00:00 Hello, I'm Seth For Privacy, and welcome to a special episode of Opt Out. Opt Out's a show where I sit down with passionate people to learn why privacy matters to them, the tools and techniques they've found and leveraged, and where we encourage and inspire others towards personal privacy and data sovereignty. Wanting to find a solid VPN provider, but struggling to break through all of the marketing fluff and grandiose claims? This episode, we're going to sit down with Victor, a member of the IVPN team, the newest sponsor of Opt Out, to discuss the ethos behind IVPN, their approach to providing privacy to users, and some of the history of IVPN.

Welcome on to Opt Out, Victor. Hi, thanks for the invitation. Yeah, I'm so glad to be able to sit down and walk through, I think, some of the common questions and concerns that listeners may have around VPNs. And obviously, IVPN is a service that I've used for a while and really, really enjoyed, but the more that I dig into Yelp's blog posts, the more I dig into the privacy guides that you publish, and just see the ethos that goes into the company and the ethos of the people on the team that I've gotten to know.

It's just been clear that it's very much a different ballgame from, I think, the norm in the VPN provider space, which has a lot of bad actors or just companies that kind of misuse the ideal of security and privacy. So I'm glad to sit down and hopefully get some clarity and just invite the listeners to get to know IVPN a little bit more. Nice. That's quite a glowing feedback. Thanks. Yeah, I've been very pleasantly surprised. I had been very recommended IVPN by a lot of people in the past and got into it and started looking more into it.

And I just, yeah, I've come away very, very impressed and grateful that there are services out there that seem to care about user privacy beyond just making a quick buck, but really, really do value that and want to provide a service that protects people's privacy at all costs. So definitely grateful for that. Yeah, nice. For those listeners who aren't familiar with you specifically or with IVPN, do you mind introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about what IVPN does?

Sure. So I'm Victor. I'm from Hungary. And I'm part of the IVPN team for over four years now. I'm doing communications, community, doing special projects. I'm seeing I'm going to mention some of them and explain some of them. And yeah, IVPN is a previously focused VPN provider. And we exist, you know, for the mission of protecting people's privacy through encrypting their traffic and masking their IP address and solving some of the basic problems that you face right now in the digital world with logging off your data and surveillance, essentially.

Awesome. Well, I wanted to get to know a little bit more about kind of your personal privacy journey. So I'm curious what it was that woke you up to the need for personal privacy. Sure. I've been thinking about this a little bit more since I've started listening to Opt Out. And I have a couple of answers to that. I used to work in the digital side of the adult industry for a couple of years. Strong libertarian spirit. Freedom of speech is very important value there, usually.

And that was a so-called Operation Choke Point. I'm not sure if you are familiar with that. The U.S. government's different ways of trying to shut down businesses that they've condoned as like not very compliant with their ideas of what businesses should be allowed to run. So they've shut down the bank accounts and there were different things happening there. And that really made me like raise my eyebrows and think about the implications. So that was one thing.

And working in the industry, I was working on like generating traffic to websites, like improve monetization. And that part really woke me up to the value of the personal data. So after a couple of years, I felt responsible. Like I'm part of the problem, not any kind of solution. So, yeah, I got out of that. And, yeah, going back a little bit further, I'm from Hungary, as I mentioned before. And like secret police and surveillance, that was pretty much the basic thing, you know, up until the end of the 1980s.

Pretty much like in East Germany and the Stasi. And I was listening to these stories from relatives who were participating from both sides. And it was clear to me which side I want to be on. So, yeah, that's roughly the backdrop for it. But the trigger was reading a long obituary about John Periballo, the co-founder of EFF, when he died. And that kind of like opened up a whole library of knowledge about EFF and what they're about and the whole background of the movement.

And that really blew me away. And I wanted to join this whole course, really. And, you know, IVPN was looking for a person with a skill set and background similar to mine. And IVPN was an EFF sponsored even back then. So it was like a great fit at that point. So that's roughly it. Yeah, it's cool to hear when people who are involved in kind of the other side of the aisle, I guess, but the people who are like helping with data collection and helping to utilize that to, like you said, improve monetization or improve hits on a website, that kind of thing.

