- Encrypted DNS option is planned for Android as that feature offers a good combination of security and customization, but it’s not set in a specific time frame yet.
- Personally, for mobile I use iOS, IVPN with WireGuard and AntiTracker.
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I can share my personal position - currently I’m using an Apple phone with IVPN with WireGuard, avoiding social and invasive/tracking apps and using DuckDuckGo. This covers my personal threat model OK, but I have a plan for this year to get a used Pixel 3 or 4 and experiment with Calyx/Graphene.
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I would not rule it out, but we have no immediate plans for expanding this campaign. We have a couple of colleagues in Ukraine and that brought this issue close to us, the motivation was strong to use our resources for something good (if possible). We know the need is there in other countries facing upheaval or heavy censorship. We are in contact with organisations and activists who are working on solving this problem, and try to learn from their experiences.
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Due to the complexity of implementing on mobile we have not progressed with this nor do we have a timeframe for doing so.
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Snowflake (Tor pluggable transport) developers have reached out to us to discuss how we could implement it, we are investigating. We have implemented obfs4 but are currently running it in obfs3 mode due to some issues we discovered in testing but we hope to resolve these soon.
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They make a very important point that providers need to stop claiming that their obfuscation methods cannot be detected and for providers to move to pluggable transports. We don’t currently have any plans to separate our obfsproxy service from our non-obfs services by putting them into different network address spaces but this is an excellent point and something we will begin to think about.
Iain:
We do not provide threat intelligence services like ipinfo.io, brightcloud etc. with any information, nor do they ask us for any. We don’t know how these services gather their intelligence, although they almost certainly use some public data sources, for example whois.
If we care to look at the information they provide, we find it to be of variable quality, often outdated and inaccurate. In short, we have no control over this and don’t consider this issue.
Just to add to what /u/viktorivpn stated;
There are companies that specialize in this sort of thing, marketing themselves to the corporate and banking sectors, and maybe even VPS providers and streaming services as well. One example would be https://proxycheck.io
You can check out their API documentation and blog to learn more. In short, most commercial VPN providers have no control over this kind of thing.
It looks like IVPN is detectable under IP2Proxy.
IP2Proxy VPN Coverage
Hi,
No immediate plans for this, but I would expect that some improvement plans will land on our roadmap. The primary focus of our service is to protect against dragnet surveillance / solving the ISP snooping issue.
We are aware that ads and tracker blocking significantly contributes to privacy protection improvements and VPNs are well-placed to do a combo on this, hence the addition of AntiTracker. At this point we consider this as an add-on though.
Blokada started their journey from the other end - building out a great ad blocker and then adding a “full” VPN functionality. I cannot comment on their VPN, have not used or evaluated it yet, but my assumption is that they should always do the ad blocking job better, while a VPN-first provider like us should do a better overall job for the VPN side (considering all aspects. ie security/transparency/app functionality/audits etc.).
In the end, if that solution works out well for you, ad blocking is a primary concern for you, and you trust them just as much you would trust us with handling your data, then I would stick with them.
Happy to share a gift code with anyone who reads this and wants to test our service (2 weeks Pro account). DM me or email viktor at ivpn.net. As explained in another post we don’t have discounts/coupons.
Thanks for the feedback and suggestion.
Sorry, but I’m not sure about the expected outcome. Do you mean whitelisting domains so they are not blocked by the AntiTracker, or something else?
Thanks for dropping by and for the positive feedback. There have been some exchanges between Yegor and our team, we are open to collaboration on projects that would benefit the VPN ecosystem.
I understand where you are coming from, and we acknowledge the need in other areas.
Some reasons for focusing on Ukraine/Russia only at this time:
- We have team members in Ukraine, so this problem was very close to “home”, giving us motivation to try and positively affect it
- Resource constraints - serving different regions would bring on additional costs that would put strain on an organisations of our size - servers/bandwidth, system administration efforts, customer support etc.
- Abuse mitigation - while I can’t share a lot of details on this, since the campaign started we faced many issues on people abusing this offer, and having staff that speaks local languages was important
We have not considered BCH, no plans to add more cryptocurrency options right now.
We don’t have plans to make a native (Swift) macOS app at the moment. Can you share more about why would you prefer that over our current solution?
Yes, I agree with your observation, perhaps not the “euro centric” label. We serve the US and Europe particularly well, and there is certainly room for better coverage in South-America, Africa and some parts of Asia.
Reluctance is coming from:
- Significantly higher prices (vs. in US/EU) for rented servers at data centers that offer the level of service and type of packages that we prefer
- Lack of clear demonstrated demand to justify these costs - we have less inbound interest vs. Proton for example and we have a conservative approach towards expansion (see #2 here)
- Uncertain regulatory environment in popular locations that prevent long-term planning (see India)
We have recently explored some options and we will continue to do so.
As for Virtual servers, your wording is spot on - compromise. We stick to bare-metal we rent from hosting provider that give us secure access to IPMI, which allows us to install our own build with full disk encryption and review the installed hardware etc.
Feel free to ask for an extension when it’s close to expiration (until the offer stands). You can do this exactly the same way you requested the original code. If you have any issues with the process when it’s time, DM me.
I’ve mostly answered this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivacyGuides/comments/vtd9ss/comment/if7agn3/
Although I’m not saying that list justifies the higher cost, it’s for you to decide. If you choose purely based on price, you trust both providers and care little about the rest, you will most likely pick Mullvad, and that’s OK.