I see people say that NordVPN is a bad choice all the time, but I’ve never seen any credible evidence that they’re not trustworthy. Can anyone provide any sources with valid reasons to avoid their service? I only know that they had some servers hacked in 2018, but it seems as though they took that very seriously and upgraded their hardware and encryption accordingly. I’m just trying to decide if I want to start looking at alternatives, but honestly I’m pretty satisfied with my experience so far.
Personally my biggest distrust of nord comes from their ads. Most notably one where they anthromorphized a guys smart TV, Roomba and phone talking about him when he leaves the room, and others that basically totally misrepresent what a vpn does.
In short, your TV, Phone, etc… most likely share and compile information because of the ACCOUNTS they need to function. using a VPN will do NOTHING to stop google from knowing any android data, Your devices don’t hear eachother by listening to the network, which is almost all going to be encrypted protocols anyway, but by sharing accounts.
In short, I’ve always found nords comercials constantly misleading on what a VPN can and can’t protect you from, and to me it seems that’s largely so they can market them to people who don’t actually have any use for them, and worse doing it to make people feel like they are “protecting themselves” from something that they are just as vulnerable to with the vpn.
AFAIK those commercials are made by the content creators themselves and Nord just gives them a guidelines doc, right?
It’s true that VPN doesn’t do much tho it definitely used to help with IP-based tracking. Imagine if we all pooled our connections through 1 Lemmy IP then the tracker will be very confused why this one IP is coming to many different sources. It doesn’t work as much anymore because now 99% of tracking is done through javascript and it’s a long lost battle already.
I use a different VPN, but honestly, I wouldn’t use Nord only because of their ads and sponsorships. It’s kind of a lame excuse, but they wore me out with that.
Honestly, all of these VPN companies deserve a lot of hate for having some pretty deceptive advertising and fearmongering. VPNs definitely have their uses, but the average person probably doesn’t need one… Especially not for “security” purposes.
Also, how often do you want to watch a Netflix movie/show that is not available in your country?
This is the thing I don’t mind VPN companies advertising about, because yeah, they can work to get around region restrictions, and that’s a totally valid use for them that some people will appreciate. If you have a specific use case like this, by all means pay for a VPN… But if you’re just using it as a magic internet condom… I don’t think it’s worth your money.
In general the claims about security at a coffee shop or whatever are kind of bunk, and any privacy benefits are kind of overstated (especially if you don’t think you have a reason to trust the VPN provider more than your ISP). There isn’t a complete lack of truth to these claims, but I don’t think they’re true in a way that’s meaningful to the average person who isn’t tech savvy, and I think there’s often a lack of transparency about certain aspects such as the fact that technically the VPN provider can log everything anybody else would, and you have no way of knowing.
Wasn’t NordVPN that provider that said they were no log and then a hack happened and exposed that they did, in fact, retain logs of user activity? Am I mixing them up with someone else?
According to them it was one specific server somewhere and they no longer use that company. The CEO when it happened still claimed they didn’t have logs according to this https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/after-twitter-allegations-nord-vpn-discloses-breach-1.1334946
That’s happened with almost every VPN provider that has claimed to be no-log and then got a government subpoena. At that point you have 2 options: A.) Shut down, or B.) Code a technical way to capture the requested information for that user.
Sometimes they do choose to shut down and sometimes there isn’t a technically feasible way to get the information.
I don’t know why others don’t like them but I personally dislike them and Express because of false advertising.
They make it seem like a vpn protects you from everything online, from hackers, phishing attacks, viruses etc and provides absolute privacy no matter what. This is not what a vpn does.
I also wonder how they can get away with marketing themselves as a way to get around geoblocking. I don’t personally mind this part but I assume it’s a legal gray area for them so they do it until they can get away with it.