It's always cool to hear when that is part of why people wake up to realizing that need. Because obviously you've seen the ins and outs of how that process can work and how that data can be used. So, yeah, you've come around after that. And I will have to check out that obituary. I hadn't heard of anyone mentioning that before. So I'm curious to read that and see what jumped out to you. I'll have to learn more about that. But definitely thankful for what...

Sure, happy to share that. Yeah, I'll definitely have to give it a read. I'm thankful for what EFF has done. And just so many people in the space who have dedicated their lives or much of their lives to drive the point of privacy forward, drive the ability for people to reclaim personal privacy forward. Yeah. And yeah, just to add to that, I mean, the whole starting point in the first years, there was the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace by John Pedro Barlow, where he really went on about what we need to fight for and what kind of future we want to build, you know, without any kind of interference from the corporate giants and the governments.

And I feel like sometimes we are kind of losing that battle and that makes me like, amps me up a little bit more, you know, to keep going. So it's a good historical perspective and things to go back to. Yeah. Yeah. Great motivation there. And I'm curious what it was that sparked the creation of IPPN. I mean, there's so many VPN providers out there and they have been for a long time. So I'd love if you can share a little bit about what kind of sparked the creation of IPPN.

And yeah. Sure. Yeah. I mean, IPPN was conceived like in 2009 and there were far fewer VPNs. And it was founded by a gentleman called Nick Pastel. And he's a lifelike cypherpunk. And he had a pretty similar story like mine in the sense that he had like peered into the data collection part from the, he was working in the financial service industry as an infosec analyst, risk analyst. And he was like kind of disillusioned by the amount of like customer data companies start to collect, analyze it, predict purchasing behavior, all this kind of stuff.

So he went on and looked for like how can we help this issue and how can we solve at least a part of that. And I think even back then, like this ISP problem where like the greatest threat really to privacy is like ISPs holding a lot of power, seeing all the customer traffic flowing through. And they can tie it to this real persona, whatever personal information or payment information you gave them. They capture it and they can package it and sell it and share it with anyone.

You know, I think that was a huge chunk of the problem like 10 years ago. I think a lot of things changed since then, but it's still a very important problem. And we are still focusing on solving that. So most of the VPNs at that time, you know, focused on anti-censorship, security, and then like this unblocking of geo-restriction that provide a lot of growth opportunity for a lot of companies and shifted their focus, you know, finding new ways to grow essentially.

But the VPN was built for privacy protections and we have kept that focus ever since then. So that's why you don't really see, we don't do any development, for example, in the unblocking streaming services or whatever. Some of our customers would like to see that, but we rather focus on the privacy aspects. Yeah, definitely agree that the privacy aspects I think are much more important. So I'm glad that that's remained the core focus there. And what is it that separates IVPN from the other VPN providers out there today?

That's a good question. I could talk about this for an hour, I think. Yeah, a couple of things.

10:00 I can think about three overarching things there. One is the principles. So we really try to build a service that we will want to use ourselves and we want to treat customers how we want to be treated. And that's with honesty, no FUD, no overselling. And there's no like everyone needs a VPN kind of thing. We don't say it provides anonymity and complete privacy and no military grade encryption stuff. So we don't use these kind of things to sell more subscriptions.

And we want to stay true to the privacy mission. So no retargeting ads, no data brokers, and Facebook and Google ads, email list buying, all this kind of stuff. I had a discussion about this on Twitter with someone that they were like, I mean, companies need to grow. And if you just don't use these tactics, then you won't reach more people. But I argue that like VPN providers, they exist to provide better privacy and essentially sell privacy in some sense.

So it's their whole mission and it has to be their key promise. So if you use these kind of tactics, you sell something and you consistently and constantly undermine it at the same time. And for me, it's mind boggling. Like there are just a couple of VPN providers that don't have any trackers and don't do Facebook and Google ads. You know, it's debatable, but we would like to like keep that, keep this part. So that's one. Yeah. Slow growth instead of violating privacy.

And a second one would be like on the product side, the privacy focus. No email needed for registration. We accept cash and Monero and BTC as well, if you can source it anonymously. But, you know, that's, again, that's a tricky topic. So, and no third party tools, as I mentioned. So we don't pass on any information to any parties. We cannot be completely self-sovereign. We are an ISP. We have some infrastructure partners, but, you know, we are very mindful of trying to minimize those corporations and interactions when it's not absolutely essential.

