techlore / vpn-reviews

Transparent, community-driven VPN tools.

Techlore VPN Toolkit

Transparent, open source VPN tools for your privacy & security 🔐

Our goal is to give users the tools to make educated decisions on what makes a VPN 'good', and what they realistically accomplish. To view our full VPN ToolKit Click Here

This repo has been archived. Development for our VPN Toolkit can be found directly in our website's repo - thanks everyone!

vpn-reviews's Issues

Remove two providers from the honest marketing section

I took a closer look at all the services that still have the check for honest marketing and found two additional services that don't deserve it, in my opinion.

StrongVPN: Let's start with this statement: "Right now, your private data is at risk without a VPN. It’s not too late to take action — use StrongVPN to shield your personal information from the spying eyes of your ISP..." My biggest issue with this is their use of urgency and fear to market their service.

Here is another statement: "Anonymous Browsing" "With the protection of StrongVPN, your browsing history and activity will be virtually invisible. Stay hidden from any prying eyes by using one of our anonymous IP addresses and surf the web without a trace." A little over the top, would you say? You can find both of these on this page.

HideMyAss: This one is shorter, but using disinformation to sell your service is unacceptable. "Why get a VPN for privacy? Because without a VPN, you don’t have any. A VPN encrypts your connection to the internet, keeping your info safe from spies and hackers, while connecting you to a remote server to hide your IP address, so governments, your ISP, and more can’t see what you do online." The biggest problem is the claim that you supposedly cannot have privacy on the internet without a VPN. Even though this may seem like a relatively small thing, I think it is a big and false claim that should not be tolerated. https://www.hidemyass.com/privacy

Is Surfshark helping privacy causes?

Hi! While Surfshark is still not open-source (and probably never will be), I found this on the surfshark site about supporting the open internet:

But the VPN chart says this:

Are these organizations considered as privacy causes too?

Combining Both Killswitch Categories on the Chart

There is (understandably) a bit of confusion surrounding the killswitch categories on the chart.

Some services have a system KS but no app-based KS, which currently appears to be a negative attribute since an app-based KS is its own category. Ex. Mullvad

It makes more sense to combine these categories into an all-encompassing “kill switch” category and offer the following options within it:

• None
• Program-Basis
• System

This should avoid the confusion.

Investigate Privacy Criteria Values

The NordVPN 2020 review brings up a valid concern over whether site/app trackers should be worth more in the privacy category. This needs to be investigated.

Licensing?

Figure out licensing (if any) for our VPN data.

Changed nordvpn stability and usability score to score to a 1

Nordvpn recently became unusable on iso and ubuntu with sometimes it works on ios

Mullvad supports killswitch

Misleading Marketing Mislabeled in Protocol

The way ‘misleading marketing’ is labeled in both privacy & security categories is inaccurate. It should be flipped yes/no. Scores were not impacted, this is simply a formatting issue that needs fixing.

404 Error on repo landing page for first "Click Here" link to https://techlore.tech/vpnchart

Thanks for all the work you do. When coming here to review these efforts on GitHub I clicked on the "Click Here" link on the repo's landing page: https://github.com/techlore/VPN-reviews

Specifically, To view our full VPN comparison chart Click Here | Contribute Here

Notice that the first link gives a 404 error for the following: https://techlore.tech/vpnchart (at the time of this issue submission).

This is easily fixed by updating the source documentation to offer a working link, or updating the existing web template/url path.

Investigate/Implement Windscribe & x509 verification for VPNs

TLDR: Need to decide how this impacts things on our chart: https://blog.windscribe.com/ukrainian-server-seizure-a-commentary-and-state-of-the-industry-e71e8d205b26

Remove the checkmark for honest marketing for three providers

Ivacy, WeVPN, and PIA do not deserve the check for honest marketing. Here are the reasons.

Ivacy: Their reasoning for using a VPN is just straight-up fearmongering. Take a look at this page. I could give some examples here, but the page does more justice to their disgusting marketing. In my opinion, Ivacy is probably the worst offender when it comes to services that have received the checkmark.

