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IT Technology

Atlas VPN To Shut Down, Transfers Paid Subscribers To NordVPN 39

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Atlas VPN informed customers on Monday that it will discontinue its services on April 24, citing technological demands, market competition, and escalating costs as key factors in the decision. The company said it will transfer its paid subscribers to its sister company, NordVPN, for the remainder of their subscription period to ensure uninterrupted VPN services.
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Atlas VPN To Shut Down, Transfers Paid Subscribers To NordVPN More

Atlas VPN To Shut Down, Transfers Paid Subscribers To NordVPN

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  • No link to Announcement? (Score:4, Informative)

    by OtisSnerd ( 600854 ) on Monday March 25, 2024 @01:28PM (#64343303)
    Here's a link to Atlas' blog announcing this news:

    https://atlasvpn.com/blog/announcement
  • The only VPN you should use is one you maintain and control, or one provided by your workplace. "Coffee Shop" MiTM attacks haven't worked in a decade (thanks enforced TLS!). The way most people use them, they have no privacy advantages. For example if you browse a website with any active trackers, now they just have you as a VPN user as another data point.

    It's a scareware legacy industry from before HTTPS/TLS was used universally. Their marketing is technically inaccurate and plain deceitful. Why woul

    • These days I'd say the killer app for VPNs is for people who live in states with stupid porn age verification laws.

    • Well any VPN is better than no VPN. I have a dedicated IP from NordVPN that is useful for a variety of reasons.

      • I don't think that's true -- can you please explain your technical use case? A dedicated IP can easily be assigned an affinity to a user in most (Google, Meta, etc) tracking systems, all you have to do is login to a site with Google Analytics etc.

        In 2024, I think for 99.9% of use cases No VPN is as good as VPN.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Junta ( 36770 )

          I think most folks nowadays use it not to avoid tracking or to preserve their privacy, but to circumvent geofenced streaming content by appearing to reside in a different place than they actually do.

          Sure, the advertising is super offputting by claiming to protect your privacy and provide for 'safe banking' or similar stupid stuff, but folks know what is really the deal, even if the providers have to play ignorant about the real utility of obscuring your origin.

          • I wish this was the case but as a security pro, I've talked to dozens upon dozens of NordVPN users and that's never the reason. I met a CEO who rolled it out to the whole company and mandated it for his 200 or so employees at all times for "security reasons.". I met a couple 30-something techie software developers at an airport lounge, and one turned on the wifi and instantly said "I'm turning on my NordVPN - gotta protect myself at an airport!" And the other also had a subscription. I spent ten minutes di

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Junta ( 36770 )

              I spent ten minutes disabusing them of this notion that it protects them on public WiFi.

              Obviously, you were trying to hack them, nice try!

              I suppose there are some things which might still suggest a VPN toward an end other than streaming content:
              -Misbehaving DNS (though you could *just* do the DNS without the rest of the networking being affected)
              -Your local provider blacklisting certain network addresses/address ranges
              -You want to obscure what sites you are visiting from your local provider (knowing the IP address is usually still enough to know exactly what you are up to). Your local provider

              • Those reasons are a bit hand-wavey and maybe why tech people continue to think VPNs have a security benefit.

                -Misbehaving DNS (though you could *just* do the DNS without the rest of the networking being affected) -Your local provider blacklisting certain network addresses/address ranges -You want to obscure what sites you are visiting from your local provider (knowing the IP address is usually still enough to know exactly what you are up to). Your local provider might be your employer that cares about you visiting content they don't like, even if perfectly legal, while the VPN provider doesn't have a horse in the race.

                DNS attacks using ARPSpoof and SSLStrip MiTM techniques have not worked in the last decade due to widespread use of HSTS. One can also just set their DNS to 1.1.1.1 using TLS to ensure it can't be tampered with.

                If your employer is just monitoring network traffic via IP of sites visited for HTTP requests, they're doing it wrong. I've never seen a system that does this for content filtering withou

        • One example - when I'm traveling overseas and need to tunnel into systems that have exemptions for my dedicated IP address.

          "In 2024, I think for 99.9% of use cases No VPN is as good as VPN." I disagree, VPNs encrypt all data in transit. You don't need a dedicated IP, but any VPN will provide at least a margin of additional security.

          • VPN encryption of data is redundant thanks to the use of TLS and HSTS on most web sites. So, there's really no "additional" real-world security adding by adding a layer of the onion there, the encryption is already strong and end-to-end. It does however, introduce the attack vector of compromise of the VPN provider.

            It's really odd for people to need a dedicated commercial provider (NordVPN) IP address to access some type of corporate resource -- usually, they'll setup a corporate-controlled VPN concentr

            • "VPN encryption of data is redundant thanks to the use of TLS and HSTS on most web sites"
              There's more to the internet than just websites...