So that's the second. And then the third one is the trust. So really educate people on, like, when you use a VPN provider, you shift trust. So you shift trust from your ISP. And, you know, it cannot be proven 100% that the VPN provider is not logging. There is no way to do that right now. You can look for signals like audits and who owns it, transparency, clear privacy policies, and all this kind of stuff. So rent canaries. Yeah. And whether the software is open source, some other parts are open source.

But, you know, audits also just like a snapshot in time. We usually highlight that. You know, you cannot verify that that code actually runs live. So, yeah. So I think these are the stuff that came into my mind about what separates. Yeah. But we also usually say that when I add that, I think it's not the best fit for everyone. You know, it's speeds might vary. App functionality might be different. And, you know, if you care about some other stuff, you know, if you want a server in your country, in some parts of the Middle East that we don't cover, or you really want streaming unblocking, then IVPN is not for you.

And that's fine. You know, and not many VPN providers say that. There are actual limitations. Wow. No, I just want to say, like, if you don't use IVPN or don't pick IVPN, just use one that you can trust. So I think in my personal view, there is only just a handful of trustworthy providers. I'm not going to name them. But, you know, if you pick those that are recommended by people that don't have, like, financial incentive to do that, and then you can identify those that, like, care about privacy.

As you said in the intro, that was pretty good. Like, not chasing an exit or hockey stick growth. You know, it's not easy to identify those companies, but it's possible. So, like, try them and test them and, like, pick one of those, and then I'll be happy. You don't have to use IVPN. Yeah, I think the things that really drew me into IVPN were, one was just accepting Monero, I think, is a clear signal that a company is serious about preserving their user's privacy.

Because allowing people to pay directly in Monero with no third party and no payment processor is a huge win for the person who's actually subscribing to the service because they get a really easy way to maintain their financial privacy while subscribing. Another huge one that is just almost novel to me. I've never seen anyone else do this. I think another VPN provider, Mullvad, does it now. But that you didn't require email for signing up just was such a cool system.

And so the end user doesn't have to worry about using some kind of aliasing service or trying to spin up an email just for that. Or they don't have to worry about the email privacy side when they're signing up, which I think is also very important. And it just removes an extra burden on the user who's signing up when they're trying to protect their privacy from IVPN. Because obviously they don't want you all to know everything about them. Yeah, that helps.

That helps. Like, I mean, it helps us, you know, looking at our threat model. Just one note about that. Mullvad have done that before us. So just want to make it clear. So it's not an innovation. Yeah. Yeah, it's just a very cool feature. It's not something I had seen before. But the other thing that really drew me in was just looking at the principles that y'all live by and seeing that carried out in your marketing and in your blog posts and in your privacy guides.

It became very apparent that, like you talked about, you're not willing to sell users' data. You're not willing to lie to users and tell them that either VPNs do something that they don't or tell them that IVPN does something that it doesn't. And it's just so rare in really any company. But especially in the VPN space, it feels like there's so many providers that are willing to make those grandiose and ridiculous claims about what their VPN service can do in order to pull users in.

And then users end up being hurt because they get pulled into a probably logging, data-selling, awful VPN provider. And they don't realize it because they're being sold this bill of goods that's just completely false. So the approach that y'all take to messaging and to education has, I think, really set you apart from other VPN providers that I've looked at. Yeah, that's good to hear. Yeah, we've been working on that for a number of years now to try to highlight these differences and try to work on the education part quite a lot.

So sometimes being really vocal and calling out other companies, we don't necessarily want to do that too much anymore, I guess. But yeah, that's an important aspect. Yeah, thanks for walking through those three main aspects. Super helpful to hear. And I wanted to give you a chance, too, just to share what makes IVPN specifically a powerful tool for users who are taking steps to reclaim their personal privacy. Generally for VPNs, I think the starting point would be considering the individual threat models, so your threat model.

And it's just a part of a toolkit. And perhaps, depending on the threat model, perhaps it's not the first step or the first tool that I would recommend. And depending on that threat model, other steps might make more sense to do first, like switching your browser or privacy enhancing extensions. But as far as the VPN part, it's just like really preventing your ISP from analyzing, logging, selling your data, and keeping a permanent log of that. So they could cooperate with entities you don't know, trust, like corporate, government entities.

