VPN Should Be Free?

When I think about it , VPNs should be Free:

It must be technically possible to build big VPN communities or networks that provide the same functionality, but between member computers in service as VPN servers.

It would only take part-time access / use of lotsa such computers, with their owners' authorization of course, to make it happen.

(OK, some easy to install [Open Source]) VPN software would be needed, from a Kickstarter project…? Volunteer(s)? Anonymous? etc.

'could be like: "Share your Unused CPU-cycles"networks, but (for those with fast, Unlimited Internet accounts), but for "excess Data"…

What do you think?

PS So many, VPNs out there, at a range of costs. One never really knows "what's in VPN box" you may be paying for… Are you sure you're protected? Is anyone actually checking?How many of the existing VPNs are just rebadged clones of previous ones, with different client software, logo's, "deals" trial periods & quotas?

If it's Not Open Source (or you don't have an honest team of folks to look critically at its code), what do you know…?

Opera has got a VPN in 1 or more of its browsers, but I don't know if you can select a desto land.

Perhaps a community would support the building of a "open, so: known & proven" VPN, whose user community provides the bandwidth it needs to do its job.

KickStarter or GoFund[Us] crowdsourcing might help make this kind of thing happen, ie, IF it hasn't already done so.

Poll Options

  • 29
    I trust every1, & I have LOTSA money; I'll PAY my good $$ to use a "BLACK-BOX" VPN
  • 2
    I trust every1, but like to "Cut the Cards" I'd happily help crowdsource-fund a VPN
  • 1
    I'll Name in a Comment: an "already built" Crowdsource-Funded, Open Source VPN
  • 9
    What's a VPN?
  • 6
    "Trust your Enemy" - Why would anyone -Not- trust all the existing VPN's our there?

Comments

  • +27

    Add option: TI;DC (too IVI, don't care)

      • +1

        South England?

        • -7

          Yep, where the Daughters of Vikings speak svensk.

          • +9

            @IVI: Why would you use an initialism that none of us are going to recognise? How much easier would it have been to simply write "Sweden", if that's what you meant?

              • +11

                @IVI: I don't personally know all the domain name extensions and I doubt many or any people do. AU could be taken as short for Australia (since you were using it in the context of a location), and since we are mostly all Australian here it is reasonable to assume we will understand AU as short for Australia. However the same is not true of SE meaning Sweden. Only the tiniest proportion of us would use Swedish websites regularly and even of those, there was absolutely no context that could lead to anyone knowing you meant it as a reference to a domain name extension, so even very few of those people, if indeed any exist, would know what you meant.

                You are either mentally deficient or you're a troll. Occam's razor says troll so I'll assume that from now on and not start any discussions with you. Have a nice vacation in that noggin of yours.

                • -8

                  @Quantumcat: Got your knickers in a knot over that didn't you.
                  Take a step back and reassess how important this is to you

              • +1

                @IVI: Weirdest troll but well done

            • +13

              @Quantumcat:

              Why would you use an initialism that none of us are going to recognise? How much easier would it have been to simply write **"Sweden"*", if that's what you meant?

              It's Julian Assange, he's talking in broken cryptographic leet, '1337'.

              I keep forgetting… I'm in AU

              He's complaining the Australian government hasn't been helping him.

              that I'm back in SE…?

              Yep, where the Daughters of Vikings speak svensk.

              'SE' meaning Sweden.
              'Daughters of Vikings', now Daughters are girls, and Vikings were lawless plunderers from Scandinavia.
              The 'Vikings' has two meanings, the first is telling us Sweden (Sweden is a Scandinavia country) for a second time, this gives us 2 Sweden's, which means 2 girls from Sweden.
              The second meaning of 'Vikings' is lawlessness, this means Julian Assange is a victim of injustice.
              Julian Assange is telling us how the Australian government hasn't helped him, he was set up by 2 Swedish girls and he's a victim of injustice.

              It's Julian Assange, he wants us to build a free open source VPN that everyone in the world will be able to use, this will protect freedom of speech.

