What is a mixnet? Unparalleled online privacy with a VPN

Nearly one third of people worldwide are already using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). That is a huge market. Many users, however, may not realize that the majority of VPNs on the market cannot guarantee our privacy online. In fact, sometimes they may even actively undermine it.

Until recently, traditional VPNs have been centralized and single-hop proxy services. In order to obscure client traffic, a VPN reroutes user data through their own server, replacing user IP addresses with the VPN’s own. Herein lies the problem: metadata logs of user traffic are likely stored on these targettable servers. As long as our data is centralized, it is at risk of data breaches, cyber attacks, and government surveillance, all of which could reveal the histories of what we do online.

Enter mixnet techology.

But what is a mixnet?

A mixnet, short for “mix network,” will probably be a new word for most VPN users. But it addresses this crucial risk by providing an alternative routing architecture under the hood of a VPN service. Instead of routing user traffic through a central server, encrypted user data is instead mixed up with other traffic as it is sent through multiple successive servers, or nodes, before arriving at its final destination. With a mixnet, not only is there no single point of failure for revealing metadata, but traffic analysis is also remarkably stunted.

Research into mixnet technology has actually been going on since the 1970s, beginning with the academic work of David Chaum. But it has only been recently implemented in practice and commercially. With the rise of AI powered surveillance, and the systematic analysis of our metadata and online patterns, a VPN built on mixnet technology couldn’t be more urgent.

Thankfully, the new NymVPN is the first commercially available VPN to run on such a mixnet. Before breaking down NymVPN’s novel privacy features, we will work through the problem that metadata leakage poses for privacy and how a mixnet works to resolve it.

Read this article to discover more about the differences between centralized and decentralized VPNs.