Criticism of AirVPN

[qoeisvpkby 1]

Dear AirVPN Team,

Although I am a new customer of your VPN service, I have spent so much time in your forum pages in the past couple of days. It would be a foolishness of me to evaluate the technical aspects of your service without even using it properly but I can tell a few words about the mindset behind it.

It is clear that you are not a company that aims commercial success; but aims the support of open platforms and free speech on a self-sustaining environment.

Anonymity and personal privacy based on a stabile user experience is your main concern; not a vast number of nonfunctional servers all around the world.

And I am so glad for all the things that I mentioned above.

I also understand that your resources are limited and you have to prioritise the list of to-dos.

But your service on Mac platform is not complete without a VPN client which supports SOCKS proxy. I know the fact that things are working perfectly on your side but a healthy VPN experience relies on the performances of both the server and the client.

The problem is you can not provide a fully working Mac client right now. I do not expect you to develop an official client but I believe that at least you should be able to offer a fully compatible one with your service.

Some forum users might think that this is just a detail but when it comes to security it is mandatory. Even that your own website has a dedicated page about the Tor integration. This is also the clear evidence of you are paying attention to the topic too.

Thank you for reading.

[Staff 9973]

Hello!

Thank you for your nice words, they are much appreciated.

Tunnelblick and Viscosity are OpenVPN wrappers that do not support connections of OpenVPN over socks proxies. This is not a limitation of our service. It's not even a limitation of OpenVPN for Mac OS X. It is just a limitation of the wrappers due to their programmers inability to support all OpenVPN features from the wrapper.

Mac OS X users who need to connect over OpenVPN over TOR or over a proxy just need to use OpenVPN directly (installed by themselves, or using the version installed by Tunnelblick). Or they can use Shimo as an allegedly full-featured OpenVPN GUI (only for OS X 10.7 or higher).

EDIT: please note that we did NOT test Shimo.

Therefore, while we appreciate and welcome your criticism, we wish to reply that it's unfounded: our support to Mac OS X platforms IS complete.

Kind regards

[qoeisvpkby 1]

Thank you for your explanations.

Tunnelblick and Viscosity are OpenVPN wrappers that do not support connections of OpenVPN over socks proxies. This is not a limitation of our service.

I know, that is why I wrote that things were working perfect on your side. But you do not provide a native client for Mac platform and I do not know a way of using your service without using the mentioned wrappers which do not support SOCKS proxies.

Mac OS X users who need to connect over OpenVPN over TOR or over a proxy just need to use OpenVPN directly (installed by themselves, or using the version installed by Tunnelblick).

Could you please explain this in more detail? Do you really think that it is appropriate for the intermediate users?

Or they can use Shimo as an allegedly full-featured OpenVPN GUI (only for OS X 10.7 or higher).

If they provide a demo version, I will test it and write the result on another post. But it is an expensive piece of software anyway.

[qoeisvpkby 1]

I have tested Shimo and it is not supporting OpenVPN connections over a SOCKS proxy.

You have a perfectly working system (I am not being sarcastic) but your premium members can not connect to your servers over a SOCKS proxy with any of the GUI based applications known to Mac platform.

There are many unsolved deserted posts about the related problem in your user forums.

And you still think that my criticism is unfounded.

No worries, you are not the only one who support free speech. Me too, lol.

[Staff 9973]

Thank you for your explanations.

Tunnelblick and Viscosity are OpenVPN wrappers that do not support connections of OpenVPN over socks proxies. This is not a limitation of our service.

I know, that is why I wrote that things were working perfect on your side. But you do not provide a native client for Mac platform and I do not know a way of using your service without using the mentioned wrappers which do not support SOCKS proxies.

Hello!

You need to launch OpenVPN directly from a shell. Put your configuration files (i.e. the files generated by our configuration generator) on any directory you like, enter the directory (with the command "cd ") and issue the command:

sudo openvpn

Remember to launch TOR before (or your socks proxy), if the generated configuration file is built to order OpenVPN to connect over a socks proxy.

sudo is necessary because OpenVPN needs root privileges to modify the routing table and the default gateway.

