>> One of the ways uProxy connects you through your friends, is by connecting to existing chat networks, such as Facebook or Google Hangouts. uProxy can use a chat network to discover new friends and setup peer-to-peer proxying from your friends. If a user does so, then the chat network can see that the user has uProxy installed. A user's chat contacts may also see this.
So Google funded uProxy; it will be able to see who your VPN "host" is via Google Hangouts; and lastly it controls one of the two browsers on which this plugin runs, Chrome.
That's too much Google for me, personally.
My point was the average Internet Joe or Jane needs to look beyond "free" services and be willing to spend some money buying better alternatives. One of the reasons we're all so compromised on the Internet today is our collective blindness towards the hidden "costs" of free services.
But if a user is both unable to assess the security of the system them self, and unwilling to trust another's analysis, the funding model is irrelevant. Source is the gold standard, IMHO, even if that's still not terribly helpful.
It's P2P so that you have clear endpoints, so repressive regimes can't ascertain whether it's a VPN or not. It's also helpful in that you might well trust a friend in another country over a VPN company.