Many (if not all) of the benefits on the landing page are available in Mullvad too, which is a more mature and reputable product, has all clients fully open-source, and powers the exit servers for Obscura.
Mullvad is a Swedish company, which has stricter privacy protection laws in place.
According to Obscura's legal page, it is a New York-based company [0]. Under US law, a secretive court order could compel a US company to update software or implement targeted logging on a specific user without notifying that user.
The only scenario where Obscura would be useful is if Mullvad were compromised. Why would I trust a New York company to shield me from a more reputable Swedish company?
[0]: "(2) your written notification must be mailed to 169 Madison Ave.; Ste. 11185 PMB 63183; New York, NY 10016..." <a href="https://obscura.com/legal/" rel="nofollow">https://obscura.com/legal/
Yeah, it's basically not possible to offer an actually secure and private service in the US. If men with guns and gag orders haven't shown up at their new york office yet, they will as soon as this VPN gets popular enough to show up on their radar. At that point if they have any integrity they'll shut their service down like Lababit did rather than allow it to be compromised by the state.
maxloh · · focus · HN ↗
Many (if not all) of the benefits on the landing page are available in Mullvad too, which is a more mature and reputable product, has all clients fully open-source, and powers the exit servers for Obscura.
Why should I choose this over Mullvad?
maxloh · · focus · HN ↗
According to Obscura's legal page, it is a New York-based company [0]. Under US law, a secretive court order could compel a US company to update software or implement targeted logging on a specific user without notifying that user.
The only scenario where Obscura would be useful is if Mullvad were compromised. Why would I trust a New York company to shield me from a more reputable Swedish company?
[0]: "(2) your written notification must be mailed to 169 Madison Ave.; Ste. 11185 PMB 63183; New York, NY 10016..." <a href="https://obscura.com/legal/" rel="nofollow">https://obscura.com/legal/
autoexec · · focus · HN ↗