this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2026
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[–] Babalugats@feddit.uk 65 points 1 day ago (5 children)

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

It seems a bit pointless otherwise.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 81 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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

[–] tb_@lemmy.world 54 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] victorz@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I know lol, I was being facetious. 😉

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I don't see a problem with that.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 4 points 9 hours ago

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

[–] beep@piefed.world 38 points 23 hours ago (3 children)
[–] artyom@piefed.social 17 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

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

[–] Cris_Citrus@piefed.zip 42 points 23 hours 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...

[–] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 23 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 13 hours ago

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

[–] Th4tGuyII@fedia.io 22 points 1 day 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 1 day ago (1 children)

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

[–] Th4tGuyII@fedia.io 6 points 23 hours 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 11 points 23 hours ago

It’s an ad for Proton. Obviously.

[–] Zarobi@aussie.zone 8 points 1 day 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 18 points 1 day ago

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