              "It's really odd for people to need a dedicated commercial provider (NordVPN) IP address to access some type of corporate resource". I agree this is probably not a typical use case for the average user, but it useful for me. For example, consulting for a company that does not want to "onboard" me fully.

              • Re:Who trusts these VPN companies? (Score:4, Interesting)

                by Midnight_Falcon ( 2432802 ) on Monday March 25, 2024 @03:16PM (#64343713)

                "VPN encryption of data is redundant thanks to the use of TLS and HSTS on most web sites" There's more to the internet than just websites...

                Yep, and pretty much all of it is encrypted with TLS at this point..at least, I hope you're logging in via SSH and not telnet in 2024. What are you using that's plaintext?

                I agree this is probably not a typical use case for the average user, but it useful for me. For example, consulting for a company that does not want to "onboard" me fully.

                For that case, an OpenVPN concentrator at a cloud provider should do the trick without paying NordVPN, probably fits in AWS free tier.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bert64 ( 520050 )

          I use a VPN when travelling, because a lot of networks still don't provide IPv6 and i have a large number of IPv6-only resources that i need to access.
          The cost of getting legacy IP for all those resources (some of which are outside of my control) would be MUCH higher than the cost of connecting to a VPN.

    • Re:Who trusts these VPN companies? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Monday March 25, 2024 @01:46PM (#64343385)

      There's "The Truth" (all the things they say a VPN is good for) and the truth (it's there to hide your BitTorrent traffic from your ISP)

    • Perhaps you are correct, but having one did prove convenient a few years ago. I worked at a Wal-Mart, and net connections were spotty inside the store. The store did provide a wireless network, but they blocked some political websites I liked to visit. A VPN let me go to them.

      Necessary or lifesaving? No. Convenient, yes. ::shrug::

      Oh yeah, it also helped me access some Japanese porn sites that didn't allow logins from the US.

    • Absolutely, I have a VPN server at home and my cellphone is always connected to it.

      Also my router at home advertise as the only DNS server, intercept every DNS request in case it's hardcoded, and is using DoT/dnssec to resolve. I can be anywhere even connected to public WiFi and check with DNS check tools [dnscheck.tools] that my DNS is secure and using cloudfare/quad9.

    • They have one use: They can make you look like you're located somewhere else. This is particularly useful when you want to access something that will block you if you use a local IP address. Granted, this is a rather overcomplicated way to get a proxy address, but it's the easiest way to do it for a lot of people.

      • I agree, the geolocation use case is valid for commercial VPNs that offer numerous locations. I'd hazard to guess 95 percent of subscribers don't actively use this. Most users I talk to saw an ad on TV and thought unless they pay NordVPN they will be hacked instantly at an airport.

    • Access things at your workplace=> Use your employer's VPN
      Access things at your home=> Use your own VPN

      Access geofenced streaming=> Use a VPN Service
      Circumvent local censorship laws=> Use a VPN Service

      Security in a coffee shop?
      They would have to fake the ssl/tls key
      So I think that means it's a site you haven't been to or at least don't have the key cached?
      But then.. they would have to fake the certificate provider right?
      And communication with that would go back to a key that is built into your br

    • Cloudflare's free DNS service is pretty effective for Coffee Shop MiTM attacks.
      The content filtering for the Wifi on my local train service seems to think that every exchange server (including both my own, and the Microsoft 365 ones), are phishing sites. It does the MiTM thing to redirect to a blocking notification page. The SSL picks that up and displays an error message, or rather one error message for each of the email accounts I have set up on the phone, which gets annoying real fast.
      If I set up Cloudfl

  • Google knows every ip on the planet and can cross reference with their huge tracking network that uses secret servers that ublock and pi hole doesn't block.

  • YouTube Sponsors (Score:3)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Monday March 25, 2024 @03:04PM (#64343669) Homepage Journal

    Ouch. They sponsored probably half the YouTube videos I watch. They must have dumped a ton of money on those sponsorships. Who's going to fund all those channels now?

    (Well, maybe not half, but I did see them mentioned often, though only when watching something just posted, as Sponsor Block skips over those sections most of the time.)

    • makes sense now. was curious why a lot of channels stopped advertising them. Ground News seems to have stepped in to a good chunk of them.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by crow ( 16139 )

        That's true. I see Ground News advertising all over the place now. At least what they sell doesn't appear to be exactly the same as a dozen other companies.

  • although Nord may not hold logs.. they do weirdly have access to data that can trace back to your account, IP, and activities over the tunnel, including all the sessions you open...

    which to me was a reason to never use them again, nor to suggest others to use them... we don't store logs of your sessions, but we do have all this data on them from our "machine" algorithm that also reviews them for ToS violations... which apparently can be violated when you open too many sessions too often which can happen wh

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