And if you're also concerned about your IP address being visible to your website you visit or services you use, that's also a very good way to do that is to use a VPN. And improve security somewhat on untrusted networks. That part has been improving quite a lot in the recent years with HTTPS and other developments. But it's still something that is useful. So that's generally. And yeah, specifically for IVPN, I think just going back to the trust and like the we don't lock part and we have very strict legal guidelines.

And, you know, we have kind of figured this out over the years, like what are the things that we can promise and actually carry out or like actually provide to the customers as these defenses for them. And on the product side, perhaps multi-hop would be an interesting thing to mention, which spreads the risk around multiple jurisdictions. So that's when you connect to one server and then to another and use VPN that way. We have just recently launched the WireGuard version of the multi-hop and I use it personally and it's pretty fast.

So, yeah. And another thing is our anti-tracker, which is a little bit going.

20:00 away from the VPN, let's do one job well thing. But we have added an anti-tracker and ad blocker. Some customers have asked for that. And yeah, that's also can be useful to do it at a DNS level. Works similar to like a pie hole or stuff like that. So yeah, I think it's a nice little feature to bundle in, especially because DNS when using a VPN can be pretty important. So it's nice if the person's going to use your DNS provider when using VPN. It's nice to have that option to just quickly enable some basic DNS protections around ads and tracking. Nice little feature there. And I love, I think the core thing that you mentioned earlier too, is just that you recognize and you're honest about VPNs shifting trust. So it's not that it becomes a trustless thing. It's just that you're deciding when you use a VPN service like IVPN, that you trust this company not to be logging, not to be doing these things to act ethically, to care for your data. And you're saying you trust them more than you trust

your ISP. And obviously there are a lot of different ways that you can kind of make that decision for yourself. But a lot of things we talked about already help to help to inform that decision around, do you trust IVPN more than you trust whatever IP or ISP you have? And especially since the ISP that you use, I think a key piece of that that people need to remember is that the ISP has generally all of your personally identifiable information. Like they will generally have name, address, phone number, maybe ID, maybe other things. So shifting the trust away from someone who has all of your personally identifiable information is I think almost always a good move in almost any threat model. Obviously not everyone and everyone needs to decide that for themselves. But shifting that visibility into traffic away from the third party that has your personally identifiable information can be really vital. Yeah, exactly. And one thing to add to that, in Hungary and in my personal situation is that the my broadband ISP is the same as my mobile carrier. So it's one company. So it's like

that even makes it worse in terms of how much information they can immediately correlate. So yeah, scary. Yeah, yeah. If you do have that, I would even more highly recommend using a VPN or if you can switch to not having that data going through the same person. But yeah, the more the more data points you provide, the more dangerous it can be to you now or in the future. That's right. You've mentioned a few, but I wanted to just kind of circle back to what the core limitations or misconceptions are around the privacy that's provided by a specifically by a good non logging VPN like IVPN. Because I think there's a lot of misconceptions in the space about what VPNs do and don't do. So I'd love to hear your thoughts around the kind of the core limitations of VPN or the misconceptions around it.

Sure. Yeah, yeah, this is a big topic. And that's it's it's kind of like a pet peeve of mine. And this is what like to draw me to like writing blog posts about this and and some projects. But yeah, I mean, VPNs don't do a lot of things that people assume either by looking at the ads and like, like, have a feel for what they might do or just have this way promises. So VPNs won't stop you from like tech giants tracking you, for example, like many, many other ways to do that.

You can solve one part of that with the the IP shifting, but like device fingerprinting persistent cookies through the browser, you know, if they if they own a browser, and one of them happened to do that. So yeah, so it really is just it's just should be a part of a toolkit, as I said, and it's not a one button solution. And I think it's very harmful that many providers, you know, run with these kind of ads. And yeah, VPN will protect you from like a passive global adversary that can monitor all traffic.

And it definitely won't protect you from targeted surveillance. But that's the other thing that like I see in the chat communities, people coming in popping up like I have a question like someone is after me and like, I don't know. So it's like, it's, it's, it's, it's not gonna help you. It's not gonna help you. And, and, and if someone thinks that it's gonna help them, and they do something silly, then you know, it's, it's, it's just, it's just way worse than they have this false sense of security. So that's, that's my biggest, biggest issue with this. And, you know, depending on the threat model, as we talked about that, you might need Tor, which is better for anonymity, but you know, suffers from some issues, as some of your guests have have talked about in previous episodes.

