AzireVPN - 8 Year Service Anniversary!
AzireVPN was launched on the 23rd of September, 2012. Therefore it means that our service is now 8 years old! We are taking this opportunity to write a retrospective of this past year. We will also express what we have in mind for the following year.
What we have done this past year
New locations
Our main objective was to expand our locations to propose a more diverse choice. From 7 locations and 2 continents, we are now present in 16 locations (+129%) and 3 continents, including Asia.
Those new locations are, in order of release:
- Sweden, Gothenburg (se2)
- Thailand, Phuket (th1)
- Denmark, Copenhagen (dk1)
- United States, Chicago (us2)
- Germany, Frankfurt (de1)
- Romania, Bucharest (ro1)
- France, Paris (fr1)
- Switzerland, Zürich (ch1)
- Milan, Italy (it1)
It is possible to connect on any of these new locations, using either OpenVPN or WireGuard. They also benefit from new unified back-end images to better use the servers’ capabilities. It means that we can now propose in those locations new services such as:
- SOCKS5 proxy
- DNS IPv4+IPv6 servers
- OpenVPN and WireGuard
- SOCKS5 proxy
Our current global DNS servers (Sweden and United States) are still useful for static configurations, for example, at the Operating System level, as our per location DNS servers are only reachable while being connected from the same location.
We have the security of our infrastructure at heart and take it very seriously. As always, our servers are running without persistent storage, booted with PXE, and maintained remotely.
New mobile clients
We released new custom mobile clients based on official WireGuard implementations, for maximum ease of use, performance, privacy, and security.
They are available on the following operating systems:
Improvements on privacy
Privacy is of utter importance to us, as our tagline rightfully says it: when privacy matters. We then worked on writing new documents describing more precisely how we manage and handle personal data.
- We created a privacy policy document describing how we handle personal data. Also, it describes what are one’s rights regarding that data and how they can exercise those rights.
- We created a cookies policy document describing what cookies our site is using for its proper functioning. Also, visitors can use a simple one-click option to opt-out of our statistical cookies.
- We improved our warrant canary to display Hacker News’s daily top computer news on it. It demonstrates that the warrant canary was signed at the time indicated and not earlier.
What we have in mind for the following year
Clients
We want to release a new custom desktop client, also based on WireGuard official implementation, in replacement of our current OpenVPN custom client, on all main operating systems. Following the same ease of use as our mobile clients, it would have often requested features like kill-switch, DNS locking, graphs, and more.
Port forwarding
We announced in an earlier blog post that we donated money to the WireGuard project to help the development of the wg-dynamic open-source module, which would allow the assignment of dynamic IP addresses on the same model as OpenVPN, benefiting users’ privacy even more by removing the need of using static IP addresses bound to public keys.
Some delay is to be expected as the project is now in an undefined state for reasons beyond our control. That is why we want to offer a middle-way solution, in the name of port forwarding. It will allow the assignment of an incoming port for users who wish to have one, on our shared IP addresses mode. This service will be available on WireGuard.
Multihop
We also want to release soon a new feature which will be included in all our plans: multihop. This feature permits users to connect to a specific location and exit on another one, by making use of the connection port on the entry location. Then, the entry location will create another encrypted tunnel towards the chosen exit location.
This feature is intended for privacy-minded users, as it could make surveillance even harder for a potential attacker. It could also possibly help people with speed or connection problems to their desired location, by hopping on a closer one.
Marketing
It is an important field that we should not overlook, as it may benefit everyone. Like a rolling snowball, having a growing user base means that we will be able to move faster and to deploy new locations.
We also need to diversify and strengthen our marketing in this fast-moving digital world:
- We are willing to send stickers to anyone wishing to obtain some.
- We are still proposing a sponsorship offer to blog and websites content creators to get commissions while promoting our service on their website.
- We would also like to seek video content creators. Whether you are a YouTube content creator or a Twitch live streamer, we can send you logos to place on your videos or your live stream software. A code would give you commissions as with website content creators.
If you are interested in any of the preceding offers, please send us a message to support@azirevpn.com.
On the other hand, regular users are not forgotten. They can still give a code to their friends, family, or any person they know willing to buy time on our service, to get some free time for themselves. This code is available on the referral page.
Final words
At AzireVPN, the satisfaction of our users is an important matter. That is why we try to improve our service in all ways that we can. A lot of users asked for new locations, especially in privacy-minded countries like Switzerland, and we delivered.
However, as we expressed, we still want to improve our service even more. As such, we expect to deliver this following year: desktop applications, new features, marketing, and perhaps new locations. We appreciate it when our users give us suggestions and feedback and we invite them to do so.
We are thankful to all our users to support us in this adventure, as nothing of that would be possible without them.