Recently came across this blog which stated that the VPN industry is growing at a faster pace. No doubt there are so many players in the market be it big or small, all are working to grasp the niche. It is quite astonishing to me how this industry has grown so significantly.
The details are here in the blog: https://www.vpnranks.com/how-a-12-billion-vpn-industry-grew-to-36-billion-in-10-years/
Share your views people, how many of us here use a VPN and which one is the best of all?
Good, I hope theyâre forecast is correct. Almost everyone should be using VPN.
With the significant caveat that the VPN industry is, unfortunately, something of a lemon market at present.
Itâs not pretty (PDF); and, while Iâm sure somewhat different moles have popped up since that report was assembled, it isnât clear that the overall trajectory is positive(though Facebookâs pet VPN caught a ban which is certainly a plus).
Itâs a real pity. You canât, obviously, remove the element of risk in adding a man in the middle(though finding one more trustworthy than your ISP, especially mobile, is a lower bar); but, despite there being a number of VPN protocol options, âVPNâ has become almost synonymous with âquite possibly dodgy app/service bundleâ.
Iâm not sure if this was cemented during a period when OS-provided support was mostly trash; or because getting the user to configure it is a customer support headache; but itâs not a plus.
Agreed. I wouldnât advise just installing the first VPN one comes across. There are only a few I trust. The past year Iâve been using VyprVPN by Golden Frog both because theyâre up front about what they will and wonât log and how long they retain it, theyâre based in Switzerland which has relatively strong privacy laws, and theyâre active in lobbying against authoritarian spying.
https://www.goldenfrog.com/about-us
That said, no service is without drawbacks. Here is a more critical review of their serviceâŚ
Everyone VPN shopping should read reviews just as they would when buying physical goods on Amazon, and VPN lab is a good place to start.
I personally discourage using free VPNs unless one has no other options, as they tend to be less accountable.
Another option is using Tor, which has its own pros and consâŚ
Ultimately, I recommend using something to mask you traffic even if you live in a comparatively less authoritarian country, because ISPs are simply not trustworthy.
Iâm definitely in favor of the tool; just not the state of the market.
The other issue (seems to arise particularly with Tor) is arrangements that just beg you to use the mechanism in a deeply counterproductive way:
The cute little rPi Tor hotspots, say. A fun project; and they do work; but the trick with Tor is that its design provides reasonably strong protection against traffic analysis by intermediate parties; but cannot(and doesnât claim to) protect you from analysis of exit traffic by whoever is running the Tor endpoint; which makes it an abjectly terrible idea to allow traffic that contains useful plaintext or leaks identity or origin IP information to pass.
Unfortunately thatâs a long list of common software; so a system for naively tunneling everything that a given device feels like chatting about when it finds an AP is very, very, likely to go badly. The actually-safe configuration is rather more limiting and pesky to set up; but on the plus side it isnât automatically self-defeating.
Well, Tor was originally developed to allow parties with a certain level of mutual trust, specifically the US intel community, to communicate sub-rosa. It wasnât ever really intended to allow unilateral anonymity.
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