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Never trust a 3rd party VPN for anything sensitive ever, period. Words of assurance and "security audits" are completely meaningless. HTTPS interception and for

Never trust a 3rd party VPN for anything sensitive ever, period. Words of assurance and "security audits" are completely meaningless. HTTPS interception and forwarding is a trivial thing to do. For the public who are unable to setup their own VPN, they will have to accept that everything they do is being monitored by a random internet company rather than their ISP now. There can be some use for these services if you are very careful with everything you do while connected. But the risk of transmitting usernames, emails, passwords, and CC numbers accidentally while still connected is too great IMO.

ehxcaet 9y ago
I'd rather give my internet traffic to a company that doesn't sell my info versus my ISP, which almost certainly would sell my info.
- drdaeman 9y ago
  A VPN provider is no different than ISP. Seriously. Both get paid and provide Internet connectivity. Both have incentives to do something to your traffic, would it have no negative consequences (financial, legal or just moral) for them. The only non-technical difference is that VPNs have a lot of competition (so free market actually works) and in some countries/areas telcos have near-monopolistic positions. That doesn't mean that VPNs are universal friends of your privacy and ISPs are its foes. Just that there is some disbalance.
  - ehxcaet 9y ago
    Yeah, I agree. I don't think there's an intrinsic good guy/bad guy. But I have pretty much zero faith in ISPs in Canada. Maybe it's better where you live.
  - Godel_unicode 9y ago
    Just because there are options doesn't mean there's competition n the free market sense. In order to have competition, the market requires complete information (or as complete as possible). VPN providers are not competing on security as there is (as others have stated on this thread) no ability to validate their relative security claims. Many people are advocating for VPNs as a pure knee-jerk reaction to monitoring by traditional ISPs.
pnutjam 9y ago
If you aren't using their software, you will notice HTTPS intercepts. If your installing their client, they could slip a certificate into your chain, but someone would eventually notice. I stick to openvpn providers and use my own software.

ehxcaet 9y ago

I'd rather give my internet traffic to a company that doesn't sell my info versus my ISP, which almost certainly would sell my info.

drdaeman 9y ago
A VPN provider is no different than ISP. Seriously. Both get paid and provide Internet connectivity. Both have incentives to do something to your traffic, would it have no negative consequences (financial, legal or just moral) for them. The only non-technical difference is that VPNs have a lot of competition (so free market actually works) and in some countries/areas telcos have near-monopolistic positions. That doesn't mean that VPNs are universal friends of your privacy and ISPs are its foes. Just that there is some disbalance.
- ehxcaet 9y ago
  Yeah, I agree. I don't think there's an intrinsic good guy/bad guy. But I have pretty much zero faith in ISPs in Canada. Maybe it's better where you live.
- Godel_unicode 9y ago
  Just because there are options doesn't mean there's competition n the free market sense. In order to have competition, the market requires complete information (or as complete as possible). VPN providers are not competing on security as there is (as others have stated on this thread) no ability to validate their relative security claims. Many people are advocating for VPNs as a pure knee-jerk reaction to monitoring by traditional ISPs.

pnutjam 9y ago

If you aren't using their software, you will notice HTTPS intercepts. If your installing their client, they could slip a certificate into your chain, but someone would eventually notice. I stick to openvpn providers and use my own software.