4 ms·

Running your own VPN provides no privacy, since you're the only user. Of course other VPNs don't provide privacy either. The belief that they do is due to mark

Running your own VPN provides no privacy, since you're the only user. Of course other VPNs don't provide privacy either. The belief that they do is due to marketing, and misunderstanding what the "Private" part of VPN means: it means that two non-publicly routable IP networks (10/8, 172.16/12, 192.168/16) are virtually joined into one network. VPN companies took advantage of this (and that the connection is usually encrypted) to imply that they offer a privacy product. The main use of a commercial VPN is to bypass region locks and other legal controls that depend on location. Pick a VPN provider (or VPS host) in a jurisdiction that won't cooperate with your home law enforcement. Assume the VPN provider spies on all your traffic.

mlthoughts2018 6y ago
This is such a deeply misleading statement. Privacy fundamentally is about keeping things private ... from someone. If that someone is everyone, then nothing is private. Any sufficiently powerful entity can just overpower you, torture you into submission, guarantee a backdoor into a system you thought was cryptographically private, etc. I for one do pay for a VPN service, because it keeps my home traffic stream private from some people - namely my ISP - with high probability. It also obfuscates various types of traffic I generate and makes it harder, though I agree not impossible, to collate my traffic into a usable form for spying agencies. For me that’s easily worth paying ~$100/year for someone else to manage, and if they base their business reputation on not collecting logs, etc., there’s enough incentive to trust that while also staying vigilant to verify what I can and switch providers if they are shown to be lying. Self-hosting a vpn is utterly not an alternative for my use case, not even for technical reasons as I am an engineer who works on production web services all day. Just from a cost effectiveness / value POV, third party vpn vendors are a good solution for me.
- SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago
  Right, I overspoke. It provides no extra privacy, against anyone except your ISP. If they're the threat, AND you're able to safely assume that the VPN provider is less of a threat, THEN it provides some privacy.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

mlthoughts2018 6y ago

This is such a deeply misleading statement. Privacy fundamentally is about keeping things private ... from someone. If that someone is everyone, then nothing is private. Any sufficiently powerful entity can just overpower you, torture you into submission, guarantee a backdoor into a system you thought was cryptographically private, etc. I for one do pay for a VPN service, because it keeps my home traffic stream private from some people - namely my ISP - with high probability. It also obfuscates various types of traffic I generate and makes it harder, though I agree not impossible, to collate my traffic into a usable form for spying agencies. For me that’s easily worth paying ~$100/year for someone else to manage, and if they base their business reputation on not collecting logs, etc., there’s enough incentive to trust that while also staying vigilant to verify what I can and switch providers if they are shown to be lying. Self-hosting a vpn is utterly not an alternative for my use case, not even for technical reasons as I am an engineer who works on production web services all day. Just from a cost effectiveness / value POV, third party vpn vendors are a good solution for me.

SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago
Right, I overspoke. It provides no extra privacy, against anyone except your ISP. If they're the threat, AND you're able to safely assume that the VPN provider is less of a threat, THEN it provides some privacy.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]