But really, so you, you might need not a VPN at all, if you trust your ISP, or you absolutely not concerned about any of these for any reason, you know, you just want, I don't know, hide your financial transactions or something like that. And you don't care about that part, then that you might not need a VPN. And yeah, that's, that's, that's an important takeaway, I think. And most of your listeners probably need one, but some of their friends or their grandma, you know, might not need one.

I don't know. And this is why we have wrote posts, like why you don't need a VPN. And this is why we have created the tool. I think you mentioned it in, in the show notes that, or the sponsor notes that do any the VPN.com, which specifically collects the different issues that people might have around privacy, and they can, they can select them. And, you know, if you select, stop social media tracking, and hiding financial transactions, then, you know, this tool will spit out, you know, you don't need a VPN, that's, it's not gonna help you, it's not gonna save you. So yeah, it's, it's, it's a complex topic.

Yeah, and, and everyone needs to do their own assessment on this. Yeah, it's definitely one we could spend a lot more time looking at and like, you know, spent some, spent a good amount of time talking about it in a couple of the previous episodes of opt out. But I think the, the key thing there for me is that it's, it's a piece of the toolkit. And it may not even be the first piece of the toolkit that you put in place, even though I'd argue that usually it should be pretty early, but it's not gonna solve all of your privacy issues in one go, you really need to bundle it with, like you mentioned, using a good browser using good privacy preserving extensions, maybe using a different operating system, there's a lot of different things that go into personal privacy, and it's not just slap a VPN on it and call it a day. And that the do I need a VPN tool is so awesome. I love the I've created a tool entirely designed to tell people to tell some people that they shouldn't pay for your service. I think that's just an awesome thing that I've never seen anyone

else do. So it's cool to see people who are willing to willing to actively dissuade potential customers in order to protect their privacy and to not make false claims. So it's a great little, great little approach there. Thanks. Yeah. And it's open source. So if you go on the site and fight something that you disagree with, or it's outdated or anything else, we are happy to change it. Just create an issue on GitHub and we can work together on it. Awesome. I also wanted to just give you the chance to share any future plans for IPPN that listeners should know about. Future plans, yeah. Yeah, I mentioned GitHub. I think most of our stuff is like visible and accessible, what we're working on right now.

We want to create a better roadmap, make it public. There are some drawbacks and challenges with that, you know, like, we make a promise and we don't keep it by the time we, you know, we estimated it and some stuff like that. But generally, it's also increases transparency and people can see that what they can expect from the service. So we'd like to do something like that. We mentioned anti-tracker. We want to improve that a little bit. We haven't done that since we had added to the service, but we have some requests about that. We're working on Linux split tunneling.

It's high priority now. Thanks. So yeah, that's, that's, yeah, we recently added on another platform. So that's on the product side. And on the infrastructure side, you know, this is going to be a big focus for next year, improve on our infrastructure. This is not my focus area, but I'm aware of the goals and the plans. So we want to add more on servers. And we're also looking at progressing towards some sort of open source infrastructure. So there are some experiments by Mova around this. They have a project called system transparency, which is pretty interesting. So we are, we are, we are, we're looking at that as well.

So yeah, we're not working directly with them, but, but yeah, the, we definitely have the same goals are the same ideas. So, so yeah, that's, that's an interesting project. Awesome. And yeah, go ahead. You finish up. No, I wanted to jump on some other stuff. So yeah, no, I was just going to say, I look forward to checking those out, especially the split tunneling on, split tunneling on Linux. I think it'd be helpful for, for me and for a lot of people I know that, that use Linux for their data driver.

Definitely. It's, it's, it's been requested many times. So in the past couple of weeks. So yeah, that's, that's, that's a priority. And, and besides this, like more content and guides and perhaps experimenting with other formats, you know, to talk about the VPN and our operation and our plans and, and our ethics and stuff like that. So yeah, like education further the cause through education and, you know,

30:00 If not doing it by ourselves, then at least sponsor great creators like the host of the show. So that's the idea. It's a good segue. My next question is, what made you decide to partner with Opt Out and support the show financially? Yeah. We've been listeners since we've discovered it. I think I've discovered you through Henry from Techlore. Oh, nice. He was an early guest, I guess. And, you know, overall great episodes and great guest selection and format.

