MacOS only at the moment.
this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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Privacy
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I'm glad we have choices but be careful everyone, they're new and we don't know if they're trust worthy.
It does seem interesting,
but I remain skeptical.
This means putting your trust in Obscura, since they're the 1st hop, receiving your data without additional encryption, a new player, who yet has to prove that they're trustworthy.
Sure their Github may show great software, but that doesn't mean we can see which software they might additionally install on their servers.
Meanwhile Mullvad has already been proven to be trustworthy through the best possible review any VPN company can receive, being: Server seized by the feds, but zero useful info retrieved by them.
Which proves they back up their claim of being a No-Log VPN.
Due to this I trust Mullvad,
and don't have any issues with sending them my data.
But I can't put the same faith in Obscura yet, not before they receive a similar "review".
Server seized by the feds, but zero useful info retrieved by them.
The gold standard.
Assuming they don't log your perfectly trackable payments.
They don't take xmr or cash?
They seem good, but they're new and we can't know just yet whether we can trust them or not.
As I understand it, the "first hop" in Obscura's case would give them access to your IP address, but the identity of the destination server would be obscured until it was accepted by the second hop, Mullvad's server. In contrast, Mullvad's server would not see your IP address. (And, hoping you are visiting an HTTPS secured website, they would see the domain you are visiting but not the page contents.)
A helpful diagram is halfway down this page. I feel comfortable providing it, as this company is no longer in business AFAIK.
This means putting your trust in Obscura, since they’re the 1st hop, receiving your data without additional encryption, a new player, who yet has to prove that they’re trustworthy.
I've not checked but the whole claim is to use additional encryption, between you and the 2nd hop.
With our 2-party setup, Obscura operates the 1st hop, and we’re proud to partner with Mullvad who operates the 2nd (exit) hop. As the WireGuard packets are end-to-end encrypted to Mullvad’s servers, we never see any parts of your packet in plaintext (not even SNI). In fact, you can check your connected server’s public key in the Obscura App against those listed on Mullvad’s server page!
Can someone explain this to me? It seems like I'm sending stuff to obscura, so they can then send it to mullvad, which can then send it to the website? Like a two layer TOR?
Basically yes.
The USP here seems to be the traffic mangling used to disguise the connection. The client is open source, which is always good, but that means it's probably easier for a bad actor to analyse and break that USP.
Very limited payment options and macOS only currently. Feels like they've made a pretty webpage & rushed launch, instead of polishing the product/product availability first.
Unfortunate that the term 'Obscura' is dominated by the band in search results.
I will stick with stuffing an envelope with cash and posting it to mullvad, but this is definitely one to watch.
Bullshit. If they're joining Mullvad then how fucking long til they accept Monero?
They claim to accept privacy, so why don't they accept the only real private cryptocurrency*?
*Don't even start that here. Take it to Monero.town as your most social form of educating yourself but do just that.
They accept cash bruh.
First time seeing a service support Nostr public keys instead of email.
It is interesting but it also does not inspire much confidence in this service since anyone who's used Nostr knows exactly what and who it's for.
Weirdo crypto bros?
Monero is pretty good tho.
And Raging angry right wingers. Though a lot of those are moving to mainstream services like Twitter and Facebook.
It's swarmed by crypto content but it's a nice, simple, distributed protocol. Run your own node; compared to any AP service, it's astonishingly lightweight. Peer, or not; refuse to handle traffic from the crypto heavy nodes.
It's a fantastic, well designed protocol. Read a few NIPS, then read the Activity Pub design and you tell me which one you think is more well-designed.
I won't ignore that the majority of traffic was crypto stuff, but it's slowly broadening out to more legitimate content, like porn.
Pretty sure it also has a decent amount of alt-right MAGA content as well.
I say, what are you implying sir? I use it for memes and talking to strangers.