best connection to CN.
Interesting, thanks! My astrill subscription is still running for a couple months, but will test it as a fallback.
I mean i don’t want to be in China in general. Proton worked fine last time i was there (10 years ago) and they are working on a stealth protocol to circumvent blocks of wireguard and openvpn protocols.
For China the best option is using TOR anyway.
LOL, China is not that bad, and the GFW is easy to break through anyway.
It is one of the worst places on earth.
and the GFW is easy to break through anyway.
Initially maybe, but they use a Algorithm to detect VPNs and other holes in their filter and they will block you eventually, or they just scan your traffic regardless of a VPN (yes that’s possible, although very Costly)
And then you are fucked.
Also, fuck China.
Have you ever been to China? I have been lived in China for many years, actually no much complains of my very own experience so far.
And I’d been to US, Indonesia, Thailand…and the worst experience I had is in US, each time I visited there, there were gunshot incidents happened nearby, and homeless people, bad smell on subway…I am not saying all US places are like this, I only visited CA, some places are cool, but I definitely won’t go out alone after 8pm in the dark.
1989
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip
Thanksgiving
Pro China troll. Blocked.
What makes them a “troll”? Their comment was exactly the same as yours - subjective opinion based on their claimed experiences living there. Neither of you provided any factual evidence. You sound like someone who wants to live in a bubble where anyone who disagrees with their world view is a “troll” and instantly blocked. Ironically, quite a similar outlook to the Chinese government you so despise.
Unfortunately vpn (and vps) providers are very wary about providing service that specifically target customers in china because when their service inevitable got ip-blocked by the gfw, those customers would immediately issuing chargeback, which is much more expensive to process than refund. The only providers that are still in the market for circumventing gfw now price their service accordingly (i.e. much more expensive than the usual vpn marketrate) to absorb this risk.
Mullvad doesn’t have port forwarding, otherwise its good. There are some good providers along Proton, but not many and most are not reputable, Nord for example…
You dont know that much about VPNs then
And why is that? Because i don’t trust some companies easily?
Proton and Mullvad are the only trustworthy ones, and of those two only Proton has port forwarding.
Ah your list has already doubled
Since i need port forwarding i didn’t think of Mullvad, so yeah.
And how do you know Proton VPN isn’t exactly the same?
https://protonvpn.com/features/trustworthy
Ah, they say they are trustworthy so it is totally fine
No…? Do you not understand the meaning of “open source” and “independently audited by third parties”? Or maybe you just didn’t actually click through to the link I shared (what a surprise).
Its completely open source and based in Switzerland. Also its kinda non profit and part of CERN.
I still use Nord. Never had any problems with it.
https://cyberscoop.com/nordvpn-data-breach/
So, did you read the article? A rented server was breached because it didn’t belong to Nord and the company that it belonged to was at fault. I personally have had no problems with the service. They didn’t lose passwords, user data or any credit card information. At worst someone may have been able to monitor some user data and internet traffic. This also happened before I started using them (I had another VPN before that).
The fact that they cant protect user data and security is the only necessary fact you need to take from it.
If you defend a VPN service that runs on shitty servers without sufficient security, then you are just against reason.
How is it exactly that you think large VPN’s work? Because I gotta say, no large VPN isn’t using some independent vendor. Can you prove they still do business with that vender?
I’m not well versed in the machinations of the Chinese government, but if a relatively “normie” VPN like Nord works in China… it’s probably controlled opposition (i.e. they’re logging everything to a government server.)
You also don’t appear to be well versed in VPNs.