Cloudflare’s WARP ‘VPN’ isn’t private nor safe; Don’t use it
All doubts I had about Cloudflare’s intentions, and specifically with their WARP ‘VPN’ service have now proven to be justified. Cloudflare’s WARP ‘VPN’ service went live a few days ago, and is another serious blow to the overall privacy and security on the Internet. Like I mentioned before, just like Facebook, Cloudflare is breaking all privacy and security on the Internet, and it’s happening in small incremental steps.
Note that I put ‘VPN’ between quotes because they’re taking the private right out of Virtual Private Network (VPN) with their Warp ‘VPN’ service. Here’s what their boneheaded CEO Matthew Prince had to say about it:
WARP is not designed to allow you to access geo-restricted content when you’re traveling. It will not hide your IP address from the websites you visit. If you’re looking for that kind of high-security protection then a traditional VPN or a service like Tor are likely better choices for you.
Not only is your real IP address being exposed to the websites you’re visiting while you think you’re using a private network that protects your privacy (because ‘VPN’), but Prince also admits that they will be monitoring traffic on their network:
In the two years since the Daily Stormer what we have done to try and solve the Internet’s deeper problem is engage with law enforcement and civil society organizations to try and find solutions. Among other things, that resulted in us cooperating around monitoring potential hate sites on our network and notifying law enforcement when there was content that contained an indication of potential violence. We will continue to work within the legal process to share information when we can to hopefully prevent horrific acts of violence.
This comes down to plain surveillance and spying. It’s not much different than what the Chinese government is doing with local companies. While you think your traffic is secure and (end-to-end) encrypted while using Cloudflare’s services they can read everything and track everything you’re doing — and they actually admit doing so! End-to-end encryption becomes fucking useless when you’re using Cloudflare’s services. Censorship on their network also becomes very easy to do like I previously explained.
It’s very deceptive to hide exposing users and monitoring their traffic behind services that supposedly offer the opposite and claim to protect users. In Cloudflare’s case they’re hiding it in plain sight, openly admitting to what they’re doing. I think they’re relying on the majority of users who are clueless, don’t read and investigate, and will blindly trust them because it says ‘VPN’ and their browser shows everything is secure. They also deserve points for co-opting WireGuard and actually making it less private and less secure. Bravo. Now we know why they didn’t want to work as part of the official WireGuard team. The international cabal behind destroying privacy and security on the Internet must be very proud of Prince.
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