this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2026
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[–] Babalugats@feddit.uk 77 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Any chance of seeing the list broken down by ownership and trackers?

It seems a bit pointless otherwise.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 94 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Not important, this is just a disguised advertisement for Proton VPN.

[–] tb_@lemmy.world 63 points 2 days ago (2 children)
[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 2 points 15 hours ago

useful data

The extent of which is "Proton good, others bad".

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I know lol, I was being facetious. 😉 I also want to see the list.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don't see a problem with that.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It can be healthy to question your sources and their motives. 👍

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Proton is a stellar VPN, but people cannot live without dragging out an old twitter post about a CEO praising the instauration of some judge by trump. That's it. That's all the critic that has been found over the years.

Mullvad is super fasho and show me one that doesn't store and sell all the data...

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago

people cannot live without dragging out an old twitter post

Kind of like that Nazi salute people just can't seem to forget, gosh.

Proton is a stellar VPN.

🤷‍♂️ Perhaps it is. Perhaps Teslas are great cars.

Show me one that doesn't store and sell all the data...

Ah yes, well, if everyone is doing it... 🫪👍👍

[–] beep@piefed.world 46 points 2 days ago (4 children)
[–] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

ProtonVPN

Mulvad VPN

CalyxVPN

RiseUpVPN

PIA VPN

Proton has 1 tracker, while the others have 0.
PIA has GPS location permissions, though.

Edit. All links go to the Exodus Project page for those products. The same site that the David P post uses

Edit 2. Some (including Proton) have camera permission, and I don't understand why a VPN app would need access to my camera.

[–] Cris_Citrus@piefed.zip 45 points 2 days ago

Its unfortunate they really only name and shame random shovelware vpns it looks like. So it feels difficult to tell whether their points apply to any other real options people have heard of before...

[–] artyom@piefed.social 22 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Its a good thing they posted them on inaccessible Xitter in a confusing as fuck "thread" instead of their own God damn website...

[–] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 27 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Surely it's too hard to upload a spreadsheet on the internet.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 1 day ago

Some people just have to complain about everything. Maybe a specific excel format?

[–] Th4tGuyII@fedia.io 25 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, it would be nice to have an actual list so we're not reliant on their numbers alone. But unfortunately telling only half the story is something Proton seems to do quite a lot.

On the bright side, the actual privacy data for this was by Proton's own admission from Exodus, so while its probably not feasible for you to skim 65K apps on your own, you can at least see the data for specific VPN apps you might be worried about.

[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They would probably get sued if they dropped names of direct competitors.

[–] Th4tGuyII@fedia.io 6 points 2 days ago

Yeah true enough. Even if the data they've got was 100% accurate and easy to prove in court, they'd still be stuck having to pay out the arse for lawyers just to appear in court.

[–] MolochHorridus@piefed.social 12 points 2 days ago

It’s an ad for Proton. Obviously.

[–] Zarobi@aussie.zone 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They listed a few in their article, but yeah a full list would be nice.

Three of the VPN services we looked at are actually owned by market research companies: ‎Phone Guardian Safe WiFi (Sensor Tower), My Mobile Secure VPN (Comscore), and Urban VPN (BiScience, which has been been shown to capture user conversations across several services and share them with AI chat platforms).


In what many could reasonably see as the ultimate act of betrayal, 64 VPN apps actively track your physical location using GPS and other geolocation data. [...] These apps include some of the most popular VPNs in the US, such as VPN Proxy Master, VPN-Fast VPN Super, and X-VPN

[–] PineRune@lemmy.world 20 points 2 days ago

Those all sound like fake VPN apps that I wouldn't trust anyway.