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Researchers find alarming overlaps among 18 popular VPNs
App stores treated the VPNs as separate products, despite shared parent companies, codebases and vulnerabilities.
A new peer-reviewed study alleges that 18 of the 100 most-downloaded virtual private network (VPN) apps on the Google Play Store are secretly connected in three large families, despite claiming to be independent providers. The study, published in the journal of the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS), doesn't just find that the VPNs in question failed to disclose behind-the-scenes relationships, but also that their shared infrastructures contain serious security flaws. Starting from the list of the most-downloaded VPNs on Android, the researchers compiled data from each VPN's business paperwork, web presence and codebase and sifted through it for connections.
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