NordVPN: Why the False Allegations are Wrong

DooKey

DooKey

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A couple of days ago we brought you a story about NordVPN and accusations that they were reselling customer bandwidth. This is the other side of the story and NordVPN is denying all the accusations and claims it is a concerted troll effort based upon a patent infringement lawsuit that has nothing to do with the allegations. They claim the inaccuracy of the allegations is easily verifiable and that they are speaking out for the sake of their reputation. Their response seems to make sense and it's worth reading their side of the story before you throw them under the bus.

We understand that these facts alone may not be enough to clear our name. Therefore, we are hiring one of the largest professional service firms in the world to run an independent audit and verify our ‘no logs’ claim. The audit is expected to be completed within 2 months and will independently verify that the accusations are false.
 
It's all hearsay and conjecture until it's proven in court. Until then, I won't believe either side. If the one making the claim against NordVPN has real evidence, they need to provide it in a court of law.
 
We've hired one of the best security experts in Russia.... oh, dang it!
 
So the logging thing is I guess a theoretical possibility (and is such with any VPN that you don't personally control, that's just a matter of trust), but the other accusation just seems dumb... Hola only works via an app cause it's a kinda sketchy P2P thing, while Nord offers OpenVPN or IKEv2/IPsec as connection options. How on earth would Nord resell customer bandwidth over OpenVPN.
 
Jaquile said:
So the logging thing is I guess a theoretical possibility (and is such with any VPN that you don't personally control, that's just a matter of trust), but the other accusation just seems dumb... Hola only works via an app cause it's a kinda sketchy P2P thing, while Nord offers OpenVPN or IKEv2/IPsec as connection options. How on earth would Nord resell customer bandwidth over OpenVPN.
Click to expand...

GET YOUR BANDWIDTH, RED HOT BANDWIDTH! ROCK BOTTOM PRICES, FRESH OFF THE MODEM! GET IT WHILE ITS HOT!!!*

*may also be heavily encrypted and thusly totally unusable
 
Its weird I have their 3 year subscription. They happened to be the fastest VPN for me by far. I got 1 gig connection unlimited internet from AT&T gigapower. I only flip NORD VPN on sometimes, most of the times just regular browsing. So during that time if they use my pipe and still provide me with fastest vpn speed. I really cant be mad lol. But I honestly doubt they are.

Their service is the only VPN service that goes in to 120+ mbps over vpn. Most vpn's I tried choked my connection down to 20mbps or so.
 
Jaquile said:
How on earth would Nord resell customer bandwidth over OpenVPN.
Click to expand...

Not that big of a leap though. Companies do shady stuff like that all the time. Verizon does it, as they offer a few Cell Service over IP devices that the consumer can install in their own home / office to build out Verizon coverage if it's insufficient (dead area).

The issue is, the majority of these devices lack security protocols that limit the devices that can connect to it. So ANY Verizon customer can connect within range and use your bandwidth. They don't readily admit this unless you ask them very pointed questions. In that sense, Verizon is using your resources (land/power/internet) to provide better coverage for their network to any Verizon customer.

Supposedly the latest unit just launched allows the use of a PIN code for authentication, but I haven't tested it.
 
NKD said:
Its weird I have their 3 year subscription. They happened to be the fastest VPN for me by far. I got 1 gig connection unlimited internet from AT&T gigapower. I only flip NORD VPN on sometimes, most of the times just regular browsing. So during that time if they use my pipe and still provide me with fastest vpn speed. I really cant be mad lol. But I honestly doubt they are.

Their service is the only VPN service that goes in to 120+ mbps over vpn. Most vpn's I tried choked my connection down to 20mbps or so.
Click to expand...

I get about 550mbps using PIA, and it only adds 4-6ms to my ping, so I run it permanently on my entire network using OpenVPN in my pfSense router.

I pay for Gigabit, but I have no problem getting "only" 550mbit over VPN. It is still plenty fast.

Without VPN:

90610_upload_2017-9-24_15-59-7.png





With VPN:

90611_upload_2017-9-24_15-59-31.png



Worth noting is that if I use their VPN app on a phone or computer I get nowhere near these speeds. I suspect the app doesn't use proper AES-NI acceleration.

If I do it using OpenVPN on my pfSense router with hardware acceleration on it gets me up to about 550mbit most of the time. I suspect this is a remote limitation of either bandwidth or encryption hardware, as my router gets nowhere near full load (~27% at most) when I max out at about 550.
 
Spidey329 said:
Not that big of a leap though. Companies do shady stuff like that all the time. Verizon does it, as they offer a few Cell Service over IP devices that the consumer can install in their own home / office to build out Verizon coverage if it's insufficient (dead area).

