As I understand it, it is just like in Opera. So a proxy not a VPN. I honestly find it distasteful that they may call it a VPN without it actually being one.

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m132 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

What makes a proxy a "VPN" again? Most popular "VPN" companies only offer a proxy that merely runs over a VPN protocol.

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nl 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> Most popular "VPN" companies only offer a proxy that merely runs over a VPN protocol.

Well that doesn't seem true?

Mullvad, Proton, Private Internet Access, NordVPN, ExpressVPN etc are all VPNs. You can use them for whatever protocol you want.

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tobz1000 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

All of them offer only proxied access to the internet. They do not expose access to any "private network".

	▲	DaSHacka 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Depends on the VPN, I remember Nord had a private p2p network that allowed users of their VPN service to communicate directly with each other without exposing their p2p services to the greater internet. Granted, its been a lomg time since I used Nord, not sure if they still offer that service.

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ShowalkKama 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> You can use them for whatever protocol you want.

the two most commons protocols used for proxying traffic support arbitrary tcp traffic. socks is quite self explanatory but http is not limited to https either!

Of course most providers might block non https traffic by doing DPI or (more realistically) refusing to proxy ports other than 80/443 but nothing is inherent to the protocol.

edit: this is also mentioned on MDN: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/...

> Aside from enabling secure access to websites behind proxies, a HTTP tunnel provides a way to allow traffic that would otherwise be restricted (SSH or FTP) over the HTTP(S) protocol.

> If you are running a proxy that supports CONNECT, restrict its use to a set of known ports or a configurable list of safe request targets

> A loosely-configured proxy may be abused to forward traffic such as SMTP to relay spam email, for example.

	▲	m132 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		To complement your comment, SOCKS 5 also supports two, less known kinds of traffic: UDP and the server side of TCP https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1928#page-6

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7bit 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Because people understand VPN but not necessarily proxy. It's targeted to non-tech people.

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gzread 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A VPN as you refer to it isn't a VPN either. There's no private network that is virtualized. Actual VPN software is like Tailscale.

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dyauspitr 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Is the proxy encrypted? If so then you might as well call it a VPN.