• AbidanYre@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I’ve heard good things about Mullvad, never heard of Amnezia. This coming from WhatsApp makes me immediately suspicious of both.

    • Otter@lemmy.ca
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      1 month ago

      Supposedly Amnezia is an anti censorship tool, however Facebook has a terrible track record with recommending VPNs. The previous one turned out to be spyware

      Onavo, Inc. was an Israeli mobile web analytics company that was purchased by Facebook, Inc. (now Meta Platforms), who changed the company’s name to Facebook Israel.[1] The company primarily performed its activities via consumer mobile apps, including the virtual private network (VPN) service Onavo Protect, which analysed web traffic sent through the VPN to provide statistics on the usage of other apps.

      Guy Rosen and Roi Tiger founded Onavo in 2010. In October 2013, Onavo was acquired by Facebook, which used Onavo’s analytics platform to monitor competitors. This influenced Facebook to make various business decisions, including its 2014 acquisition of WhatsApp.

      Since the acquisition, Onavo was frequently classified as being spyware, as the VPN was used to monetize application usage data collected within an allegedly privacy-focused environment. In August 2018, Facebook was forced to pull Onavo Protect from the iOS App Store due to violations of Apple’s policy forbidding apps from collecting data on the usage of other apps. In February 2019, in response to criticism over a Facebook market research program employing similar techniques (including, in particular, being targeted towards teens), Onavo announced that it would close the Android version of Protect as well.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amnezia_VPN

  • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    They’re giving good advice but, in my opinion, they are using the reputation of Mullvad to ‘privacy-wash’ their public image by associating with a trusted brand.

    WhatsApp is not a secure messaging service, your messages are not private. Being end to end encrypted doesn’t mean anything if both ends are compromised by having the app installed on them (or being vendor rooted).

  • RandomDude@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    I’ve never heard of Amnezia VPN, but agree with Mullvad. ProtonVPN is also up there

  • nucleative@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Been with mullvad for a very long time but this scares the crap out of me and I might have to bail soon.

    • Nindelofocho@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I think this might be a multi level move to get you to do just that (and to push whatever that other vpn is) Imo the best thing to do is disregard anything meta says and keep up your own diligence

  • mr_noxx@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    My guess is that this has more to do with the slew of recent bans on social media for youngsters. Think of all that lost ad revenue!

  • Feyd@programming.dev
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    1 month ago

    If amnezia is sus they probably added mullvad to lend credibility to the overall statement