“All of them claim to be the best”: A multi-perspective study of VPN users and VPN providers

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  • Date: Thursday, December 1, 2022
  • Time: 11am - 12pm EST / 4pm - 5pm UTC (What time is it in my city?)
  • Who: Reethika Ramesh, CS PhD Candidate at the University of Michigan, and lead researcher at VPNalyzer
  • Location: Zoom

RSVP: https://digitalrights.formstack.com/forms/vpnvillage2022_2

All of them claim to be the best”: A multi-perspective study of VPN users and VPN providers (Presentation and Q&A)

Earlier this year the VPNalyzer team “All of them claim to be the best”: A multi-perspective study of VPN users and VPN providers, reviewing the key findings of their study of 1,252 VPN users and qualitative interviews of 9 VPN providers which highlights the human factors of VPN use. In this session, join Reethika Ramesh, lead VPNalyzer researcher and co-author of the aforementioned paper, to hear about the key takeaways from the VPN user survey and VPN provider interviews and find out about new developments with the VPNalyzer Tool, a desktop tool that helps test and identify security and privacy issues with your VPN.

Bio: Reethika Ramesh is a fifth year PhD Candidate at the University of Michigan. She is the lead researcher at VPNalyzer: an academic research project that analyzes the VPN ecosystem through large-scale data-driven studies. She also investigated Russia's decentralized national-level censorship system, including their throttling of Twitter in March 2021.

Notes and Resources

"All of them claim to be the best": A multi-perspective study of VPN users and VPN providers Slides

Additional Resources: Investigating Influencer VPN Ads on YouTube

There hasn’t been much research into the human factors that affect VPN use, however there has been more technical / security research into VPNs

Unanswered Questions about VPNs

  • Why are users turning to VPNs?
    • Marketing?
    • Diminishing trust in ISPs?
  • What is the impact of dark patterns and marketing on usres?
  • What are the incentives in sustaining such practices?

User Survey Overview
Disclaimer: This is not a comprehensive study. It’s based on US users and a select number of providers.

  • Launched in March of 2021
  • 1252 U.S. users
  • Over 1500 users from 40 countries

Survey consisted of 27 questions. User types were determined based on subscription preferences (paid v. free) and technical expertize level.

What are users’ needs and considerations?

  • GUI ease of use
  • Price
  • Speed
  • Logging (only for high expertise users)

What resources did users use to find VPNs?

  • Google Search
  • Friends
  • Affiliates
  • VPN Mentor
  • Recommendation websites (95% of respondents felt these sites were trustworthy O_O)

Emotional Connections

  • People are more likely to use a service if they have an emotional connection to it (it makes them feel “safe” etc.).

Mental Models

  • Almost 40% of users have a flawed mental model, including users of all expertise levels.

A large number of people believe that VPNs have access to much more data than they actually do.

VPN Provider and User Alignment

  • Mental Models
    • User mental models are flawed and providers know this.

VPN Provider and User Misalignment

  • Reliance on Recommendation Sites
    • Most providers agree that recommendation sites are not reliable
  • View on Data Collection
    • VPN providers think that their privacy and logging policies are clear, but users are not clear about them.

Recommendations

  • Oversight on VPN ads and marketing
  • Attention to flawed recommendation sites
  • User education campaigns need to be improved
    • User VPN mental model, what a VPN can do, the threat models for which a VPN can be useful.
    • Organizations need to focus more energy on VPN education.
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