Surfshark Blog

Great discussion. I also think that the more we talk about it, the more and better solutions will start appearing to solve all the problems that come with choosing DNS providers. There is also one issue that we don't discuss too much. I understand that by selecting a private DNS resolver over the ISPs DNS, you still provide your info to that resolver's operator, and they can monetize it. And here I see one crucial thing - choosing the provider that HAS to collect your data over choosing the provider that doesn't do it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but basically, any DNS provider located in the USA is required to collect and store your data by law. So it's not only easy to use that data for monetization, but also they would be required to give all that info to the gov if needed. I was going through a list of most popular DNS providers, and I didn't quite like what I saw. But I found this Trust DNS app (https://surfshark.com/trust-dns) that as a product from Surfshark is also located in the British Virgin Islands. So technically, they are not required to collect any users' data, and they state that they don't. There is also an option to switch between DoH and DoT. The only downside is that it's only for Android right now. Any thoughts about it? Are there more options that are not based in the USA or other 14 eyes countries (or well, China)?

I wasn't sure what a decentralized VPN would look like, so I searched and found https://surfshark.com/blog/decentralized-vpn . Obvious bias coming from a VPN provider, but if they are stating the technology correctly, then I think it's important to determine if this is correct: > A decentralized VPN is a distributed VPN service where volunteers supply your VPN servers instead of a single company – but paid by crypto. Like with regular VPNs, you have to trust that the VPN server isn’t monitoring your data. But instead of there being a single VPN provider company behind it all, you have to trust that none of the thousands of server volunteers are spying on you. Is this a correct understanding of dVPNs? Is there a rebuttal, especially to that last sentence?

ISPs are also in the business of analytics [1, 2], and a significant percentage of customers hiding their traffic reduces the value of their analytic products. 1: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ftc-isps-collect-and-mo… 2: https://surfshark.com/blog/isp-selling-data

I've never used surfshark myself but they advertise as having a killswitch inlcluded in their VPN [0] so it sounds like in this case, it definitely failed. [0] https://surfshark.com/vpn#vpn-page-essentials

>To determine the composite index value of the availability of content around the world, the access to Amazon Prime (Saba, 2016), Netflix (Netflix, n.d.), YouTube Premium (YouTube Help, n.d.), and adult content was assessed for each country. Countries were given one point for each service that was freely accessible from within each country. Zero points were given if the respective services were not accessible from the countries at the time of data collection. The total of the points for each country were divided by four to get an average value. The average was multiplied by the weight indicator of 0.14 to determine the value of the Content Availability indicator. https://surfshark.com/dql-report.pdf This is so bad actually because the none of the services have a global catalog. US Netflix vs a european one is totally different. Same with Amazon Prime Videos. In a lot of cases you can't even watch their original content on their own service because they already sold the license to local TV channels

Heck, most VPN providers provide guides to accessing TOR. Ref: https://surfshark.com/blog/how-to-use-tor https://www.expressvpn.com/vpn-service/tor-vpn https://protonvpn.com/support/tor-vpn/ https://nordvpn.com/blog/what-is-tor/ https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/how-to-use-private-internet… Hard to claim it's secret information IMO.