Ovpn.se Thoughts????

[Asar 2]

             i currently have a membership with them and i have to say i'm 90 percent satisfied with their service.  The only con i have with them is server locations. the quality of their servers are pretty solid and i get reasonable performance when i use their service.  i actually found out about them through this forum, i don't remember the username but i do remember him or her speaking very highly of it so naturally my curiosity took over and i bought a month.   

i'm curious to know what others think about this VPN provider, even better other folks who have memberships.  i have my own opinion of them but i feel like i need a second opinion on them or better yet i just want to start up a conversation about them, because they seem to be ticking the right boxes yet they're pretty much unknown.    

[Shiver Me Whiskers 15]

"As you can see, there are no hard drives or USB flash drives connected to the servers. As far as we know, no other VPN provider can deliver this kind of physical security."

 

That's interesting.

 

However, that is not proof that the VPN provider is not logging. They are, after all, internet connected machines... if they wanted to log, they can simply log remotely to a place that does have a HDD/SSD etc.

 

I wonder if AirVPN is using "no drives" on their servers ?

[LZ1 672]

"As you can see, there are no hard drives or USB flash drives connected to the servers. As far as we know, no other VPN provider can deliver this kind of physical security."

 

That's interesting.

 

However, that is not proof that the VPN provider is not logging. They are, after all, internet connected machines... if they wanted to log, they can simply log remotely to a place that does have a HDD/SSD etc.

 

I wonder if AirVPN is using "no drives" on their servers ?

Hello!

 

AFAIK Staff say they use RAM.

 

But I don't know what the point of such seemingly fancy measures are, when they use Facebook on their site and in connection with their product marketing.

[Asar 2]

 

"As you can see, there are no hard drives or USB flash drives connected to the servers. As far as we know, no other VPN provider can deliver this kind of physical security."

 

That's interesting.

 

However, that is not proof that the VPN provider is not logging. They are, after all, internet connected machines... if they wanted to log, they can simply log remotely to a place that does have a HDD/SSD etc.

 

I wonder if AirVPN is using "no drives" on their servers ?

Hello!

 

AFAIK Staff say they use RAM.

 

you got a point, i noticed that on their own proxy extension lol

 

But I don't know what the point of such seemingly fancy measures are, when they use Facebook on their site and in connection with their product marketing.

[LZ1 672]

You can check their policies.

 

OVPN does not log any activity from customers when connected to our VPN service. Thus, we do not know who is connected to our service, what they are doing or when they are doing it. At a bare minimum, this means that we do not store any bandwidth information for users or any timestamps for connections.

 

Writing permissions for the OpenVPN processes have been removed from the servers operating our VPN service. This prevents any user information from being logged at any time.

This is a conscious decision from our side as we take anonymity seriously and believe that privacy online is a human right.

 

If it's a human right, then why aren't they respecting the human rights of non-customers who go to their site to not be tracked/registered/analyzed/whatnot by the likes of Facebook/Google/? Likewise, once an OVPN customer disconnects, they will simply be affected by the same analytics/ad networking as non-customers. Unless OVPN can identify customers after they disconnect, in which case the whole scheme falls apart anyway.

 

Customer information

 

As our customer you will need to enter an email address and a password. We recommend our customers to provide an email as we send receipts after a payment has been made, but to be clear, providing a valid email address is not mandatory

 

Confidentiality

 

OVPN can not share information regarding where, how and when customers use OVPN - since that information does not exist. Furthermore, we do not require e-mail addresses when signing up. However, if an e-mail address is supplied, we reserve the right to use that email address for marketing purposes, such as: email (via Mailgun) and ad targeting (via Facebook).

 

I think this is a strange arrangement to say the least. Email isn't mandatory - which I think some people see as a privacy enhancement - yet they use Facebook tracking and penalize those who do use email. Maybe they should just recommend people to not use email in the first place then, as it's apparently the way to go. But at this point:

 

• Their support is outsourced to a US company. Intercom.
• Their primary payments handler is a US company. Braintree.
• Their website analytics consists of 3-4 US companies. Including Google and Facebook.
• Their email marketing uses another US company or two or three. Mailgun and EmailOctupus; the last of which runs through Amazon.

At this stage I would ask: does it really matter to be "based" in Sweden?

