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Comment by asimpleusecase | Hacker News Reader

This would be a lot more helpful if they would say exactly what the problem is. “Shady” partner? Who is that? Transparency report - what is expected here? I work with people who rely on VPNs for personal safety, so I’m very interested in anything that can compromise that safety. But this article raised questions but did not answer them in a way I found useful.

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As the article has spelled out, Nord’s operations in many parts of the world, thanks to their convoluted and opaque corporate structure, makes it hard to determine which user data may be accessed by which countries' government entities or third-party companies.

Being owned by a data mining company that also owns a residential proxy service (Nord uses it for unblocking streaming services: https://hiddenrouter.com/how-is-nordvpn-unblocking-disney-it...) is also baffling. Hard to trust a data mining company with data, when they make a profit from selling user data?

Other VPN providers like PIA have released transparency reports that contain requests from state, federal, and foreign law enforcement: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/private-internet-...

Nord’s own employee said they don’t want to publish transparency reports out of “obligations” to their investors.

I for one do not like their requirement to use a closed source VPN client just to have Wireguard support. I ditched them after trying out Mullvad and am so thankful I did. You'd have to contact chat to do basic things like change your email address. Mullvad doesn't even know my email address.

NordVPN does shady advertising:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31896120

NordVPN is ran by same company that supplies residential proxies.

The way it worked is by using using their service you'd actually reciprocally share your IP.

Thats dodgy on multiple levels.

or a feature

Traffic coming from your IP would be mixed up with unrelated traffic

> Traffic coming from your IP would be mixed up with unrelated traffic

I'm sure that notion will keep the FBI from raiding your home when that unrelated traffic turns out to be involved in something illicit.

..RIAA

There are far worse things one can do anonymously over someone's internet connection than download an mp3.

It sounds more likely that the FBI knows you're using NordVPN before they come busting.

How else do you expect to get around maxmind’s anonymous db?

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