Private Internet Access Announces WireGuard VPN Beta | Hacker News Reader

Private Internet Access Announces WireGuard VPN Beta

privateinternetaccess.com

23 pointsdrummer15 comments

This is really good news. When will this be available to all users?

Probably after the beta but they don't mention how long that will take. What I like is that Donenfeld apparently was involved in the implementation which gives more confidence. As compared to Cloudflare where they made their own implementation instead (1.1.1.1/WARP) and also are not hiding your real IP address [1].

[1] "From a technical perspective, WARP is a VPN. But it is designed for a very different audience than a traditional VPN. WARP is not designed to allow you to access geo-restricted content when you’re traveling. It will not hide your IP address from the websites you visit." https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-warp-plus/

Chris Miller, CMO for Private Internet Access here. You are correct, we were extremely fortunate to be able to work directly with Jason Donenfeld on our implementation. We wanted to have the most seamless integration we possibly could, and who better to help than the developer himself?

I'm sure it'll help a lot with trust. His name has a typo in the article though ;)

Fixed! Thanks for the heads up :)

> "...It will not hide your IP address from the websites you visit."

This would make it much less private than most VPNs. For most corporate use that's no loss. Though I imagine a big draw to a company whose name starts with 'Private' is the protection of ones address.

It's quite dangerous because most people will think it's like any other VPN with regard to making an effort to keep your IP address/location private. Cloudflare also don't prominently communicate the difference (not many are going to read that blog post).

Perhaps there should be a different phrase, like "virtual tunnel".

I'm the Donenfeld in question. I have not worked on PIA's implementation at all, nor have I seen any of its source code. I've chatted a bit with their developers online and offered some tips here and there about where to find the right wireguard source code and things like that, but that's about it. The original version of this post vastly and inaccurately overstated my involvement.

Thanks for clarifying and thanks for your work.

Unfortunately it is too early to commit to a date yet, but we are working hard to get it ready for "prime time" as soon as possible.

A closed beta is nonsensical for a VPN provider. The purpose of using a VPN is to mask yourself. A provider should be disinterested in their customers' identities, not encouraging them to set up some persistent "relationship" to get perks.

Also this focus on proprietary VPN apps is weird. They just seem like a way to sell into the snake oil market (eg people that pay for a VPN with their credit card). There is no way I'd run a blob just to make a few bits of configuration quicker.

Which VPN providers offer WireGuard today?

According to https://thatoneprivacysite.net/#detailed-vpn-comparison AzireVPN, CryptoStorm, IVPN and Mullvad.

Mullvad works great with WireGuard on iOS. It’s step by step instructions allow me to install it without problems.

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