Disclaimer: I know TurboVPN and the others mentioned are not good services to use, I’m strictly doing research. I’m not looking for VPN recommendations.

Genuinely wondering how these numbers are possible? 300M downloads and 8.35M reviews…? How?! Not even Amazon Shopping app or Disney+ have this many reviews. And surely NordVPN and Express VPN are considerable larger in both users and resources? I’ve never seen a sponsorship, not even once, from Turbo VPN. Are these numbers regional based? Is Turbo VPN more known in other regions? Is it easy to spoof these numbers?

Appreciate any comments on the matter, and have a nice day 🌻

  • Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 months ago

    It’s as simple as ‘it’s free’. Most people don’t care about privacy, just bypassing censorship. Plus, the majority of people in third world countries can’t afford to pay for a vpn, so they’ll flock towards free ones.

    • Rooki@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      and Nordvpn or Expressvpn isnt even private so… its paid but you still give all your data to them.

      • Billiam@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Isn’t that how non-self-hosted VPNs work by their very nature? The VPN owner is always going to know where your traffic originates and where its destination is.

        • Bahnd Rollard@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Yes, but some claim to be log-less so while they can see your traffic, they pinky promise not to record it. Proton being one who proports to not keep logs, and seeing as they are Swiss ,that tracks.

          (Proton VPN is the 3rd party one I use)

          • azalty@jlai.lu
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            2 months ago

            Proton is also a bit shady about their marketing and aren’t really transparent about governments asking for data. It’s also really really expensive for what it is.