Scam watch: flagged, dead & watch-listed
VPN services that died, vanished, or were flagged as scams. The market churns hard: brands get bought, merged, sunset or run with the money. If a provider you paid for is on this list, the archived review documents what happened.
Flagged scam (0)
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Dead - not operating (23)
| Streisand VPN megascript unpublished Grand unified self-host script; effectively unmaintained since ~2019, superseded by Algo/Amnezia. | – |
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| Tenta VPN unpublished Privacy-focused browser+VPN (ESW Capital-era); effectively retired. | United States |
| Blockless unpublished Canadian Smart DNS; defunct. | Canada |
| IronSocket unpublished Ex-Hide My Ass competitor of the 2013 era; wound down (per sibling-site research 2024). | Hong Kong |
| OverPlay unpublished Ziff Davis family Smart DNS; discontinued. | United States |
| Unblock-Us unpublished Early Smart DNS pioneer; defunct. | Canada |
| UnoTelly unpublished Canadian Smart DNS; defunct. | Canada |
| 911 S5 unpublished Massive botnet-powered residential SOCKS5 market; FBI/Europol seizure operations (2022-2024) killed it - successors (skip-hop proxies) live | China |
| Atlas VPN unpublished Nord Security's budget sister brand; announced shutdown March 2024, service ended April 2024. Site now quota-blocked/dead (checked 2026- | United States |
| BulletVPN unpublished VERIFIED LIVE 2026-09-27: homepage shows 'BulletVPN End of Life - no longer available'. Confirmed dead; pay lifetime money, get a to | United Arab Emirates |
| DoubleVPN unpublished Seized by law enforcement (Europol/Taskforce, 2021) for serving ransomware operators. The 'more hops = safer' marketing was a false | – |
| FrootVPN unpublished 'Free forever' 2014-era P2P VPN that went paid then vanished; kept as defunct exemplar. | Sweden |
| LiquidVPN unpublished Small US provider that effectively stopped operating; kept as defunct. | United States |
| OneVPN unpublished Bundled-lifetime seller from the ~2016 era; dead. | Hong Kong |
| Privatix unpublished 2018 ICO-era dVPN that faded after the token pump; kept as defunct. | – |
| SpyOff unpublished Small Swiss-branded service quietly retired; traffic mostly migrated to bigger brands. | Switzerland |
| Substratum Node unpublished ICO hype-era 'decentralized internet'; collapsed ~2019; kept as defunct exemplar. | – |
| SwissVPN unpublished Very early Swiss VPN (2005+); defunct. | Switzerland |
| VIP72 unpublished Infamous criminal-ecosystem SOCKS service tied to Bankbot/botnet fraud; long dead/seized. | China |
| VPN by Google One unpublished Google shut it down in June 2024 (folded into 'Dark web report'/AI features). Kept as a warning: free big-tech VPNs die on product-o | United States |
| ibVPN unpublished Long-running Romanian provider; strong signs of wind-down (product merged into smart-DNS sister sites, support silent). Verify before recomm | Romania |
| Proxy.sh unpublished Seychelles 'ethical' anonymity provider of the 2013-2017 era; long dead. | Seychelles |
| Perfect Privacy unpublished A 2026 obituary for a pioneer: Perfect Privacy (since 2008) sold genuine privacy engineering - 4-server cascades, NeuroRouting, TrackStop, R | Switzerland |
Under watch (1)
| Cryptostorm cryptostorm.is is verifiably LIVE (fetched today, HTTP 200) with a PGP-signed warrant canary dated July 1, 2026 and an unbroken Wayback snap | Iceland |
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