

FrootVPN – Surf anonymously on the Internet - killerpopiller
https://www.frootvpn.com/

======
teamhappy
Free product, free support, no logs. They're either lying or trying to turn
this into a freemium product at some point in the future. Everything else just
seems unlikely.

Furthermore, their domain is protected by WhoisGuard (Panama). If they (the
people involved, not the servers) were sitting in Sweden this would be
unnecessary (compare IPredator). The IP address behind the website points to
the same Swedish datacenter(s) that the services surrounding The Pirate Bay
use as well (Portlane). IPredator itself seems to have moved to Cyprus though.

Uppercase and underlined "anonymous" next to plain text passwords via email is
just unprofessional.

~~~
api
I can't tell you how happy I am to see this as the top comment.

Free is a con.

If you want a cheap VPN that you control (and that's faster than Tor), set up
an endpoint on something that takes Bitcoin payment and pay with Bitcoins
obtained via an anonymous route. This list might be helpful.

[https://www.exoticvps.com](https://www.exoticvps.com)

~~~
darkstar999
Depending on your needs, you can just roll your own with Amazon EC2. I use it
for an SSH tunnel, mostly to use while at work. Not that I'm doing any weird
browsing, I just don't like the thought of my employer keeping a log of what I
am doing on my free time ([https://xkcd.com/303/](https://xkcd.com/303/)).

I wrote a script to spin up a new instance when I need it, and to terminate it
when I don't. It should cost less than $10/mo, and I only pay for what I use.

~~~
beagle3
That's a VPN but not anonymous. Amazon knows who you are.

~~~
teamhappy
There is always a server that knows who you are. Whether it's an OpenVPN
server hosted on an EC2 instance or a TOR entry node.

Hosting you own VPN server seems overkill for this kind of use case. There are
many trustworthy VPN providers that I'd recommend for use cases unrelated tor
BitTorrent. A couple of years ago people recommended SwissVPN over and over to
me, though I've never used it. I was a happy IPredator customer for quite some
time.

If you want to host your own VPN server (let's face it, servers are useful
anyway), I'd recommend cloud providers other than Amazon. Iceland, Sweden and
Germany are very friendly countries.

~~~
desdiv

        There is always a server that knows who you are. 
        Whether it's an OpenVPN server hosted on an EC2 
        instance or a TOR entry node.
    

Correction: the TOR entry node only knows the data came from you, but there's
no way for it to know whether the data _originated_ from you or not. For all
it knows, you could be a relay and the data came from someone else.

~~~
teamhappy
My bad, this is actually an important distinction.

------
furyg3
I'm not quite sure what the appeal of free VPN services are, or why anyone
would trust them.

Setting up a VPN server takes very little time. From a default Ubuntu
installation you only need to install the OpenVPN Access Server package, visit
a web page and add a user.

You can do this from a cloud service provider in a location with favorable
privacy laws, like Iceland. I do this with GreenQloud, and just spin up my VPN
instance when I'm on an untrustworthy wifi network, behind a corporate
firewall, traveling to a country that censors, or whatever. Powered on
instances cost little, and powered off nearly nothing. The attack surface is
low, as it's usually powered off.

People who wish to be nearly untraceable can use a prepaid credit card for
anonymity.

~~~
Torgo
>People who wish to be nearly untraceable can use a prepaid credit card for
anonymity.

Does anyone have experience with this? I tried it once, and found that most
places blocked the use of these cards and needed a "real" one.

~~~
click170
I used a prepaid card to sign up for an AWS account because I'm not
comfortable giving them my real one for a "free trial", they accepted it at
the time, approx 1 year ago.

------
hobs
1\. We offer a free service. 2\. With free support. 3\. And we somehow have
enough ips to go around for everyone? 4\. Btw, we are not MITMing you or
logging anything.

What?

~~~
exelius
You don't need enough IPs to go around; you can always assign a private IP
address and do NAT (this is how most VPNs work anyway).

But yeah, I don't understand how they're paying for it. My best guess would be
they found a loophole to exploit peering agreements, similar to how small
rural telephone companies will set up free conference bridges because the big
telcos have to pay them connection fees.

Or they're just capturing info and selling it (unlikely; personal information
just isn't worth that much and it's easy enough to buy already from data
brokers).

Or they're MITMing the big ad networks and showing their own ads instead. I
consider this the most likely scenario.

~~~
hobs
Oh sure, sorry I meant to imply that effectively those external ips they will
be exposing to outside services will be banned fairly soon by a lot of things
and marked as a vpn/proxy service.

On second reading I realize that I basically in no way say that.

Agreed with everything you said though, it's not legit.

------
jliptzin
I always chuckle when I see a VPN service claim no logging. While it's
probably true, they can't ever prove to you that that's actually the case,
which makes the claim moot for anyone who actually cares about their privacy.

~~~
aluhut
Until somebody gets sued and posts about it on twitter.

------
gondo
received email with password in plaintext after registration

~~~
rabble
I was just going to say the same thing. What the hell kind of group offers
security and VPN services and then sends passwords plaintext!

~~~
Someone1234
They will need to store them in plain text or encrypted plain text (which is
just plain text with sugar on top) just due to the way some of the VPN
protocols they support work.

They should avoid emailing them however, if they can.

------
spiralking
Within less than an hour of being connected to FrootVPN through OpenVPN,
incoming connection to sshd from sketchy IP followed by multiple attemped
incoming connections to screensharing from another sketchy IP... bots, or not,
I dont know...

But if every single comment thus far isn't enough of an indication.. as I have
never experienced these security issues in the past, I think it's fair to
say.. stay away, stay far away...

------
Zalos
Dosen´t seem very legit. According to reddit it´s sluggish not really working
and presumingly stealing information. Can anyone back this information? or
counter it? I don´t feel like using this software it´s way too fishy.

------
sauere
Wait... so...

\- free

\- no logs

\- support

\- unlimited bandwidth

Is this some kind of badly executed sting operation?

------
Gabriel_Martin
"Do you keep logs?"

"We dont keep any logs of any kind. all we ask from you is your email address
and username. and thats it. no other information is keept in our system."

One must immediately question a company whose customer facing copy appears in
such a way.

~~~
Someone1234
The whole site/concept/product only appears to be a week old. Even Googling
the name turns up stuff from the last few days only.

------
gngrwzrd
"Hide your identity online and surf anonymous. When using our service you will
be protected behind a encrypted tunnel and no traces can lead back too you"

Shouldn't that be "back to you"? Not back too you.

------
uslic001
They are no longer sending the password with the sign-up email. Not going to
try it out though given it still is likely some type of scam.

------
benmorris
I don't really use these VPN services, but I did see they use PPTP (for
android at least). Isn't that flawed/insecure?

------
AdmiralAsshat
Could be another Anon OS. I'd be weary of anything marketing itself as a
"free" VPN.

------
nikolak
Has to be either a scam or it will require a payment after they get few users.

------
KyleSanderson
Sent my password in plain text back in an email. Game over.

------
TomH_NL
hmm could abuse the plaintext password for <script> and <iframe> tags...
Something smells fishy with everything free!

------
junglhilt
Interesting...doesn't work in China.

