TL;DR

• Eight of the most well-known VPNs are owned by just three companies, many of which also own review sites that rate VPNs.
• What appears to be a crowded market is really a controlled conglomeration of big players designed to lock you in.
• NoNordNovember.com and Obscura is your chance to break free.

An Internet of Choices, with Few Options…

If you’re looking to buy a VPN, you’ll be swimming in what appears to be an endless sea of decisions. Paid or free? Open or closed source? One hop or two? Should I really be using Tor?

Yet despite the appearance of hundreds of VPN companies with thousands of exit nodes and a dizzying array of features, the sobering reality is quite different.

“It’s Déjà Vu All Over Again”

Many of the major brands you’ve heard of, like NordVPN and Surfshark, are owned by the same company, Nord.

Meanwhile, Kape Technologies, a company you’ve probably never heard of, owns ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, Private Internet Access, and Intego Privacy Protection. They also own review sites. Previously they also provided a development platform that was used to distribute malware. (I’ll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions.)

Adding further complication to this picture, multiple tech publications are owned by Ziff Davis, which also just so happens to own IPVanish and StrongVPN.

“You Can Observe a Lot by Watching”

Lost, confused? Check out this excellent interactive map from Windscribe. It breaks down this complicated web into a visual map that gives you a better picture of the market.

The bottom line is this: the big players in the VPN industry thrive in a byzantine environment that is designed to give customers an illusion of choice and real competition. This illusion is why big stale companies lock you in and play games with reviews and marketing. Not much differentiates them, so they muddy the waters.

“If You Don’t Know Where You Are Going, You’ll End Up Someplace Else”

Obscura is a new independent VPN. We don’t own review sites or operate multiple VPNs under different brands. We use a better, more private approach than the big guys. And we don’t ask you to trust us.

Ready to break out of this maze of fake choices? Visit NoNordNovember.com today and we’ll match the time left on your contract with any of the Nord, Kape, or Ziff Davis VPNs.