  • +3

    A P2P-based VPN defies the purpose of privacy.

    No VPN is fully safe and don't trust any commercial ones. Create your own by renting a server at OVH or similar but even then, no security they won't log you and pass info to others.

    • A P2P-based VPN defies the purpose of privacy.

      No it doesn't.

      There are multiple privacy focused projects that are p2p eg Freenet.

      • Freenet is neither a VPN nor privacy-focused. It's a decentralized way to share 'freedom of speech' content and is infiltrated by authorities.

        • -1

          Didn't AU just pass a
          Privacy-Killing Law
          (by another name),
          that requires users of
          encryption (or some
          privacy tool(s)… Zello?!?)
          to "hand over their keys…?

          Does that affect this issue?

          • @IVI: This is incorrect, Gov introduced a law that forces private corporate to come up with solution that is not "backdoor" (eg give the key away)
            When communication is p2p encryption key is one time only (session based) operator/gov cannot have "the key". But these communication can be relayed as such so it can be stored on the device without end-user's awareness (and extracted)

    • -1

      OVH…?

      OVingHam Airport?

    • -3

      Where are the holes?
      Surely, they can be
      fixed, if we know..

  • +4

    Nice poem.

    • -1

      You talkin' t' me…?
      (blush)

      • +4

        He's telling you you type weirdly

        • so many voices
          so much reduncancy
          [eg, across posts]

          Iyam
          what
          Iyam

        • +1

          That's understatement of the year

  • +5

    Nah, I thing trains and Buses should be free first, then bread, Cola and cigarettes, not to mention caged eggs

    • +1

      Maybe bread
      only Coles'
      7-seed bred
      will b free

    • They don't seem to have ours:
      …UNLIMITED…
      ('dunno is VPN comes 1st or last)

  • +3

    boy you are on a roll this week IVI!

    • -2

      Speed-Commenting+Posting

      Akin to Speed-Dating, but
      you don't get l—- as much '~/

      Actually, it's his daughter
      here, house-sitting.

      IVI's on his way back from Pari
      where he left his lighter or
      something made of Gold…?

      Heart, maybe…?

      (He left instructions: No
      lines longer than newpaper
      columns… how m I doin'…?

      • +5

        With your weird column width, I feel like I'm reading just a really really bad attempt at a poem

  • +10

    Hola — that's a free P2P VPN that everyone connects to everyone else's Internet connection. Look up how dangerous it is…

    • -5

      So, …not Open Src, eh…?

      • Stop hurting those poor ellipses.

  • +3

    this is like saying taxis should be free
    because we're driving around anyway and might have space in the back seat
    ie dumb

    • -6

      Taxis will - per Shai Agassi -
      someday (when Autonomous Cars
      finally implement them, putting
      Uber, etc. our of business…)
      have costs -approaching- Free.

      YouTube has the video…

      • +2

        How do you know that Uber won't just own the autonomous cars ecosystem?

        You very well may have autonomous cars one day, but not everyone will be ale to afford to buy one. People will still need to lease them to get from A to B.

        • Good pt…

          I think they're about to do an IPO
          maybe that's [in part] why…

          If Agassi's right, they'll all be
          EV's (a No-Brainer…) so, Greener
          and cheaper to send than bus service

    • -4

      We're stuck in a
      contrive scarsity
      world; only some
      of us can even
      envision Abundance

      & most of those
      [us] who can…
      "get" Nuclear En
      (eg, The French)

      OSU's student dining
      hall sold -cheap-
      "meal ticket" that
      bought you unlimited
      seconds on all foods
      at each meal

      In France, they don't
      do that flavor of it,
      but - with Nuclear -
      they're prepared for
      "windfall" profits,
      from selling to folks
      who fear NPP leaks, ..
      (~half of Germany's
      states' people seem
      to)

      The French embrace
      Quality, N Amer'ns
      seem to like Qty. ;~(

      Original Nuclear spin
      incl'd "Too cheap to
      meter" (or sim.)

      Nuclear is
      Potential-
      Abundance

      • +1

        What's going on here?