 

Mailgun alone has this wonderful piece, which may say something of import, who knows:

 

9.2 Routing Data. Your email messages and other items sent or received via the mail service will include information that is created by the systems and networks that are used to create and transmit the message including information such as server hostnames, IP addresses, timestamps, mail queue file identifiers, and spam filtering information (“message routing data”). You agree that Mailgun may view and use the message routing data for our general business purposes, including maintaining and improving security, improving our services, and developing products. In addition, you agree that Mailgun may disclose message routing data to third parties in aggregate statistical form, provided that Mailgun does not include any information that could be used to identify you.

 

EmailOctupus put it best really:

 

One of the biggest challenges of our growth has been dealing with a rapidly expanding database. Email marketing generates a huge amount of data. We log every view, bounce, click, spam report, open and unsubscribe for every email sent through our platform. A single campaign can easily generate over 1 million of these events.

 

I don't get it, honestly. Piwik, Google, Facebook, Adrecord & CJ, Mailgun and EmailOctopus. Why so much tracking? One would think 1 would be enough. Despite how OVPN may not be letting all customer data flow to the aforementioned companies, I think it's enough that there's doubts about exactly what goes where and when, simply due to how many ToS and other policies are employed by all the different companies when put together. It seems quite pointless to me to say you don't log and don't store anything, if you really just send it to 3rd party companies and let them do it for you, so you can earn some cash from the data (I presume that's the arrangement).

 

I must say I also wonder how they manage to deal with handling physical payments, but apparently need to outsource their support. Air Staff seemed to go with the notion that the logistics of handling physical payments would be too much work. So I wonder how they handle that. I assume it's an option that will go away once they grow bigger.

[Asar 2]

well god damn you got me thinking now lol

[Casper31 73]

well god damn you got me thinking now lol

Hello all,

If you need a second option ,have a look at mullvat.net.

No tracking ;you can pay with cash; if you send them a mail,you can do this with pgp;besides openvpn they use the promising Wireguard protocol;oh yes strong encryption;also they don`t need your mail-adress,you have to generate a random number(!) ;they have a nice security blog and alife.

There website is very basic ,but you can find easily what you looking for.

 

What they don`t have is a Forum,and that is what i miss.Well for me it could be a second option...

 

Have a good day,

 

Casper

[jean claud 45]

I was very disappointed about my ovpn.se (now com) experience that I used in parallel with Airvpn and Mullvad .

I 've never been able to install their client on linux mint. I sent them a mail and they didn't be able to resolve my problem (on windows non prob) they told me to use the CLI mode , but OVPN wasn't cohabiting with the two other VPN and want to take the all the bed . I uninstalled it from Linux and windows and I was using it time to time with my ipad .

I definitively don't like it because even if connections were reasonably fast they weren't clean (for ex. ip in Sweden and DNS in Netherlands or open ports)

They are not deeply involved in Internet freedom ( it's just a commercial company)

A very poor number of country location

Overpriced

Airvpn and Mullvad are much much much more better in all points than OVPN  which was a great frustration for me

[corrado 100]

Before deciding for AirVPN I had a look at them, too. Here is what I think: If you are truly worried about privacy and freedom, you must use GNU/Linux. You cannot trust a proprietary OS. So one of the first things I look for in a provider is their support for GNU/Linux. Ovpn.se does indeed offer guides for a number of popular distributions but these are mainly instructions for installing OpenVPN. Supposedly, their client runs only on outdated versions of Ubuntu which is a strong hint that it is rather poorly maintained (confirmed by jean claud's comment above). Worse, it is proprietary as far as I can see. I don't get it: Why would a provider not publish the source code? They are not selling software but a service. Choosing a VPN provider is about trust, transparency matters. Arguably, ovpn.se is most likely not the worst provider out there, but once you have found AirVPN: Why would you even consider choosing them? The number of locations are more limited, they are far less transparent, they are much less committed to privacy (see comments above), they are arguably overpriced. Alternatively, I can recommend Mullvad, too. Mullvad and AirVPN both offer an actively maintained open source client for GNU/Linux (no other providers I know do this). I have a subscription with both. AirVPN is slightly better in terms of reliability of servers (speed is roughly equal but I'm limited to 50mbps anyway), it has a much better website and I like the existence of a forum where issues can be openly discussed. Mullvad has the better subscription model in my opinion as it does not require an email address. The support of new protocols such as Wireguard is quite nice, too.