this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2024
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How come TurboVPN can have double the amount of downloads compared to NordVPN and ExpresVPN? ++ (slrpnk.net)
submitted 7 months ago by Sunny to c/technology@lemmy.world
61 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Disclaimer: I know TurboVPN and the others mentioned are not good services to use, I'm strictly doing research. I'm not looking for VPN recommendations.

Genuinely wondering how these numbers are possible? 300M downloads and 8.35M reviews...? How?! Not even Amazon Shopping app or Disney+ have this many reviews. And surely NordVPN and Express VPN are considerable larger in both users and resources? I've never seen a sponsorship, not even once, from Turbo VPN. Are these numbers regional based? Is Turbo VPN more known in other regions? Is it easy to spoof these numbers?

Appreciate any comments on the matter, and have a nice day 🌻

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[–] Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com 127 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

It's as simple as 'it's free'. Most people don't care about privacy, just bypassing censorship. Plus, the majority of people in third world countries can't afford to pay for a vpn, so they'll flock towards free ones.

[–] Rooki@lemmy.world 33 points 7 months ago (2 children)

and Nordvpn or Expressvpn isnt even private so... its paid but you still give all your data to them.

[–] thirteene@lemmy.world 29 points 7 months ago (3 children)

As much as I detest nordvpn they do have a 0 logs policy that has been validated. Don't give them money under any circumstance, but this isn't accurate.

[–] TheFriar@lemm.ee 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What did nordvpn do that makes you hate them?

[–] thirteene@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

https://my.nordaccount.com/legal/terms-of-service/ It's only ~ two pages, 19 sections total. you should at least skim over the absolutely no guarantees, no refunds past 30 days, no refunds without needing support to "diagnose" your issue first.

Tickets are 3 day wait times, most of the updates are "do you know your account number" despite being in the ticket. The branded application is insanely unstable, since using ovpn client it's been somewhat stable but the android client causes problems with Bluetooth on my pixel. They built in multiple layers of kill switch automation INTO the product, they can't seem to figure out static ips. Honestly they are just incompetent.

[–] dev_null@lemmy.ml 19 points 7 months ago (2 children)

So what I'm reading from your comment is:

  • They accept refunds even if you were already using the service for up to 30 days
  • They have support that will help you diagnose issues
  • They will give you a refund if they can't solve your issue
  • They usually get back to you within 3 days
  • You are not locked in to their app and can use other ones if they work better for you

Thanks for the info, I should try them.

[–] Ziglin@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

If you care about privacy you should use tor/the tor network:

  • It's free
  • It can't track you unless someone happens to own your entire route the network, which hopefully isn't happening and would have to a very big actor and would only be a low chance
  • You can use tor bridges to bypass censorship and detection
  • You can visit hidden services if you find out their .onion address
  • You can host hidden services if you find out how to configure tor
  • You can switch to a VPN if you really want
  • Has integration into an existing privacy centred browser but can be used with anything that supports sock5 proxies
[–] dev_null@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I run tor nodes. I use VPNs to bypass geoblocks, not for privacy.

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[–] fulg@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago

I thought the main issue with NordVPN was, good luck trying to close your account once you’ve signed up.

I don’t really remember, I use another provider and would avoid NordVPN if only due to their aggressive YouTuber push, they must be a scam!

[–] Ziglin@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I'd like to see them find out why a server crashes if that is true. If someone actually cares and knows enough I think an admin or someone from the government could determine a lot of browsing data and link it with users just through the DNS cache and time. I'm also very sure they have some kinds of logs, even if they don't log what each user is doing.

[–] billiam0202@lemmy.world 17 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Isn't that how non-self-hosted VPNs work by their very nature? The VPN owner is always going to know where your traffic originates and where its destination is.

[–] Bahnd@lemmy.world 15 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yes, but some claim to be log-less so while they can see your traffic, they pinky promise not to record it. Proton being one who proports to not keep logs, and seeing as they are Swiss ,that tracks.

(Proton VPN is the 3rd party one I use)

[–] azalty@jlai.lu 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Proton is also a bit shady about their marketing and aren’t really transparent about governments asking for data. It’s also really really expensive for what it is.

[–] Bahnd@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

That is the tricky part. If you run a public VPN and a governement comes to you and says "give us all you have on user X were investigating them" you sorta have to comply and you cant go telling people that you did that either.

A few of these services will have a line on their website along the lines of "we have never provided data to any governemnt" and when they get told to cough it up they remove the line. Protons data canary has been dead for a long time, and Im not sure if other VPNs even bothered to add something like that.

As for the price tag, I'm paying exactly for that privacy (and also their mail service, de-googling yourself is hard). If I needed a less private VPN I would host one myself.