And it's become an essential lesson for me. And I think there is a lot of room for much more like audio and video content in this mold. And, you know, for us, it's a great fit with what we would like to achieve as a venture. So we plan to sponsor more creators, you know, who raise awareness and educate about privacy and the tools. And I think this is the best use of any profits we can think of. That was the idea all along that the profits we generate, that like a big chunk of that would be reinvested in education and sponsorships, you know, to help this whole thing gain more awareness.

So, yeah. Yeah. So it's just awesome to hear that people who create an awesome privacy product that I use are also listening to the show. It's very humbling and honoring it. It's been cool to hear that from multiple different people. And I used to hear that you specifically have listened to the show. It's really, really just crazy to think about. But I love that you all have decided to continue that focus around broader privacy and not just tunneling everything into growing IPPN like you talked about, but realizing that there's such a desperate need for education in this space.

There's such a desperate need for more honest, nuanced content creators that are willing to delve into the nitty gritty and the pros and cons and look at the different aspects of personal privacy. So I'm glad that you are doing that. And I'm just grateful that there's more money flowing into that scene. And really just that you all are also creating excellent educational content as well. I think it goes a long way to speak to the ethics behind IPPN.

So I'm hopeful to see more of that content out of y'all and obviously excited what this sponsorship will help to enable me to do. Hopefully continue to expand and maybe even start doing some video content moving forward. So excited for that. But definitely very grateful for the sponsorship. Great. Great to hear that. Yeah. If you don't mind, one more thought about this. I think the trickiest thing for us is like where to put that sponsorship money and with who to sponsor.

I mean, everyone knows that like all YouTubers out there, all the big sponsorships with the big, big ticket name, you know, VPN firms. You have a YouTuber with millions of followers doing unboxing or something like that. And they have no business in recommending tools like this. And they have no business in, they cannot properly vet them. They don't understand the whole, the nuances and threat models and everything else. And they just accept the money and the VPN companies just pay that money.

So we don't want to participate in that at all. And that's why we haven't done any kind of sponsorships. Mostly we don't want to do this. No offense to unboxing YouTubers. If anyone is unboxing YouTubers listening to it, I have nothing against you. Just don't accept the VPN sponsorships. So, yeah, I mean, my point here is that it's really encouraging to see people like Henry, for example, and yourself. And I hope more and more people are going to get into this and try it and try this education.

And if they have the knack for it and have the willingness to put themselves out there and invest the time for it, we should work together and find ways to reward and, you know, grow this whole, let's say, ecosystem or something like that. So, yeah, we are very much down with that idea long term. Yeah, I'm very hopeful that more and more people will step up to create educational content in the privacy space. I think there's a lot less than I expected when I got into this and a lot less that really put a ton of time and effort into it.

So I'm hopeful. I do not want a monopoly on this. I'm sure like Henry from Techlore does not want a monopoly on this. I want other people stepping up and doing that. It's hopefully better than I'm doing it. So I'm really, really am hoping that people listening to this, people reading our VPNs, privacy stuff, people enjoying content from Techlore will make the conscious decision to think about how can I kind of give back? And is this something I could actually help with?

And is there content I can create around privacy? And I hope that that ecosystem will continue to grow and grow quickly because it is very, very much needed. Agreed. Agreed. I also wanted to just hear if there are any other specific privacy tools that you would generally recommend people to take a look at and then why. Sure. I think I mentioned like browser extensions that I use, Ublock Origin and Decentralize. I think they are good first steps if you're just starting out or like, yeah, getting started with this.

But yeah, what comes to mind are some of the big names, well, big names in our circles, let's say. But I really like projects that manage to solve like the onboarding first obstacles, network effects, usability issues like this. And they combine it with like great gains in privacy and security. So I think that's the way forward to onboard like a large number of users for massive privacy gains overall. Like Signal is a very good example of that. I know there's some question marks over the phone number requirement depending on your level of, I don't know, purism or something like that.

But yeah, I think it's a great intersection of like great UX, great privacy and security. And yeah, I've onboarded many relatives through like saying that I only sent family photos on Signal. So now I'm talking to grandparents and friends and some great uncles and whatever on Signal. I don't have a Facebook and Messenger. I don't want to use WhatsApp. So yeah, now like there is some friction. Some of them don't answer for a week. But yeah, but it's still, I consider this one of the big wins for me in terms of privacy.

