Why is NordVPN a bad provider?

VPN
1

I read some stuff about Nord VPN being less trusted compared to for example Proton. Why is NordVPN a bad provider?

2

When using a VPN you’re essential trusting them with the information which websites you’re visiting. For me to be able to trust a VPN provider I need to know who owns and runs the company, I want accountability.
A lot of VPN providers try to hide who’s running them, sometimes the same shell cooperation owns several VPN providers (different names only). Additionally, lots of companies do shady/misleading advertising that just turning on their VPN hides you from all threads and makes you anonymous. But the only thing it can do is hide your IP address, being anonymous takes a lot more.

Another aspect is tracking in their mobile apps, a lot of providers apps contain a lot of analytics frameworks which can potentially collect a lot of data from your phone.

The last point is price, it isn’t cheap running a VPN network and if a provider is cutting prices they need to comprise somewhere, maybe even sell data they collect about their users to other companies.

So summarizing, Proton is for me more trustworthy than most of its compatriots because:

  • their business model makes sense

  • their pricing can cover the actual cost

  • ownership is clear and they could be sued if they do/did false advertisement

  • they have a mostly honest communication about what a VPN can do and what it can’t do (some ad slogans were a bit too much from my perspective)

  • tracking is keeled to a minimum

  • they do 3rd-party audits and publish their results

Edit: formatting, typos

3

I think it’s mostly that they advertise everywhere, try watching a YouTube video, chances are you’ll find a video sponsored by them. They also had a data breach once that they tried to cover up, and I have reason to believe that they have paid reviews since consistently, they always score the highest.

4

There’s nothing particularly wrong with Nord’s product - if you know enough about VPNs to have made an informed choice.

Their sales and marketing tactics do not inspire trust though. They’ve already got into trouble for running ads misrepresenting what their product can actually do. To make themselves look better than other VPNs, they compare themselves against what their competition looked like 2-4 years ago. They loudly claim to be based out of Panama for the privacy laws, but its really just to use them as a tax haven, and their real headquarters is in Lithuania. They advertise low prices that then go up 10%-25% when you actually go to pay. A year of the basic NordVPN is actually more expensive than the full Proton Unlimited Suite in most of Europe. Etc.

5

Some people look into the history of VPN companies, they focus on data breaches, monopolies that control VPNs and websites that reviews them.

If a VPN has issues on trust and history of them and their companies, people switch the providers and look into a one who is trustworthy in the privacy community.

People never forget Nord’s data breach and the company’s behavior on responding to the breach.

6

Heavily profit run , tracker infested company with rumoured ties to tensonet.

also going “jack of all trades” norton route bloating itself more and more and loosing focus.

Questionable pricing , and affiliate stuff , TOS is bad

7

I suggest the following places to start your own research:

8

Other than ProtonVPN’s location in Switzerland.

The best explanation I have heard is it comes down to who you trust.

Do you trust the guy that’s throwing money to advertise and to sponsor any YouTube creator they can? Seemingly open to any source of money, including that of a government trying to buy data or IP information.

Or do you trust the guy quiet in the back located somewhere where laws cannot force them to provide anything?

9

I have been using nord for about four years and they are fine for my purposes. The only downside is that on occasion it takes more than a minute to connect to certain servers. Otherwise, sped and security are good

10

go with the caviar Proton&Mullvad …in my opinion there the 2 best out there :slight_smile:

11

I signed up for NordVPN and didn’t realize I was being charged for 2 years for a service I no longer used. No invoices were emailed; the charges just appeared on my card. Customer service refused to help, citing their 30-day money-back guarantee. I wasted $20 a month for 2 years and received no refund. This company is dishonest and shady. Avoid auto-renewal and stay away from this service at all costs.

