Besides that the claimed “Swiss privacy” is non existent - the Swiss NDB (their intelligence service) has far more rights than most other European agencies - especially against foreigners and still Swiss intelligence History is riddled with scandals - from a system of spy-filed on their own citizens in the 80ies that was on the level of the GDRs Stasi to a recent scandal (January24) that showed that basically all traffic in and out of Switzerland and most within Switzerland is monitored and that the NDB has used its enormous rights very extensively.
Additionally there is a second NSA like agency as well-so while I like Proton as a product I wouldn’t give a shit on their privacy claims.
Their support is terrible. Used it when I moved to China, after a few weeks it stopped working, their support ghosted me on three contact attempts. Never once got a reply or refund. Just silence.
Money. China was my 9th country, I’m a career project manager. Been going all over the world to where interesting projects and of course decent budgets are. Spent 19+ years abroad so far, wouldn’t give up that lifestyle.
I’ve recently read a comment saying the great Chinese firewall somehow “learns” that you are using a VPN. So people doing quick tests “yep VPN works” but then a little later it doesn’t work anymore. No clue if that is true though.
Sort of, they are blocking protocols based on the client-server-handshake. Protocols such as OpenVPN, IKSv2 or WireGuard which have a fixed handshake signature are preemptively blocked. They work occasionally if you are connecting to a previously unknown server, it takes maybe 10-30 min until the signature is identified and the connection killed.
Other VPN providers are using proprietary (home-made) protocols or at least modified ones that are harder to catch. Again others will use obfuscation to hide the actual handshake in some additional overlay traffic. Paired with UDP, where the server doesn’t send an acknowledgment flag back (as is the case with TCP) gives them some extra reach.
So far the only VPN that has consistently worked though is Astrill, I’ve switched there from Proton after about 4 months in the country and am using it in the 5th year now.
Proton seems to be pretty good too.
Besides that the claimed “Swiss privacy” is non existent - the Swiss NDB (their intelligence service) has far more rights than most other European agencies - especially against foreigners and still Swiss intelligence History is riddled with scandals - from a system of spy-filed on their own citizens in the 80ies that was on the level of the GDRs Stasi to a recent scandal (January24) that showed that basically all traffic in and out of Switzerland and most within Switzerland is monitored and that the NDB has used its enormous rights very extensively.
Additionally there is a second NSA like agency as well-so while I like Proton as a product I wouldn’t give a shit on their privacy claims.
Their support is terrible. Used it when I moved to China, after a few weeks it stopped working, their support ghosted me on three contact attempts. Never once got a reply or refund. Just silence.
Ok I might be downvoted to shit for this, but why would you move to China? Just curious 🤔
Money. China was my 9th country, I’m a career project manager. Been going all over the world to where interesting projects and of course decent budgets are. Spent 19+ years abroad so far, wouldn’t give up that lifestyle.
I’ve recently read a comment saying the great Chinese firewall somehow “learns” that you are using a VPN. So people doing quick tests “yep VPN works” but then a little later it doesn’t work anymore. No clue if that is true though.
Sort of, they are blocking protocols based on the client-server-handshake. Protocols such as OpenVPN, IKSv2 or WireGuard which have a fixed handshake signature are preemptively blocked. They work occasionally if you are connecting to a previously unknown server, it takes maybe 10-30 min until the signature is identified and the connection killed.
Other VPN providers are using proprietary (home-made) protocols or at least modified ones that are harder to catch. Again others will use obfuscation to hide the actual handshake in some additional overlay traffic. Paired with UDP, where the server doesn’t send an acknowledgment flag back (as is the case with TCP) gives them some extra reach.
So far the only VPN that has consistently worked though is Astrill, I’ve switched there from Proton after about 4 months in the country and am using it in the 5th year now.