this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025
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Technology

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Certain Android VPN apps are insecure, secretly tied to one Chinese company (www.techspot.com)
submitted 1 month ago by memfree@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org
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Techspot has a table of some known bad VPNs, and concludes:

The report does not speculate heavily on Qihoo 360's motives for concealing ownership of so many free VPN apps, an approach that likely helped boost downloads while avoiding reputational risks. The company, which has well-documented ties to Beijing's communist regime, may have pursued this strategy to minimize costs and maintain deniability.

For more details on the security issues, this is about the same paper: https://cyberinsider.com/vpn-apps-used-by-millions-contain-shared-keys-and-hidden-backdoors/

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[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 12 points 1 month ago (8 children)

I wouldn't recommend any VPN other than Proton or Mullvad. You are tunneling all of your internet traffic through their server, which creates a database of a mountain of valuable information and almost no one is going to resist that temptation.

[–] bl4kers@beehaw.org 1 points 1 month ago (3 children)

That's opening Pandora's box though, since you then become aware of illegal activities and take on a lot of liability

[–] SpikesOtherDog@ani.social 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I can't see a Chinese company facing legal action for that

[–] bl4kers@beehaw.org 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Well yeah, but who would use a Chinese-based VPN? That's asking for trouble to begin with

[–] SpikesOtherDog@ani.social 1 points 1 month ago

The average person is not tech savvy and may pick the best deal without researching.

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