u/sudo_overcoffee

hola vpn, turbo vpn, vpm proxy master, thunder vpn — all either acquired by or linked to chinese holding companies since 2019. this matters because chinese companies are legally required to cooperate with state intelligence requests. no logs policy means nothing under that jurisdiction.

free vpn business models require monetization. if it's not ads, it's your data. if it's chinese-owned, that data can go places you don't want it to go.

everyone laughed. i didn't.

the law is still there. they just need more time to lose properly. wisconsin had the sense to pull the VPN provisions before passing theirs. utah watched that, passed it anyway, got immediately sued, and now they're regrouping. that's not a defeat, that's a roadmap.

the framing is "protecting kids" and you cannot argue against that without sounding like you're arguing for something else. legislators know this. it's not incompetence, it's strategy. each failed version normalizes the next one.

your VPN won't save you when the law targets the sites instead of the users. that's the play. utah was clumsy. the next state won't be.

jurisdiction matters. audited no-logs matters. what's happening in your state matters.

hackers have been exploiting a vulnerability in sonicwall vpn devices since february. on machines that were supposedly patched.

the patch existed. it just required 6 additional manual steps nobody told IT teams about. skip them and you're still vulnerable. mfa bypassed. zero alerts. full access.

this is what happens when vpn providers rate their own critical vulnerabilities a 6.5 out of 10 while government agencies rate the same flaw a 9.1.

the difference between a vpn and a good vpn : open source code you can actually audit, transparent security reports, and a track record that holds up when things go wrong.

some providers have had zero incidents of this kind. others have a pattern. the pattern matters.

full breakdown of which providers actually hold up under scrutiny in the sidebar.

source : https://www.cybersecuritydive.com/news/patch-bypass-hackers-exploit-flaw-sonicwall/820600/

saw this spreading everywhere this week. let me save you the anxiety spiral.

what actually happened : the eu parliament research service wrote a briefing note saying vpns can bypass age verification systems. that's a research document. for meps. not a law. not a proposal. not even close. the commissioner's office literally said "absolutely no crackdown on vpns." euronews ran the fact-check may 15.

the irony : if the eu actually does tighten age verification across member states, demand for vpns goes up. not down.

the people screaming "eu is banning vpns" either didn't read the source or are farming engagement. both are annoying.

anyway. if you actually want to understand what protects you online vs what's marketing — comparison table in the sidebar.

double vpn routes your traffic through two servers instead of one. the theoretical benefit : if one server is compromised, your origin ip is still protected.

the practical reality : it doubles latency, halves speed, and the threat model that requires it applies to maybe 0.1% of users.

for most people it's a checkbox that justifies a higher price tier. depends on your threat model.

when NordVPN, Signal, Apple and Meta all say the same thing about a bill, maybe listen. "we're not spying on you" is exactly what you'd say if you were.

using a vpn doesn't automatically protect your dns queries. if your provider doesn't route dns through the tunnel, your isp sees every domain you visit. vpn or not.

this is called a dns leak. most people have no idea it's happening. most vpn apps don't tell you either.

test yours at dnsleaktest.com before assuming you're protected. the results might surprise you.

which providers handle dns correctly by default is in the sidebar.

not a survey. just three people i know who work in security and actually think about this stuff.

none of them use expressvpn. none of them use nordvpn as their primary. two of them use the same provider — which happens to be the one with the strongest privacy stack and swiss jurisdiction.

the third uses mullvad. respect.

tbh their answers aligned pretty closely with what the data shows anyway. full breakdown in the sub sidebar if you're curious.

not all vpns work in restrictive countries. most don't, actually.

the ones that do need proper obfuscation — stealth protocols that make your traffic look like regular https. without that you're getting blocked in under 24 hours.

tested which ones have real obfuscation vs which ones just put "works in china" in their marketing. big difference.

if you're moving abroad or already there, check the sidebar — it's the only comparison that covers this properly.

don't cheap out on this one. seriously.

every vpn on the planet claims "no logs". shockingly, not all of them mean it.

went through the actual audit reports. checked who conducted them, when, and what they actually tested. some "independent audits" are conducted by firms hired directly by the vpn. make of that what you will.

kape owns more vpns than most people realize. that matters when you're trusting someone with your traffic.

swedish police raided mullvad's offices in 2023. found nothing. that's the only audit that actually counts.

breakdown by provider is in the sidebar. some results are pretty damning ngl.

if you're using a free vpn right now, you should probably know how they make money.

spoiler : if you're not paying, you're the product. data brokers, ads, selling bandwidth. not a conspiracy theory, it's their business model.

there's exactly one free vpn i'd actually recommend in 2026. unlimited data, no speed cap, open source, swiss jurisdiction. yeah it exists.

full comparison of free vs paid options is pinned in the sub.

ngl the free tier alone makes it a no-brainer for most people.

So Meta installed software on all employee computers that records mouse movements, clicks, keystrokes, and screenshots. The program is called "Agent Transformation Accelerator." They chose the acronym ATA.

The reason: they need human behavior data to train AI agents. The same AI agents that will replace those employees. Meta is also laying off 8,000 people on May 20th. You see where this is going.

Employees responded by plastering flyers on vending machines and toilet paper dispensers that read: "Don't want to work at the Employee Data Extraction Factory?"

Employees at a data harvesting company are shocked to discover they are the data. Understandable.

The Meta spokesperson actually said: "our models need real examples of how people use computers — mouse movements, clicking buttons, navigating dropdowns."

Your mouse is training the bot that fires you. Let that settle for a second...

took me a while to realize that "independent reviews" recommending different vpns are often owned by the same company.

kape technologies owns expressvpn, cyberghost and pia. they previously ran a company caught distributing malware. public record.

tesonet — the company behind nordvpn — also owns surfshark now. two "competing" vpns, same parent.

when you read a comparison that ranks these highly, ask yourself who wrote it and why.

full breakdown is pinned in the sub if you want to go deeper.

ngl this rabbit hole goes pretty deep.