[–] azalty@jlai.lu 1 points 7 months ago

Not all countries will comply, and not all will require you to stay silent

[–] Ziglin@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

Signal published their reply to a court subpoena that was funny.

[–] Ziglin@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Tor doesn't because the server that you contact passes it to another and encrypts the data further the exit node can then decrypt it and perform the web request on your behalf without knowing where it's coming from.

[–] billiam0202@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yes, but Tor isn't a VPN- the most distinguishing difference being when using a VPN all traffic from your device is sent to the VPN tunnel, while only traffic from the Tor browser is anonymized for the onion network.

[–] Ziglin@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Tor acts as a proxy Tor browser is shipped with tor but using a different port. Tor is not the browser.

So as long as you set up what you want to use with tor and remember to start it, it should work. Otherwise I'm sure you could setup a pi or local server to route everything through tor if you wanted to.

Edit: I believe the tor network is a VPN though. Your data is sent privately through the virtual tor network. Not all VPN connections have to work the same, after all Hamachi is also a VPN.

[–] Grangle1@lemm.ee 6 points 7 months ago

That's my thought, these are worldwide numbers, so while the "premium" VPN services are popular in developed countries where most have the disposable income to afford them, those in developing countries may find the free services much more accessible, even if they aren't as reliable. Income may not even be too much of a factor, sometimes software or services can get popular in places like India where there's just a very high population. India played a big part in worldwide desktop Linux growing to 4% market share, for example.

[–] Sunny 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Right they do have a free, rather limited tier. But this still has me shocked that they actually got that many downloads. I've now also checked other free ones, and they also have 100M downloads, truly crazy. As these are so far from being good for privacy.

[–] Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

As I said, only very few people cares about their privacy, so it's not really that shocking. I believe that the people that download these vpns don't even knows what these companies are doing with their data afterwards. Can't be scared of something happening to you if you don't know it's happening, or even what's happening in the first place.

The majority of netizens have a privacy literacy problem.

[–] Sunny 2 points 7 months ago

I believe this to be the case indeed

[–] DudeDudenson@lemmings.world 53 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Ever heard of bots?

[–] Sunny 14 points 7 months ago

Right, I wanted to confirm that.

[–] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 20 points 7 months ago (12 children)

They advertise aggressively through YouTubers/streamers. A lot of mushy brained people probably download it once just to see what their favourite e-girl is on about. Then once they realize it's not providing them any tangible value they don't use it, but probably leave it installed since nobody ever uninstalls apps from their phone.

[–] Sunny 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Ok so they do advertise, good to know thanks

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[–] tfowinder@lemmy.ml 11 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I think it's free.

[–] Sunny 5 points 7 months ago

A free tier indeed, although they push extremely hard to make people pay for premium.

[–] azalty@jlai.lu 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Proton has a free plan as well

[–] ShadowCat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

if you search "Free VPN" on playstore, turboVPN is ranked higher than proton

Edit: and I see its reviews are also negative, probably because of the connection issues (I've been having the issue too, takes a long time to connect if it even does

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Downloads isn't the same as recurring subscribers.

Could be gameified

[–] Sunny 1 points 7 months ago

It seems so indeed

[–] Woodstock@lemmy.world 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Does it come pre-installed on any phones? Might be a reason the downloads are inflated.

[–] Sunny 6 points 7 months ago

Not as far as I know or have researched, but good idea!

[–] mstrk@lemmy.world 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Maybe something like this service. Find it a bit dishonest if you ask me, but I don't think it affects competition that much. People will try multiple apps if they don't find what they are looking for.

[–] Sunny 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Ah yeah, quite possible! Would have thought Google would be on top of this though, but probably not? The service in the mail does not seem to exist anymore, but was able to check them out with Wayback Machine; https://web.archive.org/web/20220831185349if_/https://www.appenhancer.com/

Thanks for sharing 🌻

[–] mstrk@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Would have thought Google would be on top of this though, but probably not?

It's against play store ToS, but if somehow you can make it look organic enough it might be difficult to proof. In truth I don't know how this kind of services operate. I do think Google would try to counter this as much as possible yes. And 8M reviews can't be just from this kind of services, at some point you have real users engagement, you just need the initial visibility boost.

Good luck with your researchπŸ––

[–] Sunny 1 points 7 months ago

Thank you πŸ™Œ

[–] dgriffith@aussie.zone 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I can't speak for the popularity of TurboVPN, or the probable ease in which companies can manipulate download numbers, but note the "+" on the end of each number.

NordVPN could have 99,999,995 downloads, TurboVPN can have 100,000,002 downloads, but one would be 50M+ and the other would be 100M+.

[–] Sunny 1 points 7 months ago

Yeah good point!

[–] Audalin@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago

Rounding?

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