The DARK side of VPNs

It turns out that an overwhelming number of VPNs are actively harvesting and selling your data, capturing passwords / credentials / movements from your web activities, and doing all sorts of awful things.

VPNs can be super useful: to help you watch the Netflix catalogue of another country, avoid government surveillance and censorship under oppressive regimes, hide your IP address from websites, stay safe on public wifi, and stop your ISP from spying on your internet activities.

But it REALLY depends on which VPN you’re using.

In this video we’re going to explore which VPN companies own which review sites, which VPN permissions demand far too much access to your machine, which code has appalling security, and the giant red flags in a lot of this code that scream data collection.

00:00 Private Private Super Secret Secure VPN!
00:42 Intro
02:33 What VPNs Do
04:17 The Risk of Free VPN Services
05:30 1clickVPN
07:15 FreeVPN
08:44 ZenMate
10:03 AZA VPN and HULA VPN
11:29 NordVPN and ExpressVPN
14:01 Kape Technologies
15:23 Ziff Davis and White Labeling
16:42 Chinese Data Collection
18:04 Affiliate Sponsorships
18:57 Final Tips
19:21 Support NBTV/Outro

When you’re choosing a VPN or other tools for your privacy arsenal, it’s a good idea to do your own research and see what the security experts are saying. There’s some great information out there, but you do need to learn how to look for it.

Special Thanks to Jonathan Tomek for sharing his awesome research with us for this video!

More details in Consumer Reports:

Brought to you by NBTV members: Lee Rennie, Reuben Yap, Sam Ettaro, Will Sandoval, and Naomi Brockwell.

To support NBTV, visit:
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Our eBook "Beginner's Introduction To Privacy:

Beware of scammers, I will never give you a phone number or reach out to you with investment advice. I do not give investment advice.

Visit the NBTV website:

Watch this video on Odysee!

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Here are a bunch of products I like and use. Using these links helps support the channel and future videos!

Recommended Books:

Beginner's Introduction To Privacy - Naomi Brockwell

Permanent Record - Edward Snowden

What has the government done to our money - Rothbard

Extreme Privacy - Michael Bazzel (The best privacy book I've ever read)

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State - Glenn Greenwald

Some of my favorite products to help protect your privacy!

Faraday bag (signal stopping, to protect your fob, credit card, computer, and phone)

Data Blocker (if you're charging your phone in an unknown port, use this so that no data is transferred)

Camera tape (electrical tape is the best tape for covering phone and computer cameras)

USB-C to ethernet adapter:

Privacy Screens (use your phone and computer in public? Keep your information safe!)

Computer: (Search for the size right for your computer)

Phone: (Search for the size for your phone, decide whether you want glass or plastic!)

[NaomiBrockwellTV]

Important note based on the comments:

Many people are saying this video made them NOT want to use a VPN at all.

YOU SHOULD USE A VPN!
Just make sure it’s a good one.

Most people like mullvad.
I also like ProtonVPN and use it because it’s super stable, but have heard some conflicting stories, so make up your own mind there 🙏

[alexandremassaro]

You know when someone values quality over money when she puts herself on the blacklist of half her possible sponsors in one video

[italimarco]

Your mocking impersonification of the typical Instagram influencer is awesome!

[ahmed_monis]

Since I became privacy aware I've tried Windscribe, Proton VPN & finally settled on Mullvad VPN. Doing research about the country's privacy laws where the VPN company resides is also important I might add. I did hear about VPNs that rely entirely on crypto such as orchid VPN I do hope you shed some light on it in a future video, as always thank you for everything you've done for the privacy and anonymity community.

[Sincityboi]

You have made it so much easier to keep up with the current bs in tech and made it super simple to share that with my friends! Thank you for all you do!

[shabadooshabadoo]

Naomi, red hair, good speaker, good sense of style, and extremely tech savvy. A bunch of not so common qualities in one bundle. And I'm pretty confident in my ability to know when some ones reading off a script that they didn't write. And I'm almost certain this info is straight out of your head and your own research.

Thank you for providing good info on a subject that often has a lot of bad opinions and in a digestible way.

[RTPTechTips]

*Simple Rule:* if you opt for VPN, choose one you trust more than your own ISP. You are essentially transferring (sharing) data your ISP would have, over to that VPN provider. Choose carefully.

[rty]

Being a CIO for over 35 yrs I have always told people to stay away from VPNs because 99% of people do not understand how a VPN actually works. Recently, because of covid, many company's have their own VPNs which are managed by thier own IT staff, but are also subject to content filtering firewalls as well with reverse IP lookups. These VPNs are great for doing remote working.

[cynicalthoughts]

I have been using express for over 2 years and I was kinda happy with them, at the time they were my best option but now... sigh 😕, I hope you make a video with potential good options to choose from Naomi.

[geofftaylor]

I always had my suspicions but man.. the vpn industries is just a giant private information harvesting scheme. Thanks so much for this episode.

[robonator]

it's mentioned in the pinned comment, but mullvad is super solid privacy wise. They go out of their way to explain exactly what they do and what they don't collect, they run their servers entirely in RAM (so no drives installed even capable of storing data) and generally just seem to be super trustworthy. You can do some more research on your own (and should) but they generally seem super reliable in every metric.

[loneranger]

Thank you for this invaluable information 👍👍 It is disgusting that on paying for a service the company is ripping you off by selling your data. Legalisation is required outlawing such practices.

[mikaellyssarides]

I've always been very sceptical to free and more or less free vpns. Almost every bigger site nowadays have ads that promise amazing protection against malware and almost everything else. The scariest thing I learned today was that a third of the programs are China based/owned.
Of course there are some legitimete uses for a VPN but they try to make people belive that as long as you have one nothing unpleasant can happen to you on the net while browsing.
Excellent post, as always, Naomi !

[johnnymidas]

ALWAYS APPRECIATE THE KNOWLEDGE YOU BRING US. 🙏 💯

[MrHarrilasagna]

Good luck indeed! At least we have you Naomi. I only use Proton VPN because they've stayed ahead of everyone else when it comes to encryption and open-source support. The addition of onion routers was just a bonus.

[ivanalonso]

Amazing video. Exemplary professionalism. Thanks for the great research and report, and also for the good-looking presentation in form and content.

[johnburkhart]

Thank you for taking the time to share information that we should ALL be aware of, but most of us just go through life accepting permissions without thinking. I've fallen prey to this myself. If I'm in a hurry and I need to download something, I won't take the time to read the EULA or permissions because I need it to finish a task or reach out to someone in a hurry. Slow down, do your OWN research, and make the best choices for your privacy.

[jamesfisher]

Naomi. Thank you for the work you do. It's so important that people are educated about what is happening in our society. Also I liked your latest Snapchat episode. People need to know where and how their privacy is being compromised.

[nully.emptier]

Great video... I'm using my own OpenVPN server on my own VPS server... no logging, no spying... this could be a good subject for YT video

[sharg]

Thank you so much for this! VPN's are a great tool for company infrastructure like giving the user access to files AND allowing the company to scan and control their client computers...
I left the IT industry over a decade ago so I've struggled with argumentation like this myself.
I have a bunch of people I'll send this to.

And lets not forget that a tunnel goes two ways, companies use them to push updates, scan and backup files etc - a VPN company can do the same unless the end user is very skilled in setting up a computer (and those that are so skilled will unlikely be in need of these services).