The issue is, the majority of these devices lack security protocols that limit the devices that can connect to it. So ANY Verizon customer can connect within range and use your bandwidth. They don't readily admit this unless you ask them very pointed questions. In that sense, Verizon is using your resources (land/power/internet) to provide better coverage for their network to any Verizon customer.

Supposedly the latest unit just launched allows the use of a PIN code for authentication, but I haven't tested it.
Click to expand...

It's a really huge leap if using OpenVPN or IKEv2/IPsec.
Using either of those, you're not using an app from the VPN provider, it's either a crossplatform opensource gpl'd thingy (OpenVPN), or a built in to almost every operating system VPN Protocol (IKEv2/IPsec) ...so unless there's some super secret magic sauce that Nord has found and no one else knows about, they don't even remotely support the capability of sharing bandwidth in this fashion.

This is exceedingly different than the Verizon cell spots, where it's all their proprietary hardware and software piggy backing on your connection.
 
Normally vpn scandals are about logging, but this was a different accusation akin to the hola vpn scandal. All these words in that parts still not addressed.

I have nord vpn but it freezes and disconnects a few times an hour on desktop and mobile. Usually the static IP options are less frequent more like once am hour. But the speeds for p2p are slower.

I want to like nord but too many annoyances and these red flags. Oh well 2 years left on my account.
 
NKD said:
Its weird I have their 3 year subscription. They happened to be the fastest VPN for me by far. I got 1 gig connection unlimited internet from AT&T gigapower. I only flip NORD VPN on sometimes, most of the times just regular browsing. So during that time if they use my pipe and still provide me with fastest vpn speed. I really cant be mad lol. But I honestly doubt they are.

Their service is the only VPN service that goes in to 120+ mbps over vpn. Most vpn's I tried choked my connection down to 20mbps or so.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure over seen people on PIA get well over that, just FYI if you ever look for other options down the road
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I get about 550mbps using PIA, and it only adds 4-6ms to my ping, so I run it permanently on my entire network using OpenVPN in my pfSense router.

I pay for Gigabit, but I have no problem getting "only" 550mbit over VPN. It is still plenty fast.


Worth noting is that if I use their VPN app on a phone or computer I get nowhere near these speeds. I suspect the app doesn't use proper AES-NI acceleration.

If I do it using OpenVPN on my pfSense router with hardware acceleration on it gets me up to about 550mbit most of the time. I suspect this is a remote limitation of either bandwidth or encryption hardware, as my router gets nowhere near full load (~27% at most) when I max out at about 550.
Click to expand...

How do you watch netflix?
 
BoiseTech said:
How do you watch netflix?
Click to expand...

I don't :p

But if I wanted to, I could easily set up a firewall rule in my pfSense router to bypass the VPN for Netflix and Netflix only.

I did this with my windows desktop boot. I wanted to minimize in game pings (tuns out I didn't really need to worry about it) and I never do anything but games in Windows, so I figured I wouldn't lose much by just bypassing the VPN for my windows install by its internal IP address.

For a device used to stream Netflix, I could either have the entire device bypass the VPN based on internal IP, or I could try to figure out which Netflix servers it depends on, and bypass the VPN based on external address.

The firewall rules are very flexible!
 
Vaulter98c said:
I'm pretty sure over seen people on PIA get well over that, just FYI if you ever look for other options down the road
Click to expand...

I tried. I think it really depends on you ISP. I think I tested PIA too but I cant say for sure. I tried many I got the best performance with Nord. I can see if PIA has a test available then I will retest it.
 
its not free but just something to keep in your pocket if you ever want to change directions, no need to jump out of a perfectly good aircraft lol, running through team viewer to one of my servers back home I was able to hit about 80 out of a 100mbps line on a torrent the other day, I have no clue if it could have gone faster and was just held up based on seeders but I can't really do better testing until I get something better than 100mb at home lol
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I get about 550mbps using PIA, and it only adds 4-6ms to my ping, so I run it permanently on my entire network using OpenVPN in my pfSense router.

I pay for Gigabit, but I have no problem getting "only" 550mbit over VPN. It is still plenty fast.

<SNIP>


Worth noting is that if I use their VPN app on a phone or computer I get nowhere near these speeds. I suspect the app doesn't use proper AES-NI acceleration.

If I do it using OpenVPN on my pfSense router with hardware acceleration on it gets me up to about 550mbit most of the time. I suspect this is a remote limitation of either bandwidth or encryption hardware, as my router gets nowhere near full load (~27% at most) when I max out at about 550.
Click to expand...

Confirmed - I have PIA also and get about 500 - 600Mbit, totally sufficient for my needs. Been a happy customer for 4 years now just about.
 
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