Mac OS X users who need to connect over OpenVPN over TOR or over a proxy just need to use OpenVPN directly (installed by themselves, or using the version installed by Tunnelblick).

Could you please explain this in more detail? Do you really think that it is appropriate for the intermediate users?

It depends on the definition of intermediate user. In order to launch OpenVPN, the user must be able to install it, create a folder, copy & paste files (these last two operations are anyway required even if the user uses Tunnelblick), open a command shell and type in the above mentioned commands. Probably most Mac users are able to do that.

Kind regards

[Staff 9973]

I have tested Shimo and it is not supporting OpenVPN connections over a SOCKS proxy.

You have a perfectly working system (I am not being sarcastic) but your premium members can not connect to your servers over a SOCKS proxy with any of the GUI based applications known to Mac platform.

Hello!

First of all, thank you very much for your report about Shimo.

What you say about Mac is true, there's no GUI for Mac that is capable to use every OpenVPN feature. On the other hand OpenVPN over TOR or over any proxy is an additional service not strictly depending on us. It would be absurd that additional features independent of our system should bind us to any commitment, especially when those features are perfectly accessible with a single command. Moreover, all the Air system is designed so that the user is not bound to use an Air proprietary client, which is vital under a security and openness point of view.

And you still think that my criticism is unfounded.

Yes, definitely, and we'll try to explain why here, without any polemic intent, but to make you understand the reasons of our choices.

Your opinion could be easily interpreted like we should not be offering any advice on how to use OpenVPN fully because some system does not have a GUI to use every OpenVPN feature. What's more, as you have surely noted, we have added some significant features (without any increase in price) which are vital to use a VPN in several countries (simply because VPN connections are actively disrupted).

Should we stop offering native OpenVPN over SSL and over SSH support directly on our servers because there's no GUI on any OS to use them?

Should we had stopped offering remote-random directive because Android and iOS official OpenVPN clients did not support it (until a couple of weeks ago)?

Should we had provided insecure PPTP-based tunneling when Air was born, because OpenVPN was not available in iOS and because Apple was actively forbidding its customers to run OpenVPN on iPhone/iPad/iPod?

Should we stop offering explicit-exit-notify and embedded configuration files because network-manager for Linux does not respect that directive and does not support embedded configuration files? And the list can go on.

As you said in your previous post, we also "aim to support open platforms and free speech on a self-sustaining environment". The lack of a GUI that is able to take full advantage of every OpenVPN feature will not stop us from providing any useful additional service OpenVPN is capable of and we will never force our customers to use any proprietary software from us.

Kind regards

[qoeisvpkby 1]

Your opinion could be easily interpreted like we should not be offering any advice on how to use OpenVPN fully because some system does not have a GUI to use every OpenVPN feature.

No, as a matter of fact I am the only forum user that you have offered how to use OpenVPN features on a code basis. Your first approach to my first post was simply confirming what I have said, nothing more. You did not offered me any solution.

I would expect you to offer this terminal based solution to all the other forum members who are also effected by this problem. As I have already mentioned there are many other unsolved posts about this problem. But I also can not blame on you, because they might not be as stubborn as me.

What's more, as you have surely noted, we have added some significant features (without any increase in price) which are vital to use a VPN in several countries (simply because VPN connections are actively disrupted).

What you have said above makes a GUI more valuable because the people you have mentioned are mostly ordinary Internet users, not network admins; from their point of view even a step-by-step guide can be a challenging task. This is the reason why Tor Project simplified the whole process by creating the Tor Browser Bundle; because people are more familiar to graphical interfaces. You can not start a revolution with a handful of computer geeks; you need to reach for more.

Should we stop offering native OpenVPN over SSL and over SSH support directly on our servers because there's no GUI on any OS to use them?

Should we had stopped offering remote-random directive because Android and iOS official OpenVPN clients did not support it (until a couple of weeks ago)?

