Anything but Safe: Using VPN Can Bear Immense Risks

Posted3 months agoActive3 months ago

abawany

21 points

5 comments

dw.comTechstory

skepticalnegative

Debate

20/100

VPNOnline SecurityPrivacy

Key topics

VPN

Online Security

Privacy

The article discusses the risks associated with using certain VPN services, and the discussion revolves around the safety of using VPNs and alternative solutions.

Snapshot generated from the HN discussion

Discussion Activity

Light discussion

First comment

Peak period

2-3h

Avg / period

1.7

Key moments

01Story posted
Sep 20, 2025 at 2:45 PM EDT
3 months ago
Step 01
02First comment
Sep 20, 2025 at 5:21 PM EDT
3h after posting
Step 02
03Peak activity
2 comments in 2-3h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03
04Latest activity
Sep 20, 2025 at 7:56 PM EDT
3 months ago
Step 04

Generating AI Summary...

Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns

Discussion (5 comments)

Showing 5 comments

sterlind

3 months ago

2 replies

> Among the apps described as "highly concerning" are Turbo VPN, VPN Proxy Master, XY VPN, and 3X VPN – Smooth Browsing, each of which has been downloaded 100 million times from the Google Play Store. Thus, hundreds of millions of internet users believe they are enjoying a level of security that does not exist.

I've never once heard of any of these. And those download numbers seem more like bots pumping the stats. No way are 100,000,000 humans using "VPN Proxy Master."

This is a low-effort article.

nom

3 months ago

1 reply

I do believe hundreds of millions of people have searched for "free VPN" in play store, looked at the great ratings, installed one of them and it even worked perfectly so they rate they all 5 stars too and tell everyone at school.

The numbers are so high because the grift works well. Offer a free VPN service, turn it into nodes for your residential proxy network and rent it out for spam, crawling, ddos or whatever.

technion

3 months ago

Forget about schools, manage any large enough corporate environment and you've heard of most of these. The moment management software blocks the install of a product you can expect you expect an angry demand for an explanation, and ive been on the receiving end of such demands for basically every free VPN product ever.

nojs

3 months ago

It’s an ad for ProtonVPN

karteum

3 months ago

If using a VPN service is deemed unsafe, it's still possible to book your own VM or server with a full root access, and then setup your own openvpn/wireguard connection.

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ID: 45316103Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 5:36:19 PM

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