No Stupid Questions

Personally my biggest distrust of nord comes from their ads. Most notably one where they anthromorphized a guys smart TV, Roomba and phone talking about him when he leaves the room, and others that basically totally misrepresent what a vpn does.

In short, your TV, Phone, etc... most likely share and compile information because of the ACCOUNTS they need to function. using a VPN will do NOTHING to stop google from knowing any android data, Your devices don't hear eachother by listening to the network, which is almost all going to be encrypted protocols anyway, but by sharing accounts.

In short, I've always found nords comercials constantly misleading on what a VPN can and can't protect you from, and to me it seems that's largely so they can market them to people who don't actually have any use for them, and worse doing it to make people feel like they are "protecting themselves" from something that they are just as vulnerable to with the vpn.

I use a different VPN, but honestly, I wouldn't use Nord only because of their ads and sponsorships. It's kind of a lame excuse, but they wore me out with that.

I don't know why others don't like them but I personally dislike them and Express because of false advertising.

They make it seem like a vpn protects you from everything online, from hackers, phishing attacks, viruses etc and provides absolute privacy no matter what. This is not what a vpn does.

I also wonder how they can get away with marketing themselves as a way to get around geoblocking. I don't personally mind this part but I assume it's a legal gray area for them so they do it until they can get away with it.

Wasn’t NordVPN that provider that said they were no log and then a hack happened and exposed that they did, in fact, retain logs of user activity? Am I mixing them up with someone else?

I think the reason you stated is probably the main reason for most of the hate. I’ve been a Nord user for years and have no complaints. However, I am currently considering switching to Firefox VPN because I want to financially support Firefox development and that’s one of the best ways to do it.

None of the other answers I'm seeing are the actual reasons you shouldn't trust more specifically. The reason you shouldn't trust them is because a few years ago they had a data breach. It was relatively small and wouldn't have effected many if any people but the problem was they didn't disclose it and tried to bury it. It wasn't found out about until a few years later. That should tell you if they had a major data breach that did affect you they would try to hide that from you and you would never know unless a you were made aware through other means.

Source: https://www.techradar.com/news/whats-the-truth-about-the-nordvpn-breach-heres-what-we-now-know

Honestly, all of these VPN companies deserve a lot of hate for having some pretty deceptive advertising and fearmongering. VPNs definitely have their uses, but the average person probably doesn't need one... Especially not for "security" purposes.

Most VPN services are a sham. They just hide your network activity from your ISP, however they have full visibility in to your network traffic. Some of these VPN providers are even owned by ad agencies, but advertise privacy as a selling point. You’re better off running your own WireGuard or OpenVPN server at home or with a VPS. At least you will have control over the server and limit your exposure to unscrupulous VPN companies. (Yes using a VPS is shifting the trust from one to the other, but you will have to make a decision that is right for you.)

They store your IP, and they use it. I think that sums all up. The point of vpn is to be private, and if you’re giving up your IP to a third party, you’ve done nothing with the vpn.

Yeah. I’ve not had any issues

So. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

My general philosophy is that anything advertised on YouTube or podcasts is automatically a scam. So I'd avoid NordVPN in favor of literally any other service just on principle. Outside of that, though all I've heard is the same general grumblings about price and deceptive advertising.

In a nutshell -- it transforms your PC/phone into a honeypot for third parties.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=239w7x2TdWE

No issues personally with NordVPN but they have made me some cash by causing some people I provide tech support for to be unable to access their wifi connected printer until I disabled the lan blocking feature.

Fairly good (sef answered) write up here: https://torrentfreak.com/best-vpn-anonymous-no-logging/

I had it for a few years, not a single problem.

Ever since iOS 16, it’s a nightmare. It’s been almost a year. I’ve tried proton’s free vpn, no issues. So I guess I’m going to buy theirs now.

I don’t think this is what you’re really referring to, but this has been my experience. Lol

I can't find the document right now but NordVPN was always ranked very high on r/VPN. So I assume there is nothing wrong with using it and it's one of the few products where the money spent on marketing didn't influence the quality.

Or they also paid the person who maintained the ranking list.

I recommend Mullvad if you are looking for a decent VPN provider.

NordVPN was breached in 2018, and they took an entire year to tell people that they were breached. They're also quite expensive, while there is many other options.

I'll be honest I have no idea about the "ads" that others speak of, mainly because I don't ever see any ads for them (I had adblocker installed on everything AND I have a subscription to Nord VPN). I wouldn't say I'm biased though because if there was a good enough reason to switch, I'd have no problem doing so, so I can tell you that at least so far, after having had a subscription for 2-3 years, I haven't really had much complaint with them. Occasionally there will be weird issues where right after a downloaded update, for some reason it has a hard time connecting, but it doesn't usually last very long and those kind of things are always one-offs.

I do like that it also has both an Onion over VPN and P2P function. I haven't used the onion one yet because I rarely ever use Tor (and I'm not sure, based on my limited understanding of Tor/Onion routing, whether VPN does anything anyway as from what I can tell/read at best it doesn't really provide any additional security and at worst it may in fact create a backdoor way for tracking). I do occasionally use the P2P for torrenting though and haven't had any issues there either (and no "C&D notices" from any companies).

But again, I'm perfectly open to using other programs, but for now I just haven't had any issues with it personally so if you were looking for an opinion from someone who uses it, there you go.

As others have said, my biggest problem with NordVPN is the dishonest ads. Other big commercial VPN providers are guilty of it, too. A VPN provides very little in the way of security. Tom Scott has a pretty good break down of the problem with VPN ads.

I also object to their pricing. They push you to commit to a 1-2 year contract. If you have a good reason to use a VPN often (like bypassing geographic restrictions) then maybe it makes sense. For me, I rarely need it. If I do want to use a VPN, I can get 30 days with Mullvad for 5 euro without signing up for a year+ commitment.

I'm using it right now, I didn't know there was hate towards them. I needed a VPN, and when I was reading recent reviews, Nord seemed like the way to go for my needs. I hope I haven't made a mistake, but after a few months now it seems fine? Fast enough for sure.

dunno, I used it for a while and then stopped. it worked ok, no real complaints.