It's sus to me how cheap vpns are
Looking at my own costs for hosting and bandwidth, seems like they would lose a lot of money
I suspect they are selling data tbh
Discussion
Why they wouldn’t?
Even Proton?
Makes sense... But in the case of non-kyc, they theoretically don't have any user information. However, they are more expensive. In the end of the day, minimize trust is the correct route.
Could it be cheap due to economics of scale?
Rent a VPS for $3.5-5/month and use it as you own VPN (eg. as Tailscale exit node.).
Now think that how many people could share it using a simple app and credentials.
Bandwith is cheap, you are paying for the storage and the IP address mostly.
Bandwith is not always cheap and you have to be carefuk as some providers charge you a ton for every extra TB.
Regarding using a VPS as VPN. Yes, it can has it advantages BUT you do not hide in the crowd with that concept. Maybe you want to hide in the crowd than use Mullvad as it is used a lot, or use ProtonVPN.
Keep in mind that VPN do not allocate dedicated bandwidth to you, it is overcommited on top of being cheaper for VPN provider due to scale as was already mentioned by nostr:npub18kpw3akvdsyk239lx0jgwksr74sq4nlha3r8u9g2rnrhztfpfhysy469c4
and some of them are free
It is always a possibility and sure to happen in some cases.
Then again, I have a VPS with unlimited traffic for $4.1 monthly. There is no data to sell there.
Economy of scale maybe?
bandwidth became the cheapest commodity on the internet. way below storage and compute
Mullvad can be reached via an onion site, then pay with monero.
