Re: VPNs becoming mainstream
The average person uses a VPN for two purposes:
- Consuming geo-restricted material, e.g. American Netflix, BBC iPlayer
- Downloading torrents without getting prison-raped
Commercial VPN services provide a means to those ends that works well enough, have a large base of potential customers, and the barriers to entry are low (you could run one right in your home computer), to the point the market is oversaturated. That's it in a nutshell.
As for "computer nerds" who used them "5 to 10 years ago", I was hacking my own SecureIX premium accounts back on 2007, do I win Internet? :stuart:
Re: VPNs becoming mainstream
There are three main causes for this:
1. Govt Regulations
2. Trade War
3. Covid19
The growth in online business & internet users saw an upsurge in the last decade specifically during the pandemic. Earlier only "computer nerds" had to find a way to access the restricted or regulated contents. Now almost everyone has to something out of their reach.
Moreover evey national is trying to reduce the data flow (user info) & trade deficit (money flowing out to other countries via online). Like, US & China, India & China restrict certain app/sites. Whereas countries like UAE, North Korea has their own regulations.
Above all restrictions over porn sites. I found from a reliable source that approx 70% of the content in internet is errotic.
On top of it, covid19 pandemic limits our out door activities. So enjoy via VPN.
Re: VPNs becoming mainstream
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Prolife
Above all restrictions over porn sites. I found from a reliable source that approx 70% of the content in internet is errotic.
The other 30% is VPNs that unblock porn sites!
Seriously, though, 70% seems like a stretch... but it's all about how you define "content" and "erotic" and do your sampling, I guess.
Re: VPNs becoming mainstream
Re: VPNs becoming mainstream
The answers may be aggressive marketing, no support for port forwarding (despite having P2P-exclusive servers), and the fact one of their private keys got breached once. Reviews generally agree that the service is good, though, and also among the fastest.
Re: VPNs becoming mainstream
Quote:
Originally Posted by
koolyt
why is nord bad?
I cannot trust it and its garbage simply because YouTubers shill for it way too often and that's annoying. :dry:
Re: VPNs becoming mainstream
I'm using Hola VPN but it's not free. Are there any free VPNs as good as that?
Re: VPNs becoming mainstream
Hmmm. Any relation to the Hola plug-in for Firefox et al.? Because that one was gathering and selling your data, from what I heard.
Re: VPNs becoming mainstream
Hola is owned by a company called Bright (formerly Luminati) which sells private proxies. When you use it, your computer joins that network and others become able to route traffic through it, which potentially includes illegal content like kiddy porn and hacking attacks that then become traceable to your IP. It's the same dilemma Tor exit node operators face, except there was zero transparency regarding this behavior (which has since changed), hence the controversy.
Anyway, the only free ones I can recommend are ProtonVPN and Cryptofree. The former is fairly generous, but as usual, don't expect premium-tier service for $0.