[ADDITION] Safing Privacy Network (SPN): a VPN/ToR alternative

[atomGit]

Category

Virtual Private Networks

Software to be added

SPN, currently in early development, is apparently part of a larger package called Portmaster

i know little about it and this would have to be evaluated by people far more tech-savvy than i, but it sounds interesting in that it was built from the ground up with privacy in mind and claims to be a (far) better alternative than a VPN or ToR

What Makes SPN A Better Alternative to VPNs

VPN is an out-dated technology that was never intended to protect your privacy. It simply swaps your one identity with one different identity, creating only a minor obstacle for today’s mass surveillance. SPN on the other hand is built from the ground up and fully designed to protect your privacy. It gives you multiple identities by default. Therefore we believe people looking for privacy will prefer SPN.

Supporting Material

• safing/portmaster: 🏔 Love Freedom - ❌ Block Mass Surveillance
• SPN - Safing Docs
• Safing Privacy Network
• What Makes SPN A Better Alternative to VPNs
• Dispelling Myths of VPN Alternatives w/ Safing!

Association Disclosure

no affiliation

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[atomGit]

my thoughts...

{Negative Nellie persona engaged}

i'm not sure what to think about SPN - the network architecture seems to be largely borrowed from ToR in that you have 3 hops, 3 layers of encryption, anyone can run nodes, and you apparently can't choose the exit node... yet the service isn't free

so latency and net bandwidth (after encryption) would seem to suffer some of the same problems as ToR, though you can apparently have some effect on max. latency via settings and the entry node would be as close as possible to the user (same geo area) while the exit node would be as close as possible to the destination, but ultimately, like ToR, it's totally dependent on the number of nodes, bandwidth, the state of the network and malicious actors

in the interview one dude says that, with a VPN, it's all or nothing, meaning that all or no traffic gets routed - this is incorrect

it's also stated that SPN solves the problem of malicious ToR exit nodes by deeming certain nodes as "trusted" - i believe this is exactly what ToR does also

another problem is that many, if not all of the nodes that people run are going to be run on rented boxes, unlike a really good VPN that (assuming you can trust them) owns, physically secures and deploys their own hardware (only 2 i know of are AzireVPN and OVPN - both do WireGuard)

overall SPN sounds an awful lot like ToR sans having to use the ToR browser