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A comment on Who Owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN Relationships Explained (2024). Parent comment

Re:Who Owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN Relationships ... by extraduder_ire on Tuesday October 07, 2025 @04:30AM (#45500717)
You connect to an access point, and your browser/OS tries to open one of http://detectportal.firefox.com/canonical.html, http://www.msftconnecttest.com/connecttest.txt, http://connectivitycheck.gstatic.com/generate_204, https://captive.apple.com/hotspot-detect.html and loads/displays whatever unencrypted web page is served.

Getting someone to open an unencrypted webpage is almost trivial. It's often one of the only web pages you can open on a device.

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Re:Who Owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN Relationships ... by Dylan16807 on Tuesday October 07, 2025 @03:31PM (#45507709)
The problem isn't getting you to open a page, it's putting that page behind a known legitimate URL.
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