        • Strange cryto txt, he lives up to VPN idea

  • +28

    At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought

    • -4

      either u like
      modern art or
      u don't…

  • +4

    Tor is free and secure.

    • -4

      I saw a friend's TOR-based BT client
      seemed Slow as Moleasses to me…

      [qBitTorrent wumpt it almost always]

      • +4

        When you route your traffic to random endpoints all over the world it is, of course, going to be much slower than if you took a direct route.

      • Wow what a surprise. The most secure things are slower. Who would have thought bouncing all over the world would slow things down.

  • VPN is offered as a service so service providers can charge users for it.

    • -2

      Today, yes…

      I don't deal in Present…
      I prefer the Future…

      Eg: MSRs fr ~2030

      YT "Pedersen TEDxCopenhagen"

      ThoriumRemix.com (start w/ 2011)

  • +16

    Wtf is this post?

    • -3

      RTF-Title

      It's a Debate+Poll Hybrid

      So many voices
      so few poll votes

    • +2

      i feel like posts like these are made so people would burn through their negs like instantly and have no leftovers for others.

      • I wouldn't even know there was a neg limit if people didn't keep mentioning it.

  • +1

    make your own vpn

    • -1

      So, there must be a HowTo around for that?

      PS Why should UNLIMITED VPN (VPN UNLIMITED?)
      need OpenVPN inside…?

      • There are plenty of HowTo's for creating your own VPN. I was running a VPN on amazon's free EC2 instance until recently. If you really want, I can send you the instructions to set one up.

      • What is Google?

  • +2

    Lolwut. So its like open source vs closed source - some free, some arent.

    • -2

      RTF-OP, which hypothesised
      a
      CrowdSource-funded project.

  • < Opera has got a VPN in 1 or more of its browsers,
    but I don't know if you can select a desto land.

    You can select from a list of regions with Opera but if you don't you are given a "default" server location.

    • Is Canada among them?

      (I miss some of CA's TV)

  • +2

    Cloudflare is bringing out a free VPN soon.

    https://one.one.one.one

    • 1.1.1.1's already on iOS, right?

      Oops! (1.)**3 1 is a DNS resolver
      not [yet] a VPN

  • +5

    I think, and I haven't read all of your essay, you're essentially describing TOR.

    Check out "that privacy guy" for VPN info and unbiased data on providers.

    • ok tnx

  • +3

    Why do you limit your lines to like 20 characters?

    • -7

      20's
      -way-
      too
      many

      &

      why
      not
      ?

  • +1

    Who would give you a free VPN when they have pay for server access which includes access to internet/bandwidth cost and power for these server.

    • -4

      RTF-OP

      We hope
      folka w/
      unlim'd
      plans'll
      use it &
      share
      b'width

  • TOR is pretty much this but limits the VPN communication protocol to HTTPS (aka browser web requests).
    There has been other attempts to do something similar but the problem is you will never be able provide anyone will enough incentive to keep a VPN endpoint running on their PC, the only reason TOR works is because it has been around for so long and even then it is super slow because of how few nodes there are (among a few other reasons) You will find it works fine during the day but is very slow at night.

  • +2

    There are such. They are called onion networks.

    See https://www.torproject.org/

  • +2

    Baysew needs a payrise

    Seriously stop trolling with your way of sentence formatting, it's just immature.

  • There is a volunteer-run VPN Relay Server: https://www.vpngate.net/en/

  • +1

    This entire post hurts to read. There are free VPN's out there, the paid ones just provide trust and quality as they are selling a service. PIA for example is fast, and proven in court that they don't store session data - whereas something like Hola is free, and does the job, but at the risk of your connection being abused maliciously.
    It's a business offering a service. Someone can build a free VPN solution, but it'd be charity work - and no one would bother with that. It's like saying food should be free because it comes from the ground.
    I'd rather pay, and receive good, high quality and safe food, rather than stand in the bread line for my daily rations made by who knows.

    • Also your poll options are "agree with me or you hate money and are dumb"

  • +4

    No hablo espanol.

