1. Trust model & jurisdiction concerns
Many commenters focused on how Obscura’s two‑party relay changes trust assumptions—and worries about its U.S. base.
- dongcarl: “With Obscura, even if we're hacked there's nothing to leak … you're trusting that not both Obscura AND Mullvad have been compromised, which is strictly less likely.”
- maxloh: “Under US law, a secretive court order could compel a US company to update software or implement targeted logging on a specific user without notifying that user.”
- autoexec: “If men with guns and gag orders haven't shown up at their New York office yet, they will as soon as this VPN gets popular enough …”
2. Technical implementation & comparison to other systems
The discussion frequently highlighted the protocol choices (QUIC, WireGuard‑over‑QUIC), open‑source clients, and similarities to multi‑hop services like iCloud Private Relay.
- dongcarl: “We use QUIC for transport … we show Mullvad's server pubkey in the app so you can verify against Mullvad’s website.”
- skaul: “Two hops … first hop sees your IP but not the destination, second hop sees the destination but not your IP. Similar to Private Relay.”
- barathr: “This is like Apple iCloud Private Relay, and other multi‑hop privacy systems that have been built …”
3. Design, UX, and signup flow
Opinions also turned to the visual identity (pixelated fonts vs. squircles, retro 8‑bit graphics) and the appeal of an email‑less, randomized‑account signup.
- osnxkwmxkwnd: “bitmap/pixelated fonts and graphics inside perfect squircles … feels like the designer had a bunch of ideas and didn’t know how to bring them together.”
- dongcarl: “I'm a sucker for retro 8‑bit graphics … but when we experimented with 8‑bit for actual UI we found it super unusable.”
- john_strinlai: “I really wish more companies did the no email + randomized account number flow. … not offering it … is enough signal that it has made me choose not to purchase the product.”