Ask HN: My Suspicion Regarding “M247 Ltd”
54 by Pablo946 | 13 comments on Hacker News.
Around a year or two ago I noticed almost every single self-proclaimed No-logs VPN had started opening new servers with a provider called M247, which is based in Manchester, UK. At first it was nothing suspicious and maybe 20% of the VPN servers I used were operated by M247, and these were all servers in Europe, and there were no red flags or anything suspicious to me at the time. However fast forward to the present day and I notice that M247 Ltd is operating an estimated 65-85% of these VPN servers, and 90% of the USA servers are operated by them. Now they have VPN exits everywhere. All over USA, all over Europe, they have some in Asia, even Australia. The fact that so many VPN servers are using their network concerns me for a number of reasons, the first being that with all the VPN traffic flowing through their network, there is now a target on their back by government organizations, etc, what's stopping them from putting DPI boxes on their upstream ISP, or forcing them to log all traffic? The second is more concerning: What if M247 is just a front, not really a network provider at all but really an intelligence operation, created specifically so that VPN provider owners would rent servers with them so the traffic could be analyzed? I heard from some other sources that M247 has been known to conduct shady deals, etc. What if the government is offering up these servers for dirt cheap to VPN providers purposefully, and that is why they are all using them? Another fishy thing that concerns me is the number of false names that M247 VPN IP addresses are registered with, previously I noticed they were all registered under the name "M247 Ltd" , "M247 Europe SRL" , "M247 Miami/Phoenix/etc Infrastructure" , but recently I notice they are registering their IP addresses under completely false names that don't turn up any results on google, such as "Ppman Services SRL" , "Secure Data Systems SRL" , "Venus Business Communications Limited" , "UK Web Solutions Limited" , "FirstClassIT Solutions" , and a few others that I can't remember at the time. These IPs all use the M247's ASN (AS9009) , and under "Organization" it does say "M247 Ltd" , but "ISP" says those false names. Another strange thing I noticed was that they even used "Cogent Communications" as one of the false names attatched to some of their IP addresses (however just like usual Organization was M247 and AS was 9009). If they are a regular legal company, how can they possibly be making up ISP names out of thin air and using them, as well as using the name of an already existing network provier, Cogent. All these signs point to M247 conducting some less than kosher business, whatever that may be. I'm now very suspicious of connecting to VPN servers where the ISP is M247, for fear that they are some kind of government front/data collection firm/etc. Has anyone other than myself felt suspicious of M247 and thinks they are up to something? Or better yet, is there anyone who knows more about them than I do who is willing to shed some light on them?
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