What's with all the NordVPN hate?

Miqo@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 16 points –

I see people say that NordVPN is a bad choice all the time, but I've never seen any credible evidence that they're not trustworthy. Can anyone provide any sources with valid reasons to avoid their service? I only know that they had some servers hacked in 2018, but it seems as though they took that very seriously and upgraded their hardware and encryption accordingly. I'm just trying to decide if I want to start looking at alternatives, but honestly I'm pretty satisfied with my experience so far.

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I use a different VPN, but honestly, I wouldn't use Nord only because of their ads and sponsorships. It's kind of a lame excuse, but they wore me out with that.

Anything that’s so heavily advertised is a big red flag to me. To me it feels like they’re spending more on advertising than making a decent product and hoping people buy it instead of letting the product speak for itself. But that’s not necessarily only about Nord…

Personally my biggest distrust of nord comes from their ads. Most notably one where they anthromorphized a guys smart TV, Roomba and phone talking about him when he leaves the room, and others that basically totally misrepresent what a vpn does.

In short, your TV, Phone, etc... most likely share and compile information because of the ACCOUNTS they need to function. using a VPN will do NOTHING to stop google from knowing any android data, Your devices don't hear eachother by listening to the network, which is almost all going to be encrypted protocols anyway, but by sharing accounts.

In short, I've always found nords comercials constantly misleading on what a VPN can and can't protect you from, and to me it seems that's largely so they can market them to people who don't actually have any use for them, and worse doing it to make people feel like they are "protecting themselves" from something that they are just as vulnerable to with the vpn.

AFAIK those commercials are made by the content creators themselves and Nord just gives them a guidelines doc, right?

It's true that VPN doesn't do much tho it definitely used to help with IP-based tracking. Imagine if we all pooled our connections through 1 Lemmy IP then the tracker will be very confused why this one IP is coming to many different sources. It doesn't work as much anymore because now 99% of tracking is done through javascript and it's a long lost battle already.

NORD have to sign off on them, they are responsible for their image. It's still on them.

Honestly, all of these VPN companies deserve a lot of hate for having some pretty deceptive advertising and fearmongering. VPNs definitely have their uses, but the average person probably doesn't need one... Especially not for "security" purposes.

Also, how often do you want to watch a Netflix movie/show that is not available in your country?

American living in Japan: a lot (though other services, not Netflix). Even before moving to Japan, certain BBC content, etc.

This is the thing I don’t mind VPN companies advertising about, because yeah, they can work to get around region restrictions, and that’s a totally valid use for them that some people will appreciate. If you have a specific use case like this, by all means pay for a VPN… But if you’re just using it as a magic internet condom… I don’t think it’s worth your money.

In general the claims about security at a coffee shop or whatever are kind of bunk, and any privacy benefits are kind of overstated (especially if you don’t think you have a reason to trust the VPN provider more than your ISP). There isn’t a complete lack of truth to these claims, but I don’t think they’re true in a way that’s meaningful to the average person who isn’t tech savvy, and I think there’s often a lack of transparency about certain aspects such as the fact that technically the VPN provider can log everything anybody else would, and you have no way of knowing.

They store your IP, and they use it. I think that sums all up. The point of vpn is to be private, and if you’re giving up your IP to a third party, you’ve done nothing with the vpn.

Well, my experience was that their shit didn't work very well. Lots of DNS leaking despite correct setup, and customer service just shrugged it off. It did work right for a while under linux using the system's network manager to connect to their servers directly, but over time they made it harder and harder to find their sever list by burying it deeper and deeper on their website.

Ultimately, I couldn't use it under windows without using their client, which constantly disconnected itself and left me unprotected. It would just shut itself off. Then they went ahead and helped themselves to my money way ahead of schedule for a renewal I didn't want, and I had to threaten them with a fraud report for several days before they caved and gave my money back.

I wasn't happy with them selling me shit that barely worked and then stealing my money so I'd just stay instead of fighting them for a refund. Reason enough for anyone to avoid them.

Wasn’t NordVPN that provider that said they were no log and then a hack happened and exposed that they did, in fact, retain logs of user activity? Am I mixing them up with someone else?

That's happened with almost every VPN provider that has claimed to be no-log and then got a government subpoena. At that point you have 2 options: A.) Shut down, or B.) Code a technical way to capture the requested information for that user.

Sometimes they do choose to shut down and sometimes there isn't a technically feasible way to get the information.

According to them it was one specific server somewhere and they no longer use that company. The CEO when it happened still claimed they didn’t have logs according to this https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/after-twitter-allegations-nord-vpn-discloses-breach-1.1334946

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/after-the-breach-nord-is-asking-users-to-trust-it-again/

Not really an excuse, it’s them not doing due diligence… I’m more surprised that I correctly attributed this remote memory to the correct scummy VPN provider lol

None of the other answers I'm seeing are the actual reasons you shouldn't trust more specifically. The reason you shouldn't trust them is because a few years ago they had a data breach. It was relatively small and wouldn't have effected many if any people but the problem was they didn't disclose it and tried to bury it. It wasn't found out about until a few years later. That should tell you if they had a major data breach that did affect you they would try to hide that from you and you would never know unless a you were made aware through other means.

Source: https://www.techradar.com/news/whats-the-truth-about-the-nordvpn-breach-heres-what-we-now-know

In a nutshell -- it transforms your PC/phone into a honeypot for third parties.

I don't know why others don't like them but I personally dislike them and Express because of false advertising.

They make it seem like a vpn protects you from everything online, from hackers, phishing attacks, viruses etc and provides absolute privacy no matter what. This is not what a vpn does.

I also wonder how they can get away with marketing themselves as a way to get around geoblocking. I don't personally mind this part but I assume it's a legal gray area for them so they do it until they can get away with it.

I think the reason you stated is probably the main reason for most of the hate. I’ve been a Nord user for years and have no complaints. However, I am currently considering switching to Firefox VPN because I want to financially support Firefox development and that’s one of the best ways to do it.

Isn't the Firefox VPN just a rebrand of Mullvad or something? Like they just use their servers and put in their logo?

I have been using PIA for the last few years and I am personally pretty happy. I had some issues with Nord connect and speed a few years back. PIA on wireguard has worked great for me. I have a gigabit connection and although I can't hit that with pia, my Unraid SabNZB hits over 70MB/s easy which is great

PIA can be a little slow, but the big difference (and reason I use it) is that they don't keep any logs. A VPN provider gets a subpoena and they will turn over the history of what you did under there service. To my knowledge PIA is one of the few (like 2-3 I thought) that keeps no records and couldn't cooperate if they wanted to. I'm like 7 years deep with them and they still roll out new features and servers all the time. I consider them a pillar of what a VPN should be.

Most VPN services are a sham. They just hide your network activity from your ISP, however they have full visibility in to your network traffic. Some of these VPN providers are even owned by ad agencies, but advertise privacy as a selling point. You’re better off running your own WireGuard or OpenVPN server at home or with a VPS. At least you will have control over the server and limit your exposure to unscrupulous VPN companies. (Yes using a VPS is shifting the trust from one to the other, but you will have to make a decision that is right for you.)

I use it for torrenting and it works great. Wouldn't send my credit card number through it, but I feel like that would be retarded with any provider...