Note: I am not OOP, the OOP is u/lyf-ftw on r/privacy. I posted this here because I am also curious about URNetwork's privacy practices and I need a free VPN. I am really in a bad financial state right now, and I can't afford to pay subscriptions. And before anyone suggests to go with Proton's free VPN plan - the "privacy laws" in my country MANDATE all VPN providers to log their customers. Every VPN provider which have their app listed on Google Play Store and Apple App Store in our country MUST log their customers. When this bill passed in our country, some VPN providers made their apps unavailable to customers from our country on both the app stores. But Proton didn't, it's available for download on both the app stores till now. This sparked a lot of discussions online in forums related to our country (reddit and elsewhere). Many speculated that Proton accepted to log their customers in our country because they didn't want to lose their customer base in our country. Since then, whenever someone asks for VPN suggestions on forums related to our country the majority recommend not using Proton. The privacy conscious folks here mainly used VPN's listed on F-Droid. I used Mullvad VPN for a while but it had it's own issues- it randomly disconnected sometimes and expect from a few servers everything was slow. It was not worth paying a premium (over other VPN's) in my use case as I need 24/7 uninterrupted VPN and good speed. I can't pay for it now anyway. So here I am asking for free VPN suggestions.
Original post:
I came across URNetwork, a decentralized virtual private network (VPN) developed by BringYour, Inc. , whose team members hail from Palantir. The URNetwork Connect client, protocol, and API are published on GitHub. The team emphasizes an open-core philosophy to ensure privacy, security, and availability. They also claim to oppose censorship. The app is available on the official F-Droid repository, which is encouraging for users focused on open source and privacy. My main questions for the community are: Given the team's Palantir background, should we be more skeptical of their undisclosed data collection practices? Has an independent audit of their GitHub repository been performed, or has traffic been run through their network to verify their anonymity guarantees? Any insights, experiences, or pointers to deeper technical analyses would be greatly appreciated.
You can get proton VPN from f-droid, that does not link you to a country specific store.
You can also use Orbot, or InviziblePro (which incorporates Orbot) to use Tor on mobile.
I had never heard of this app, but ex Palantir, earning crypto money, and their website (which has Google tracking) put me off.
They have a 'Guest Mode' , I don't know how long or how much data you can use with it though. Otherwise you need to signup with phone number, email, or Solana address, all of which they store.
Cryptocurrency wallet addresses.
The city, region, and country of users._
Okay, a lot of red flags. Thanks for pointing it out to me.
TOR traffic is actively monitored in my country. So if I browse the internet via TOR I'll stand out. Most just use VPNs here. I'm not sure if my government is actively monitoring who's traffic goes through VPN tunnels but even if they do I can easily mingle as theres tons and tons of VPN users in my country.
Do you know if Tor Snowflake bridges are monitored as well?
You might want to use the proton VPN from F-Droid then. I remember reading that when India was going to ban VPN usage in the past that proton moved their servers to Singapore and used VPS to make it available in India.
Note that I have used proton previously but no longer do.
I am not sure about this. I'll have to do some research on this.
I am not really comfortable using Proton VPN. Atleast not while I'm residing in my country. Is there no other free VPN which the privacy community wholely agrees to be safe?
There is https://f-droid.org/packages/se.leap.riseupvpn/
And
https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/com.vpnhood.client.android.web
You can look at those. I personally would rate them as safe, I previously used both. I found rise up to be faster, though neither was 'fast', but it's been awhile since I used them.
Thanks for recommending vpnhood! I'll try it!