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Proton analyzed 7,000+ mobile VPN apps. 64 apps actively collect physical location via GPS or other geolocation, 3 are owned by market research firms, and 85% of them contain trackers. (protonvpn.com)
submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1366113/proton-analyzed-7000-mobile-vpn-apps-64-apps-actively-collect-physical-location-via-gps

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[–] 82 points 4 days ago (5 children)

Any chance of seeing the list broken down by ownership and trackers?

It seems a bit pointless otherwise.

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  • [–] 95 points 4 days ago (2 children)

    Not important, this is just a disguised advertisement for Proton VPN.

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  • [–] 66 points 4 days ago (2 children)
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  • [–] -2 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    I don't see a problem with that.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    It can be healthy to question your sources and their motives. 👍

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  • [–] 4 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    Proton is a stellar VPN, but people cannot live without dragging out an old twitter post about a CEO praising the instauration of some judge by trump. That's it. That's all the critic that has been found over the years.

    Mullvad is super fasho and show me one that doesn't store and sell all the data...

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago (1 child)

    people cannot live without dragging out an old twitter post

    Kind of like that Nazi salute people just can't seem to forget, gosh.

    Proton is a stellar VPN.

    🤷‍♂️ Perhaps it is. Perhaps Teslas are great cars.

    Show me one that doesn't store and sell all the data...

    Ah yes, well, if everyone is doing it... 🫪👍👍

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Praising a democratically elected moron because he appointed a specific judge? Believe it or not, Nazi.

    Guess everything you don't like is nazi nazi nazi lol.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 days ago*

    I didn't say the CEO of Proton was a Nazi, lol.

    I think you misunderstood how they were similar to each other. Not the Nazi part, but how people don't easily forget things that break their trust.

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  • [–] [S] 49 points 4 days ago (4 children)
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  • [–] 46 points 4 days ago

    Its unfortunate they really only name and shame random shovelware vpns it looks like. So it feels difficult to tell whether their points apply to any other real options people have heard of before...

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  • [–] 26 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    Yeah, it would be nice to have an actual list so we're not reliant on their numbers alone. But unfortunately telling only half the story is something Proton seems to do quite a lot.

    On the bright side, the actual privacy data for this was by Proton's own admission from Exodus, so while its probably not feasible for you to skim 65K apps on your own, you can at least see the data for specific VPN apps you might be worried about.

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  • [–] 11 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    They listed a few in their article, but yeah a full list would be nice.

    Three of the VPN services we looked at are actually owned by market research companies: ‎Phone Guardian Safe WiFi (Sensor Tower), My Mobile Secure VPN (Comscore), and Urban VPN (BiScience, which has been been shown to capture user conversations across several services and share them with AI chat platforms).

    In what many could reasonably see as the ultimate act of betrayal, 64 VPN apps actively track your physical location using GPS and other geolocation data. [...] These apps include some of the most popular VPNs in the US, such as VPN Proxy Master, VPN-Fast VPN Super, and X-VPN

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