Slashdot Mirror
VPN Providers Report Huge Increase In Downloads, Usage Since Privacy Rules Were Repealed (ibtimes.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A number of major VPN providers reported a significant increase in subscriptions, downloads, and traffic from Americans since the U.S. Congress voted to repeal the Broadband Consumer Privacy Rules that would have mandated internet service providers get user permission before collecting information. The International Business Times reports that "several popular VPN providers reported a more than 50 percent increase in downloads." VPN provider ExpressVPN said they "experienced a 105 percent increase in traffic from the U.S. and a 97 percent spike in sales" since the repeal. Additionally, "KeepSolid, the New York-based company behind VPNUnlimited, noted a 32 percent increase in purchases and growth of 49 percent in total downloads," reports IBT. "The company also reports having a considerable amount of increased engagement via social media regarding user privacy." Have you taken any privacy measures since Congress voted to repeal ISP privacy rules? If you use a VPN, which provider do you recommend and why?
I've used OperaVPN on a jailbroken phone and then used tcpdump to monitor the traffic to be sure. OperaVPN lies, or stopped providing updates to my iOS version, leaving it broke. Matter of fact, they haven't had an update in months. Using Netherlands, it connects somewhere between the U.S. Midwest to California servers. Using Germany, I've caught it using Swiss and Russian servers. I would never use a U.S. or U.K. server. You can check by using: "tcpdump -D" to get your internet device name (usually wlan0 or eth0) and then "tcpdump -xx -i eth0 tcp" to monitor your web browsing connections. The "-xx" part will allow you to see if the information coming and going is encrypted or not; you shouldn't be able to understand any of it. You can leave off the "tcp" part at the end, but you'll get UDP and other info too. The connections should all have the same IP address. Then, use that IP address via "geoiplookup #.#.#.#" in another terminal to find the country. I only knew my cities because the bottom of a Google search said the location on my phone and wasn't asking to translate to English for me. Both "tcpdump" and "geoip" packages are available for Linux, Cydia, and source code; I'm not sure about Window$.