NordVPN has decided to open access to its Meshnet feature to everyone, regardless of whether they have a subscription to the company’s products. This applies to users of Windows, macOS, or Linux operating systems.
By making Meshnet available for free to all users approximately eight months after its initial launch, NordVPN is promoting the values of internet access freedom and privacy protection that the company has upheld for years.
What Is Meshnet for?
Meshnet allows NordVPN users to create a peer-to-peer VPN tunnel between trusted remote mobile or desktop devices, like their own or those of friends and relatives. For this system to work, both the routing device and the served device need to use NordVPN’s app.
By routing traffic through trusted remote devices, the users can:
- Encrypt their data and protect their privacy when using untrustworthy public WiFi networks.
- Access geo-restricted services from abroad, for example, a U.S.-only streaming service while on holiday in Europe.
- Link devices with someone else to simulate LAN multiplayer gaming no matter the distance.
- Access a remote device securely without lowering its security to make it available through the network.
- Send or receive files to or from the remote device.
NordVPN
The file-sharing feature was launched today, allowing friends to share any type or size of files through an end-to-end encrypting tunnel. Media files aren’t downscaled, and there’s a confirmation dialog on both ends to protect the users from potentially malicious file transfers.
Is it Secure?
NordVPN assures that Meshnet enjoys the same world-class encryption its products are known for, guaranteeing zero tracking and privacy under all conditions. Furthermore, despite Meshnet being “a free for all” feature, NordVPN has made no discounts in protecting people’s data.
The company explained that thanks to its sizeable global infrastructure consisting of several thousands of servers, offering this feature for free to any number of users won’t make a dent in its economics for maintenance and operation. That is to say that NordVPN doesn’t need to collect any user data to compensate for the cost, and the offer of Meshnet is motivated by ethics rather than ulterior motives.
To increase transparency around its applications, NordVPN has also announced today that it has open-sourced its client application for the Linux VPN platform, the “Libtelio” networking library used across all NordVPN apps, and the “Libdrop” library used for the file-sharing feature of Meshnet.
Open-sourcing these components makes their code available to scrutiny from the community and generally enhances user trust in the products.
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