Disclaimer: I know TurboVPN and the others mentioned are not good services to use, I’m strictly doing research. I’m not looking for VPN recommendations.

Genuinely wondering how these numbers are possible? 300M downloads and 8.35M reviews…? How?! Not even Amazon Shopping app or Disney+ have this many reviews. And surely NordVPN and Express VPN are considerable larger in both users and resources? I’ve never seen a sponsorship, not even once, from Turbo VPN. Are these numbers regional based? Is Turbo VPN more known in other regions? Is it easy to spoof these numbers?

Appreciate any comments on the matter, and have a nice day 🌻

  • Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    It’s as simple as ‘it’s free’. Most people don’t care about privacy, just bypassing censorship. Plus, the majority of people in third world countries can’t afford to pay for a vpn, so they’ll flock towards free ones.

    • Rooki@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      and Nordvpn or Expressvpn isnt even private so… its paid but you still give all your data to them.

      • thirteene@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        As much as I detest nordvpn they do have a 0 logs policy that has been validated. Don’t give them money under any circumstance, but this isn’t accurate.

          • thirteene@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            2 months ago

            https://my.nordaccount.com/legal/terms-of-service/ It’s only ~ two pages, 19 sections total. you should at least skim over the absolutely no guarantees, no refunds past 30 days, no refunds without needing support to “diagnose” your issue first.

            Tickets are 3 day wait times, most of the updates are “do you know your account number” despite being in the ticket. The branded application is insanely unstable, since using ovpn client it’s been somewhat stable but the android client causes problems with Bluetooth on my pixel. They built in multiple layers of kill switch automation INTO the product, they can’t seem to figure out static ips. Honestly they are just incompetent.

            • dev_null@lemmy.mlEnglish
              01·
              2 months ago

              So what I’m reading from your comment is:

              • They accept refunds even if you were already using the service for up to 30 days
              • They have support that will help you diagnose issues
              • They will give you a refund if they can’t solve your issue
              • They usually get back to you within 3 days
              • You are not locked in to their app and can use other ones if they work better for you

              Thanks for the info, I should try them.

              • Ziglin@lemmy.worldEnglish
                0·
                2 months ago

                If you care about privacy you should use tor/the tor network:

                • It’s free
                • It can’t track you unless someone happens to own your entire route the network, which hopefully isn’t happening and would have to a very big actor and would only be a low chance
                • You can use tor bridges to bypass censorship and detection
                • You can visit hidden services if you find out their .onion address
                • You can host hidden services if you find out how to configure tor
                • You can switch to a VPN if you really want
                • Has integration into an existing privacy centred browser but can be used with anything that supports sock5 proxies
      • Billiam@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Isn’t that how non-self-hosted VPNs work by their very nature? The VPN owner is always going to know where your traffic originates and where its destination is.

        • Ziglin@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          Tor doesn’t because the server that you contact passes it to another and encrypts the data further the exit node can then decrypt it and perform the web request on your behalf without knowing where it’s coming from.

          • Billiam@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            2 months ago

            Yes, but Tor isn’t a VPN- the most distinguishing difference being when using a VPN all traffic from your device is sent to the VPN tunnel, while only traffic from the Tor browser is anonymized for the onion network.

            • Ziglin@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              2 months ago

              Tor acts as a proxy Tor browser is shipped with tor but using a different port. Tor is not the browser.

              So as long as you set up what you want to use with tor and remember to start it, it should work. Otherwise I’m sure you could setup a pi or local server to route everything through tor if you wanted to.

              Edit: I believe the tor network is a VPN though. Your data is sent privately through the virtual tor network. Not all VPN connections have to work the same, after all Hamachi is also a VPN.

        • Bahnd Rollard@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          Yes, but some claim to be log-less so while they can see your traffic, they pinky promise not to record it. Proton being one who proports to not keep logs, and seeing as they are Swiss ,that tracks.

          (Proton VPN is the 3rd party one I use)

          • azalty@jlai.luEnglish
            1·
            2 months ago

            Proton is also a bit shady about their marketing and aren’t really transparent about governments asking for data. It’s also really really expensive for what it is.