DNS traffic can leak outside the VPN tunnel on Android

Re:DNS traffic can leak outside the VPN tunnel on Android by starttoaster on Friday May 03, 2024 @01:39PM (#40250222)

What is it about a company spreading awareness about their product that weirds you out in particular, I'm curious? Billboard advertisements are an awareness type of advertisement. I'd be much more concerned to learn about paid endorsements, which they document on their website that they specifically do not do. Endorsements are a much more sensitive form of advertising, where once money trades hands for an endorsement, it stops being a useful third party assessment and starts being an advertisement disguised as a third party assessment. Awareness advertisements just make good business sense, so I'm genuinely curious why those would shy anybody away.

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Re:DNS traffic can leak outside the VPN tunnel on Android by epcoa on Friday May 03, 2024 @01:51PM (#40250348)

I saw them on the side of a CTA bus for the first time the other day. I don’t think it is bad at all, but the initial reaction for me as an American used to typical bus advertising it was exactly as if seeing an ad for 4chan there. It just isn’t the expected modality for the product.

(Seeing the reply down thread from a Mullvad rep, this is not unexpected)

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Re:DNS traffic can leak outside the VPN tunnel on Android by int_19h on Friday May 03, 2024 @03:20PM (#40251269)

I agree with you, but I also understand where GP is coming from. For the past 20 years, what people are mostly exposed to is internet ads, which are, to put it mildly, pushy. As a result, all ads now have to deal with considerable negative sentiment as a baseline simply by virtue of being ads.

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Re:DNS traffic can leak outside the VPN tunnel on Android by snowwrestler on Saturday May 04, 2024 @11:17AM (#40258290)

My concern with the Mullvad ads is that some are essentially lying about what their product does. One of the ads I recall said something like:

> Imagine an ad that won’t track you after you see it

> Mullvad VPN

That’s not what a VPN does though. Tunneling my browsing does not stop sites from serving ads, setting cookies, fingerprinting browsers, etc.

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Re:DNS traffic can leak outside the VPN tunnel on Android by xnyan on Saturday May 04, 2024 @02:11PM (#40259292)

> That’s not what a VPN does though.

Mullvad itself is extremely clear that use of a VPN alone is not enough for the reasons you stated. Mullvad VPN (which is what they advertised) is a suite of products and services, some of which are:

- DNS services (ads, tracking)

- A privacy-optimized browser (cookies, fingerprinting)

- Network services like multihop routing (many benefits such as resistance to timing attacks)

All of these services are included with your subscription at no additional cost. I feel like the claim of preventing ad tracking is as legitimate as it could possibly be.

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