NymVPN free beta testing has begun

NymVPN is now publicly available for anyone to beta test for free and experience the emergence of the world’s most private Virtual Private Network (VPN) technology.

Unfortunately the large majority of VPNs, despite their name and promises, do not actually protect our privacy. All advanced data tracking systems need to do is analyze data coming in and out of a VPN’s centralized servers to determine who is doing what.

NymVPN is here to change all that with a new kind of network. It will be the first commercially available app to run on a decentralized mixnet which not only anonymizes your identity and payments, but guards against metadata tracking and surveillance.

Harry Halpin, CEO of Nym Technology, officially announced the public beta testing phase at Web3 Summit in Berlin today. Nym has now come full circle to where the mixnet project was first announced in 2019.

There is no longer a need to twiddle your thumbs on the Alpha waitlist – rest in peace Alpha! Anyone can sign up to be part of the beta testing phase immediately. So don’t miss a chance to contribute to the Nym privacy revolution.

Below Nym shows you how to easily get your access credential to test NymVPN beta. But first consider why doing so is so important.

Choose your NymVPN mode

NymVPN has two distinct modes to select your own level of anonymity and speed.

Fast mode: For users prioritizing speed, this mode obscures your IP address by routing traffic through two independent servers, providing fast and efficient protection. The upcoming release of WireGuard will further enhance this mode by offering a lightweight and highly secure VPN protocol. This mode is best for messaging, crypto transactions, browsing, and streaming.

Anonymous mode: This mode goes beyond all traditional VPN protections by routing traffic through five servers, adding “noise,” and utilizing novel onion encryption. This mode offers unparalleled privacy by making it extremely difficult for any observer to trace your online activities. It is optimal for highly sensitive traffic which is latency insensitive.

Network noise for privacy

With advancements in AI-powered data analytics, data surveillance is becoming increasingly powerful. What is needed are sophisticated decentralized networks capable of confusing all the attempts to track us, not only today but in the future.

The Nym mixnet has been designed to rise to this challenge. And it’s network decentralization and noise that will power the next generation of privacy tech.

The NymVPN Anonymous mode runs on the Nym mixnet in which your traffic is routed through 5 independent servers, making it unlinkable back to you. The mixnet additionally employs a number of novel network strategies to confuse data surveillance efforts.

• Data fragmentation. Fixed-sized data packets are individually encrypted so they look identical from the outside.

• Cover traffic. As soon as you transmit data through the mixnet, empty “dummy” packets are also sent through the mixnet from your device to provide “cover traffic.” The bigger the crowd, the harder it is to find you.

• Packet mixing. When your data arrives on a Nym mixnode, your data packets are mixed up with the packets of other users, making it unclear what packets came from who or where.

• Timing delays. Advanced AI tracking systems analyze the micro-seconds when packets arrive and depart a server to trace their origin and destination. Nym mixnodes introduce randomized timing delays when handling your packets to confuse things.

Together this produces what Nym calls network noise which, like getting lost in a big noisy crowd, makes it very difficult for even AI-powered data tracking to see who is doing what online.

Test drive NymVPN today

1. Simply go to nymvpn.com and enter your email address.

2. Download NymVPN on your device from the menu bar.

3. You will shortly receive an email asking you to validate your subscription.

4. You will then receive an anonymous credential which you can copy and paste into the Add Your Credential of the NymVPN app under Settings.

And now you’re live on the Nym network and fully private!

Anonymous credentials (and payments)

An important part of being anonymous with a VPN is whether your personal subscription details (e.g., a monthly credit card payment) can be linked to your traffic. Most mainstream VPNs leave users extremely vulnerable to being deanonymized by a combination of network surveillance and access to user subscription data.

For this reason, Nym has developed a system of anonymous payments, called Zk-Nyms (zero-knowledge identity verification). This is essentially a type of anonymous signature that allows users to generate credentials without giving Nym, the service provider, details of who they are. In this way, Nym as a company has no knowledge of who is paying what, only that there is a valid credential to use the network.

Keep in mind that the beta testing is completely free. In the end you are helping Nym build a better privacy app for you. Right now the anonymous credential system will be unlinkable to your email address. With the full commercial launch, this will become a fully anonymous payment system in which users can safely and privately use crypto and credit cards to purchase NymVPN.

What’s next

Keep in mind that this is a beta testing process. There will be bugs, delays, slowness. But we need you all, the Nym community, to help us fix all this.

There’s still a lot of work for the Nym dev team in beefing up the power of NymVPN, and beta testers are a huge resource in troubleshooting the network and app. So join today to be part of the first token-incentivized collective privacy project.

In coming weeks, WireGuard will be fully integrated with the NymVPN Fast mode, providing speeds comparable to mainstream VPNs. But unlike these VPN services that falsely promise privacy, NymVPN genuinely delivers it.