Why you shouldn't pay with credit card or PayPal for a VPN service Payment methods that support anonymity can help keep your service account (e.g., your randomly generated IVPN Account ID) separate from your personal information tied to CC/Paypal. When paying with cash, Lightning, or XMR a trustworthy VPN provider only sees your IP address, with no ability to link it to revealing payment details. If the provider has no identifying data, they can't misuse it, leak it or share it with third parties. Paying with a credit card or PayPal exposes personally identifiable information to the service provider. Further, the payment gateway and each participants in the payment processing chain can learn you are using that specific provider. In the event of a leak, official request, or compromise, your use of the VPN service could be tied to you personally, and in the worst case your activities could be directly correlated to you as well. The above also highlights why you should use providers that don't require an email or other personal information to sign up and accept anonymity-friendly payment methods without an third-party. Should all of this matter to you? As we often remark, it all comes down to your personal threat model. What information you want to protect? Who are the adversaries? If you occasionally use a VPN to watch BBC iPlayer and you trust your provider, the risks are minimal. If you are concerned about potential compromise, or you might be at threat if your personal information is correlated to your activities, it's better to minimize the amount of information you (are required to) share.

A privacy guide series we recently wrapped up details the steps for self-auditing your VPN. It's a fairly technical series, but if you rely on a commercial VPN for privacy - no matter the provider - we recommend taking the time to work through these steps. That will help you verify that your VPN connection is working as intended, there are no leaks, and that your provider implemented important features like firewall and forward secrecy properly. In part one, we cover the initial setup, including installing WireShark for packet capture and analysis. You'll also learn to gather necessary details on your VPN's server, protocol, and port:

IVPN

Self audit your VPN - Pt1. - Getting started

While it is important to protect your privacy, it is also essential to trust your VPN provider with the proper implementation of its VPN service. W...

In part two, we show how to verify the details of a WireGuard VPN connection, including checking for leaks. This guide includes verification of v2Ray obfuscation and post-quantum resistant encryption:

IVPN

Self audit your VPN - Pt2. - WireGuard Configuration and Leaks

This guide is part of a series that will show you how to self-audit a VPN tunnel for data leak. The current guide is the part two and focuses on Wi...

Part three we do the same for OpenVPN and also discuss checking firewall effectiveness and perfect forward secrecy implementation:

IVPN

Self audit your VPN - Pt3. - OpenVPN Configuration and Leaks

This guide is part of a series that will show you how to self-audit a VPN tunnel for data leak. Part two of the series was about WireGuard. The cur...

Have you gone through these guides and have feedback or questions? You know what to do.

We'll be at Bitcoin Amsterdam on Wednesday and Thursday bearing gifts. If you are attending and spot someone in this jacket -> don't be a stranger.

Let's assume we have some product ideas for IVPN customers to test, invite-only. We start a chat community to get feedback and offer a place to discuss our service, privacy etc. Which platform would you prefer? - Needs to support multiple channels - Ideally self-hosted - Discord and Telegram are no-go due to privacy policies Options: - Matrix - IRC - Nostr based solution which we have not heard about - Something else

@hzrd149 we've been testing a lot of different desktop nostr clients in the past two weeks and nostrudel is top of the crop - fully featured yet clean UX + very reliable. thanks!

Do you really need a VPN? Basics recap for consumer VPNs: 1. Not everyone needs a VPN. It depends on your threat model / jurisdiction you live in / expectations around privacy. You need to understand the extent of protection they provide to assess that. 2. Despite what most VPN providers will tell you in their marketing speak, using a VPN alone will be ineffective or useless for: - Achieving anonymity or "perfect privacy" - Preventing tech corporations from profiling you - Protecting your passwords - Hiding your mobile phone location - Providing better security when working from home 3. Trustworthy VPNs can be effective at: - Encrypting your data and DNS requests so your ISP or mobile network operator cannot monitor or log your online activity - Masking your IP address from websites and servers you connect to - Circumventing censorship or geo blocks - Increasing your security on untrusted public networks by preventing MITM attacks (not common) If you see claims from a VPN provider contrary to any of the points above, they are either lying to you or are incompetent. 95% of them won't pass this test.

Working on a www redirect issue that prevents proper validation of NIP-05 and lnurlp information fetched from ivpn.net. Zaps are now accepted via Alby but we're aiming for ivpn@ivpn.net lightning address as a desired outcome.

We are evaluating running a Nostr relay on IVPN infra (compartmentalized). It would make sense as relay preference appear to be a function of sufficient trust and privacy guarantees. The risks are not clear yet, ie. how it would affect our company threat model and established/stess-tested legal guardrails. Any suggestions for deep-dive documentation on running a relay?

New IVPN PoP locations added: - Boston, US (us-ma1) - Dublin, Ireland (ie1) - Zagreb, Croatia (hr1) These servers bring us to presence in 40 countries and 56 locations.

https://www.ivpn.net/en/status/

IVPN for iOS v2.12.4 featuring several improvements and fixes is now available through the App Store. For improved privacy in public settings, your account ID is now hidden by default in the app. Changelog:

GitHub

ios-app/CHANGELOG.md at develop · ivpn/ios-app

Official IVPN iOS app. Contribute to ivpn/ios-app development by creating an account on GitHub.

IVPN is now on Nostr. Following a conversation at Baltic Honeybadger with @Derek Ross regarding the pros and cons of 'company operated accounts on Nostr' + hearing talks on the future of free speech online, we are convinced that this is the right place (or rather, protocol) to be for us. We've maintained a reserved, low-key presence on other social channels for many years. We as a team and as individuals prefer not to shout louder in a cacophony. While some companies thrive on oversharing for engagement and treating social communities as marketing funnels, such tactics don't align with our straightforward, no-bullshit approach. For Nostr we are trying something different, without any compromise on these values. Expect more posts with direct opinions, in-depth analysis, privacy/VPN consultation and anything else that contributes to the community. To anyone we've met at Bitcoin and other conferences over the years - hello! Nice to see you here. We are ready to continue the hundreds of conversations we had around trust, transparency, sovereignty, open-source ideals, LN merchant adoption, circular economy for Bitcoin and new radical ideas. Reach out in public or private if you have any questions, ideas or suggestions. Let's do this!