Obscura: VPN that can't log your activity

osnxkwmxkwnd

This sounds pretty neat, and I do dig the website, though I can’t help but think it’s an odd combination to have bitmap/pixelated fonts and graphics inside perfect squircles. Seems like you guys have two distinct ideas of a visual identity completely at odds there. Shape contrast is nice and can be rather fun to play with, but it has to be handled with care. Right now it feels like the designer had a bunch of ideas and didn’t know how to bring them together in a cohesive identity. Bonus point for the TRON reference at the end! “I fight for the users!”

john_strinlai

i am very skeptical of most vpn companies, and while i haven't looked too hard at obscura, it is worth noting the official partnership with mullvad ( https://mullvad.net/en/blog/mullvad-partnered-with-obscura-v... ) which is certainly a positive signal side note: i really wish more companies did the no email + randomized account number flow. there is a certain popular "pro-privacy" product beloved by many here that requires an email address and refuses to offer a similar account number method, which has turned me off the product.

iAMkenough

Basically a middle-man for a Mullvad VPN, where if Mullvad decides to pull out of their agreement with this company, you lose your connection and are hopefully refunded. The single point of failure for this product is Mullvad and its leadership's changing opinions.

maxloh

I don't understand the point of this. 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?

dorongrinstein

I love the website, messaging and idea. Well done. if you guys need a place to host, please consider controlplane.com

mkrdnk

> first Really? XD

hehdtyjjoj

How does this prove Obscura and Mullvad can't just both gather tracking data and then just combine it on demand?

nalekberov

I don't like 'us vs others' kinda comparisons, it's just marketing trick, which means they care more about sales than your privacy. Secondly, Mullvad did what Obscura does now years ago. Furthermore who needs a gamified VPN tool?

ramblurr

So like OHTTP but for UDP traffic? I suppose they are using MASQUE CONNECT-UDP? They are careful to not exactly claim the same anonymity properties of Tor, though I think a lay reader will read that differently (ie, that they do have the same anonymity property as Tor). That said being able to verify the inner wireguard conn to mullvad is nice. Of course you have to trust them that they aren't colluding with mullvad to share your identity/ip. But same goes for OHTTP.

ChocolateGod

Your traffic is still unencrypted by the VPN provider at the other end of the Wireguard connection, I am not sure how this changes that?

skaul

So two hops, basically. First hop sees your IP address but not the website you're going to, second hop sees website but not IP address. Similar to Private Relay: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102602 .

barathr

As others have pointed out, this is like Apple iCloud Private Relay, and other multi-hop privacy systems that have been built on and off over the last several decades (Tor included). We wrote a research paper on the general principle a few years ago: https://conferences.sigcomm.org/hotnets/2022/papers/hotnets2...

chews

a vpn company is a paid for MITM attack surface.

wahern

> the first VPN that can’t log your activity and outsmarts internet censorship. I guess they never heard of Zero Knowledge Systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Knowledge_Systems

boguscoder

It’s often ‘impossible’ and until it happens /s

hp197

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48696800 This is where part of your money flows to (I have opinions about this). Not sure if you are also aware of it.

dongcarl

Carl from Obscura here Happy to answer any questions y’all might have! Also, the technical folks may be more interested in our original post: https://obscura.com/blog/bootstrapping-trust/

floro

Vp.net did it first: https://vp.net/l/en-US/technical#cryptography

fh67

https://obscura.com/check/ does this page know the difference between a direct mullvad user and an obscura user, if so, how? Packet padding but no docs about this?

VCFundedGenYer

Many VPNs don't log activity. Headline is objectively false.