  • If computers were used as VPN Servers how would one's traffic differentiate from the actual owners traffic? This thing would be a cluster shitter, you'll have the AFP at your doorstep, rather than the AFP inquiring to a legitimate VPN company or a datacenter. What would be the point of using a VPN if you are allowing other people to take your identity essentially with the use of your IP? Free VPNs always comes with a price, someone needs to pay for things.

  • +1

    If you run a node for such a service, and another user uploads contraband via your node, you're (profanity).

    If you want a free vpn, download the Opera web browser and enable the built in vpn. That's sufficient to keep the horn pub out of the ISP metadata retention database.

  • +1

    You've basically just described TOR.

    The problem is by making it community based it's essentially un-secure. If you control an exit node you can easily monitor who ever is using your node.

    PIA is cheap and a good service anyway.

  • +1

    yes and fuel should be free, houses should be free cause you can build it yourself

    What else should be free op?

    • +2

      Land should be free. It was free when someone turned up and said 'this is mine!', so that freedom should extend to everyone in the future. I demand everyone works for me for free!

      • Free to say it's 'mine'. Expensive to ensure it stays yours.

  • Did you use to play World of Warcraft under the handle Vi?

  • Have you looked at CloudFlare's Warp, OP?

    They are essentially adding a freemium VPN to their 1.1.1.1 DNS resolution offering. It promises to be fast/free and easy to use… I'm still on the queue waiting to test it out though :(

  • There already is one - it's call TOR.

    Don't expect it to be fast though. Good enough for web browsing.

    • I think OP already aware of it but wants a freebie that performs as well as the usual paid services.

  • +5

    You have the worst grammar that I have ever seen.

  • +4

    Must be school holidays

  • +2

    As others have stated, thats Tor.

    I pay around $1 to $1.50 a month (USD) for a VPN (PIA, Nord, PureVPN) during the sales, i sure are hell don't want my connection being an endpoint for other peoples nefarious uses, not only does it eat bandwidth and quota, it opens you up to legal issues.

  • I am not sure you understand what a VPN is used for. VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. and yes its relatively easy to set one up. OpenVPN is the preeminent Open Source software to do that.

    Now VPN's are as they say a Virtual PRIVATE Network. Primarily they are used for businesses or workgroups to have their own secure networks running on top of the internet. So an office in one location can have a secure connection to an office in another location. That other location can be in another country.

    What a lot of people think a VPN is, is a way to torrent videos/music without getting caught or watch netflix bypassing geo restrictions. That's NOT what a VPN is but can be used as a secure proxy that enables that type of feature.

    However why would I let you use my bandwidth to steal video's or music or whatever other stupid thing you are thinking of using it for? Because law enforcement will assume its me doing the lawbreaking.

    Do I want to risk being busted for you? No I don't.

  • i walked into my local maccas and told them big macs should be free

    they threw a pickle in my face

    • How much did they charge you for the pickle?

  • +1

    Why screw over the IT guys? Maaan I gots five kids to feed…

  • hope so

  • +2

    Obvious troll. Mods please lock and throw away the keys

  • -1

    Look I don't know a lot about VPNs other than I use one for work, and the comments about why your suggestion doesn't work just highlights my lack of knowledge here. Which brings me to - this is technical expertise that takes people time to learn. It may seem like nothing to the engineers on here but for those of us who don't live and breathe computers (anymore!), what you're talking about takes time, expertise, and experience. How on earth can you expect these things for free?

    • may seem like nothing to the engineers

      OP probably isn't an engineer.

      How on earth can you expect these things for free?

      OP's hypothetical vpn is a peer to peer distributed network, kind of like bittorrent and bitcoin. It wouldn't need a centralised monthly expenses) server like most web services. The users are paying for compute and network resources (their PCs and home internet connections are doing the work).

      As for building the software, there are plenty of excellent open-source programs out there built buy volunteers, many of them as hobbies in their spare time.

      A system like this already exists (albeit closed source), it's called hola, but I wouldn't recommend it.

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