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Re: Avoiding ad-hoc provider-branded OpenVPN clients (was: python-pip is


From: Dmitry Alexandrov
Subject: Re: Avoiding ad-hoc provider-branded OpenVPN clients (was: python-pip is broken after updates)
Date: Tue, 26 May 2020 04:08:36 +0300
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/28.0.50 (gnu/linux)

address@hidden wrote:
> An advice about using protonvpn is not safe.

Is that supposed to be a reply to me, despite you have been addressing 
@address@hidden?

If so, Iʼve said nothing negative about ‘safety’ of protonvpn.com.

(Though, I could of course: their Tor gateway or rather the way they advertise 
it tells a lot about how they regard their usersʼ safety.  Thankfully, itʼs not 
available on gratis plan.)

> If the software is opensource programmers can check if it is safe or not.

Except, that there is zero need in doing that, when ad-hoc software can be 
simply avoided.  Thatʼs even more so on GNU, where OpenVPN support is 
well-integrated into end-user networking configurators (such as ‘Network 
Manager’).

But let us recall, that business interests of any service provider push them to 
limit the official support of standard solutions in favour of getting as much 
users as possible addicted to their branded software.

In fact, some proxy-on-top-of-VPN-providers, which are fine with driving some 
users away — like donation-based riseup.net — have already _ceased_ to 
officially support anything but their branded clients.  Under the hood they 
still use the normal OpenVPN, of course, so itʼs possible to extract the 
configuration, but you would not find it anywhere on their website.

Therefore, please keep in mind, that what you are doing by installing a branded 
ad-hoc software instead of supplying generic client with credentials (besides 
acquiring technical problems for yourself) is contributing your mite to 
promoting vendor lock-in.


> In Russia protonmail.com is blocked I did not know why

Itʼs not hard to discover: https://roskomsvoboda.org/54951/

> but after I've discovered protonvpn I understood why.

Nope.  Googling is usually better than wild guessing.  protonvpn.com is _not_ 
blacklisted in Russia [1].

[1] https://reestr.rublacklist.net/search/?q=protonvpn.com

> The same is for tutanota mail.

Yes, paradoxically enough, sometimes even state censorship should be thanked 
for opposing companies, that are trying to finish off the open Internet, such 
as tutanota.io or (less so) protonmail.com.  (Though censors obviously have 
their own reasons for doing it.)

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