Recently went browsing F-droid as a man does and came upon this app:
Apparently, Mysterium is an open source VPN (sort of) that utilizes node jumping (similar to Tor) and pay per byte (with crypto) design. The closest thing I can think of is the Safing SPN. I’m wondering if anyone has familiarity with it and cant attest to the anonymity, speed, company privacy, reliability, etc… It’s been around for a bit but I haven’t heard of many people using it.
Blockchain, crypto, and Web3, give me bad vibes. Immediate red flags that take heaps of good-will to get past.
From what I can tell, it seems to be Sentinel, but rebranded.
Most people don’t tend to update their stuff, giving way to potential security/privacy issues.
The nodes seem to be encrypted, but in what way? We know the users IP address gets logged, in plain text… potential for abuse, there.
What about malicious hosts? Could they manipulate the system for more crypto?
On Forums/Reddit, there’s folks who got into legal trouble by hosting a VPN “node” (and folks sailing the seas). Some crypto is not worth going to jail. There is also a record of people complaining about not getting paid. Considering the crypto crash… I’d expect this to be more common.
On the note for jail… how long until the police start using it as a honeypot?
Where are they based? Their Mysterium page Who.Is record claims Sweden. Yet, their MysteriumVPN and Sentinel page claims Iceland.
How privacy-friendly is their crypto?
Where is their actual legal/privacy policy? All I found is some sketch about how the “Nodes” can be kept safe. Where’s the “Warrant Canary”?
there are also many other “decentraliced” vpns
it seems to be not completely bullshit, but i don’t like that everyone has to use their own crypto/ token
there mostly also isn’T a founder with his clear name like mullvad, who stays with his name for the thing.
How can you trust anonymous founders/ developers
it is way better then the big vpns but it’s not the big revolution
You also don’t know who runs the servers
I have used mysterium for over 1 year and i don’t recommend it as a privacy vpn but I really like it because it has residential ip’s, it’s pay as you go, you can pay with crypto and the cost is very low in my opinon. I hate subscriptions because then i feel forced to use it. i put 7 dollar in mysterium more then a year ago and i’m still using that but i don’t use it everyday hours.