So that's good. And Bitwarden would be in the similar mold. I have a user. It's a password manager that I think has a really good background with the privacy and security aspects, but it's still very usable. So user-friendly, I really like that. Yeah. And perhaps on the IVPN side. So like running a business, we think about this a lot. And if you listen to this and you have your own business or you do transactions and you accept money or you have some subscriptions and you have your own website, I think two things would be important to note here.

One is that you don't have to use Google Analytics. So there are great alternatives. We use Matomo, which is open source. And we host it ourselves. There is no information passed on. We just remove the last two octets of the IPs. And, you know, the functionality is pretty well built out. And for, like, let's say basic analytics, it's excellent. So, yeah, you don't have to use a sub party for this. That's one. And the second thing is what you mentioned.

I mean, we have our own BTC pay server. So we accept BTC directly. And with Monero, we run our own node and we accept Monero directly with a custom implementation. But my point here is that this is pretty easy nowadays, especially. So if you want to, you know, improve those aspects of your business, even if a VPN provider is listening to this, please do it. And, yeah, that would be a great step. Because if you cut out the middleman, that's good for everyone except the middleman, I guess.

But, yeah, that's my message here. I think we have a surprising crossover of apps that we use. It's cool to see your list echoing a lot of the ones that I've recommended broadly. Two quick notes on the things you mentioned. I think for Signal, you hit the nail on the head that for me, it's the perfect example. Perfect example of perfect not being the enemy of good or perfect being the enemy of good. Sorry, can you get the phrase right? And just that, like, yes, it's not an absolutely perfect tool.

And there are things I would like to change. But it is an excellent first step in people's privacy journey. And really, that's the only messenger I can think of that's thoroughly privacy preserving that I couldn't have gotten all of my family and friends on. And I currently have every single family member and every single friend using Signal with me. And that's not something I can say about a lot of other privacy tools, and especially not messenger apps.

So I think it's a very good balance. And there are definitely things that I would love to see changed. But I think they've done a good job of balancing UX and UI and really focusing on still providing strong privacy throughout that. And the Bitward as well is a huge one that I've used. And just a little note, I don't know if anyone else has seen, but you can use organizations within Bitwarden. And it's a great way to either use it within a company or small team or, like, between your spouse.

Like, me and my wife are part of an organization.

40:00 so that we can share credentials and she can have access to the things that she needs to that maybe I generated or use more regularly. So it's a cool way to be able to share those credentials without having to actually copy and paste them back and forth or that kind of thing. Yeah, and it's pretty easy. And if you have people coming from, I don't know, LastPass or 1Password, there is not a big learning curve. So it's pretty straightforward. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, last question I had for you, Victor, is just how can listeners learn more about IVPN? And then what are the best ways that they can support what you're doing with IVPN? Yeah. The first point of contact, I think, would be our website. If you haven't heard about us, you can find all the information about our policies and guides and ethics, all this kind of stuff, and the product if you're interested. We have preactive communities, Mastodon, Reddit, some other platforms.

And what else? Yeah, I mentioned GitHub already. You can review our code, submit requests, issues. Some customers do that or correct some errors and copy and, yeah, point out different things. So that's very useful. We really like to keep our ears on the ground and look for feedback from customers. So that would be appreciated. That's about it. Awesome. Yeah, I will definitely make sure to have all of those and some more links that I found helpful in the show notes so people can quickly jump in and learn more.

Excellent. Yeah, well, thank you so much for jumping on, Victor. It was a pleasure for me to just be able to get to learn a little bit more about you personally and about what VPN is doing, and I really hope that this will help listeners make a well-informed decision. Obviously, I'm not forcing everyone to use VPN or telling them it's the only solution, but I think obviously it's been the right choice for myself. I've loved everything that I've gotten to learn about the way VPNs run, and I hope that people will consider it and just consider the broader idea of whether or not a VPN fits their model.

So thanks for coming on and giving so much detail and insight. Yeah, great. Great to hear all that. Appreciate it. Thanks for the opportunity. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Opt Out. If you did, please take a moment and subscribe to the podcast, or if you're already subscribed, share it with one friend or family member this week. As always, you can check out the link to the guest's content and contact info, as well as links to all of the tools we discussed in today's episode.

Now get out there and opt out this week. Thank you.