Cloudflare themselves call it a VPN.
If ControlD offers something similar then that would also be a VPN. A DNS resolver isn’t going to change your IP address.
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Right.
If you read my comment again: I said I don’t think so.
What it may or may not be technically is another question.
Truth is, you should use non-recommended services very cautiously.
Why is Proton free not enough ?
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I don’t think Warp should be recommended:
- it is proprietary client
- it gives Cloudflare an unprecedented level of access to communications since many websites are also behind CF
- it doesn’t actually promote any privacy claims and still unclear if they do share real IP with enterprise customers
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Honestly, I haven’t even mentioned it to them. I used it in the past and the speeds were unbearably slow. I didn’t want them to have a bad experience with VPNs or with Proton, so I figured it’d be better to pick a more affordable paid service. However, that was long ago so maybe things are better now. I think I might try ProtonVPN’s free plan for them and see if it’s reasonably usable on a day-to-day basis.
Another issue is lack of support for certain P2P protocols such as BitTorrent. I understand why Proton would block that for their free users, but one of the friends I’m helping out are also aiming to use decentralized protocols such as BitTorrent, so a paid VPN is probably necessary. I’ll try to follow up on other suggestions to find a discount for Windscribe or AirVPN, but no luck so far.
I just tried it and had over 120Mbps.
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To be fair it also depends on how fast your internet is in the first place. That said, their free plan is definitely usable.
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Stack Social usually have deals on Windscribe VPN.
You can torrent using ProtonVPN, but P2P isn’t officially supported.
The speed is fine IMO.
The truth is that anything below Mullvad price will probably come at ANOTHER cost…Maybe a bad connection, an insecure app, or selling your data.
At the MINIMUM, consider that anything not open-source OR non well-known for it’s respect of privacy, will be like using a spying ISP.
If you are really low on budget, create new Proton account every month and use the 1$/1st month promo.
Note that doing so probably violates their Tos, so be careful.
You could also set up a Google cloud server (3month free) and use it with a VPN client for things like BitTorrent, and daily drive with Proton.
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I have Proton Unlimited subscription for the same monthly price as Mullvad, 5 euros. Mullvad, IVPN, and Proton VPN are highly profitable, that’s why Mullvad had this 5 euro per month price for over a decade without needing to raise it.
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I highly doubt they are “highly profitable”. Mullvad probably had economies of scale that equaled inflation, just my best guess. Mullvad (unlike some competitors) employs quite a lot of engineers and are very active in censorship circumvention AND surveillance avoidance. Being focused on those two goals in parallel is highly commendable, but requires a lot of ressources.
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How did you get this?
IIRC that is the temporary discounted student price
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There are several projects that (ab)use the DNS question / answer mechanism to hide client IPs. It isn’t a fool-proof solution, but works for most HTTP and HTTPS (1 & 2) traffic. Limited to TCP but is relatively easier to build. There exist other more advanced implementations that work for all TCP and UDP traffic, too (at this point, you’re building a CDN)!
If you’re technical enough, here’s a project I wrote (for anti-censorship purposes), which you can host on fly.io out of the box, that does the relatively easier thing (which is also what ControlD does) discussed above: GitHub - celzero/midway: A rudimentary middleware for port 80 and port 443 over tcp
Though, as you may suspect, this solution shouldn’t be considered as a replacement for a public VPN (like Mullvad / Proton / iVPN etc), but as an anti-censorship measure, it is quite potent.
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Very interesting thanks for sharing.
Public VPNs are widely thought to be profitable ventures (especially for those that can consolidate lead with slick marketing) with ~60%+ profit margins. Some analysts project Public VPN industry’s CAGR (compound growth rate) at ~23% (7x growth in the next 10 years).
Ex: https://medium.com/@kolpolok/pros-and-cons-of-vpn-business-72db86b20325 (mirror).
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I’m not too sure what you mean. Are you saying that Proton only advertises that BitTorrent (or P2P in general) is only available on their paid plans, but that they don’t actually block it on their free plan?
Windscribe is having a sale of $39/year ($3.25/month) if you can pay for a year:
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There is no such thing as a free lunch.
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Well it’s similar to proton, they have a free and a paid version.