Should we had provided insecure PPTP-based tunneling when Air was born, because OpenVPN was not available in iOS and because Apple was actively forbidding its customers to run OpenVPN on iPhone/iPad/iPod?

Should we stop offering explicit-exit-notify and embedded configuration files because network-manager for Linux does not respect that directive and does not support embedded configuration files? And the list can go on.

I never tell you to ignore features that does not supported by graphical user interfaces; even I am not that stupid, lol. I would be very sorry if this is your inference about the whole conversation.

Could you please tell me if you ever connected to the developers of Tunnelblick about this issue? Or did you ever think what the problem might be? Although you have done these, if you do not mention them even when I ask, I simply think that you are ignoring me and your service is incompetent, even if it is not.

[Staff 9973]

Could you please tell me if you ever connected to the developers of Tunnelblick about this issue?

Hello!

This is the main problem:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/tunnelblick-discuss/_1Q1a2qZ9d4

Kind regards

[qoeisvpkby 1]

Admin, you are cheating. I have already posted this link.

[Staff 9973]

Admin, you are cheating. I have already posted this link.

Hello!

Ah good, thank you, the previous admin did not see that.

Kind regards

[qoeisvpkby 1]

Ah good, thank you, the previous admin did not see that.

What! Do you have more than one admin there? AirVPN should be earning more than I have thought. Next time I would apply for a discount, lol.

[Droopy 2]

While I'm not technically minded, what u are discussing seems to be mainly about OS/x, well personally i wouldn't touch apple with a forty foot barge poll, you are unable to do anything without them wanting to know about it, worse the Microsoft, that's why i use an android phone, you don't need a program just to copy music or video across, I Tunes.

[2567880152 0]

I would agree with Nessy90... the administrators have bent over backward to assist you... nevertheless the problem is Mac-centric... try to find encryption applications that work with PGP or other key exchange methods... Mac are good for there designed purposes, but they do not play-well on a global basis... this is not your fault nor AirVPN's... it is however a short-coming of the Mac OS when viewed in a global interoperability context,

[shiro21 4]

I believe Viscosity supports SOCKS proxy.

So does OS X system itself.

[shiro21 4]

Well, that was a bad picture.

Here's a better one.

[qoeisvpkby 1]

Thank you for your answers.

i wouldn't touch apple with a forty foot barge poll, you are unable to do anything without them wanting to know about it

If we were talking about iOS, I would accept what you have said but there is not such a tight control mechanism on Mac OS.

the problem is Mac-centric

Yes but as the admins have already mentioned OpenVPN works perfectly on the Mac platform. The problem is no developer ever implemented the fuction into any of the GUI clients. Although this is a well known problem there is not any warning in the Tor related page of the AirVPN website.

I know that admins are sufficiently helpful, I am not blaming anyone. But there are at least five other topics about this problem on the forum and some of them are nearly a year old. I am not criticise the fact that we got this problem, I am criticising the fact that nobody is doing anything about it.

You might think that this is the problem of that developers' (Tunnelblick or Viscosity), not AirVPN's. But that clients are complementary products of AirVPN and AirVPN's success is directly linked to theirs. Many of the Mac users do not have the knowledge to use the AirVPN service without the help of these clients.

Let's say Tunnelblick decided to discontinue their support to OpenVPN. Do you really think that AirVPN would tell their customers to talk to Tunnelblick because simply the problem is not on their side. I do not think so. This is not different, only the number of affected customers are very limited right now.

I believe Viscosity supports SOCKS proxy.

The Setting is there but not functioning, at least with Tor. Connection drops after 30 seconds. If it was only me I might think that there is a problem with my configuration but there are also other users who can not connect with Viscosity.

[shiro21 4]

Here's an old topic documenting my efforts to use Tor, VPN, and SSH.

https://airvpn.org/index.php?option=com_kunena&func=view&catid=3&id=1928&Itemid=142

As you can see, I got it to work. But I concluded it's really not worth it.