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Comment by ethbr1 | Hacker News Reader

URL would be funnier if owner also owned the actual URL, but redirected everything to the extra one.

And it's unregistered!

https://www.namecheap.com/domains/registration/results/?doma...

Edit: Per below, missed the last dot. zoltanbalazs is registered. https://www.namecheap.com/domains/registration/results/?doma...

Also, what would be more interesting: a financial breakdown of how an average free VPN provider makes money.

I assume ad injection + selling traffic data, but does that make enough to offset the cost?

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I believe at least one of the business models for "free" VPNs is to turn their users machines into exit nodes, and the real business is in selling those to people who want to spread their traffic across many residential IPs for usually dubious reasons (e.g. scalpers trying to scoop up concert tickets or limited edition sneakers or whatever without tripping bot detection).

holavpn was exposed by trend micro as a botnet for rent (best source I could find since the original white paper from trend micro seems to be gone: https://www.vice.com/en/article/pga9yk/your-tool-to-access-n... )

facebook used their vpn onavo to mitm users of snapchat, amazon, youtube: https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/26/facebook-secret-project-sn... – somehow I had missed this, I was only aware of the much older scoop about facebook using it to track underaged users: https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/facebook-project-atlas/

>facebook used their vpn onavo [...]

It's worth pointing out that while it operated as a VPN (so it could capture traffic), it was ostensibly marketed as a "security" app (ie. scanning your web traffic for threats). It's not really a good example of shady VPNs.

afaik some free vpn providers use your own connection to offer residential ips for scrapping services or other vpn users.

I know I read a article about one where they at least routed some other traffic through the vpn app, but I can't find the article anymore.

https://thebestvpn.com/118-vpns-logging-policy/

dotzoltanbalazsdotcom.com is unregistered.

zoltanbalazs.com was registered in 2021.

Oops! Mistake on my part. Updated above.

Sadly, doesn't look like there's anything hosted on zoltanbalazs.com

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