WeVPN: Their "Do I really need a VPN" answer tells quite a lot about them as a company: "Every hour, more than 1,000 people have their identities stolen in the US alone, often on the internet. Using a reliable VPN service like WeVPN is one of your best defenses against online identity theft and fraud. Additionally, WeVPN blocks ads, trackers and malware from infecting your device and its powerful VPN encryption and privacy features prevent websites, hackers, government agencies and your ISP from tracking your every move, making it a must have tool for anyone that uses the internet." So, according to them, a VPN is a must-have tool for protecting against identity thefts. Again, they should be definitely removed from the list.

PIA: "Keep your data encrypted for extra security. Don’t let anyone get their hands on unencrypted emails, pictures, banking details, or anything else best kept private." It probably goes without saying that VPN is not really useful for this kind of purpose that HTTPS is already doing.

Adding whether the VPN owns the server or rents them to the chart

Hi,
I don't know if this is the correct channel to suggest this. But I wanted to suggest to include in the VPN chart whether the VPN owns the server or is renting them. I know the logging policy should be enough but from what i understood the hosts can see everything on their machines.

Including User Reviews of Apps

Currently, user experience of mobile applications is entirely dependent on my personal experience. There should be a way of incorporating the reviews of possibly thousands of users into the review protocol.

No current ideas on the logistics, but this is something that makes sense to include in the protocol to make data more crowdsourced

Speedteam results need to have same fields

As working on Speedteam visualizer in a dedicated page ,after fetching the data , the table can't relate the connection of 2 specific fields .
There is like IVPN.csv that have a Mega Download % speedtest but then other csv like Astrill.csv that doesn't have the Mega Download % , and instead it have Ubuntu Download Test.

Suggestion to use the same field test for any test results

Suggestion: VPN Chart - Freeze First Column and Row

Hi, I would like to suggest adding an option to freeze the first column and row since as the list grows, it's really hard to navigate if you're at the rightmost columns already.

When in there, it's really hard to see if the row you're looking at is the same VPN you were looking at when you're on the leftmost section of the chart.

This experience goes more awful if you're on mobile view.

Add testing methodology for Wireguard

Profiles and instructions aren't available for Wireguard.

Creating Stricter Anonymous Payment Requirements

Requiring cash, Monero, or Gift cards for all points for anonymous payments.

Figure out an issue to Netflix/streaming

This is a difficult topic, since status of VPN streaming compatibility with popular services like Netflix is ongoing and constantly changing. However, with a crowd-sourced approach like we're trying to build, this may be possible. After our site overhaul is complete, we'll be looking to find a way to incorporate streaming into reviews.

Typo in the readme - influence spelled as influece

Publish Speed Team Methodology

The speed team needs a document explaining who testers are, how we select them, and how we test with them.

Add Section Requirements (Instant Fails)

Something that will likely be incorporated is instant fails for each section.

The most notable example is the security requirement: Changes IP Address

If a service is unable to change a user's IP address, most of the other precautions being evaluated are practically useless. With our current system, it's possible for a service to score over 4/5 in security and still not change a user's IP Address. This has yet to happen (and is unlikely) - but it makes more sense to formally introduce "must-haves" & requirements for a service to be given a score. This will be introduced in a fair way to avoid this problem.

Create Documentation

Many users appreciate the data, but not all users know how to make sense of the data. To help explain data-points and help users make educated decisions, we will be developing documentation to help clear things up.

Surfshark server infrastructure independent audit

I don't know if this is the right place but surfshark had a new Infrastructure audit happen on its by Cure53 but it seem like the VPN chart has not been updated with this info.
https://surfshark.com/blog/surfshark-server-infrastructure-undergoes-independent-audit
https://surfshark.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/SRF-02-summary.pdf

Should ProtonVPN's usage score be higher?

Hi again, another question: Should ProtonVPN's usage score be higher now that it's included WireGuard and their Linux client is out of beta?

https://github.com/ProtonVPN/linux-app
https://protonvpn.com/download-linux

There's also an android TV app and Chromebook app.

https://protonvpn.com/download-androidtv
https://protonvpn.com/download-chromebook

Including VPN Audits

Audits are an additional metric we can utilize to evaluate trust towards a VPN service. Implementing a method of including VPN audits should eventually be included.