12

i think nordvpn bad from privacy. all traffic is routed through their servers. i did a bit of digging and noticed strange wifi proxy port opened up when enabling nordvpn threat protection. under my wifi > proxies, two strange ports gets enabled which seems to route all my traffic to 127.0.0.1:XXXXX and 127.0.0.1:XXXXX respectively for web proxy and secure web proxy. dug a bit further and every time i navigate to a site a new port opens up and routes the traffic to those two ports above. the original process seems to be owned by com.nordv

13

I bought an Nord account and checked now (too late, I know…) the privay policies, that’s horrible. Sentences like “We sometimes may process your personal data under the legal basis of our or third parties’ legitimate interest” open up a door for sharing your data with everyone and everywhere, see → “Your personal data may be processed in any country in which we engage service providers and partners. When you use our Services and Websites, you understand and acknowledge that your personal data may be transferred outside of the country where you reside”.

Meshnet even worse: “When you use this feature, we process the following information: details on the connections and permissions you’ve created, device OS and version, hashed device ID, and user’s email address. If you use file sharing, we also process anonymized information about the number of files transferred, file sizes, and the type of documents (extensions) shared.”

So they say they don’t log but they log every file you move from your devices (which they also log) and share all your data with everyone they want and you have no control and no information on details.

14

The fact you are asking here, for something like this says a lot…dont you think?

15

I honestly wanted to go all-out Proton mostly because I prefer Switzerland over Panama, but when I tried Proton Pass it was just lacking so much (no password checkup or breach scanner, at least on mobile app, and the autofill doesn’t work very well). Also Proton Pass doesn’t use a master Password to lock the mobile app (it only uses biometric or PIN) which seems like such an important aspect of password management. I found NordPass to be much better, which disappointed me.

However, I do think in terms of VPN, they are roughly the same with regards to features/functionality. Nord does have meshnet which is really cool but I don’t think I’d ever use it (seems more for businesses). I’ve had NordVPN for about 2 years and it has never failed me, but I am considering switching to ProtonVPN because they are open-source. When it comes to password management, there really isn’t much privacy that needs to be maintained (it’s almost exclusively security). However, VPNs are as much about privacy (IP masking) as they are security (encryption).

There is no significant business reason to compromise security (you can’t profit off of not using encryption, but you could get a minor cost benefit since your implementation won’t take as long, but I don’t think a company would risk their reputation for such a small initial benefit).

However, there is a significant business reason to compromise privacy because data can be sold for profit on a continuous basis, as opposed to an initial cost benefit of not properly implementing security.

For these reasons, I think having an open source VPN is super important whereas having an open source password manager doesn’t really verify much (although it is nice). That’s because the public is able to independently verify the no-logs policy etc. of ProtonVPN, whereas with NordVPN you have to trust the word of hired auditors and a corporation.

Therefore I’d say the functionality of NordPass outweighs the open-source nature of Proton Pass. However, the open-source nature of ProtonVPN outweighs the slight edge in functionality that NordVPN has.

As a result, my choice of security/privacy apps:

Bitdefender Total Security
ProtonVPN
NordPass

16

105 VPNs run by just 24 companies

17

Of course they are a for profit organisation. That does not mean though that profit maximisation is their only target.

18

Mullvad comes to mind.

19

I see all the points you mentioned, but I’m not agree with the last one when it comes to the pricing. I’m ahead of buying a VPN service package but still hesitating between them.

I’ve found that NordPVN is much cheaper than the Proton one. (Im talking about their full plans for individuals)

Ive made a comparison where:

NordVPN with complete plan (2years + extra 4months): 134.74EUR
ProtonVPN Unlimited: 2 years (nothing extra months): 191.76EUR

And when it comes to the Nord, I’m able to pay via different crypto assets on a lot of different networks (like BTC on lightning network!), while Proton only accepts BTC via BTC network - with those huge fees.

20

Yes there is a problem with theyre product. Autentication issues on theyre side are disallowing thousands ofers unprotected and not allowing login. when asked this is what they said sorry we have no time frame good luck oh and your past the 30 day refund sorry about that too. NORD IS A SCAM COMPANY DO NOT BUY