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Why trust your "buck or two" VPN provider over your ~$30-100 ISP?
by wycy 6y ago
Why trust your "buck or two" VPN provider over your ~$30-100 ISP?
- benplumley 6y agoI have to choose my ISP out of the ~10 that serve my house (this might be just one or two if I lived in the USA), and price and speed are also large factors in the choice. I can choose a VPN from hundreds, even after I've filtered by acceptable prices and speeds - in other words because they actually compete on privacy.
- azalemeth 6y agoISPs are regulated, and operate in the country I live in. They know my real identity, bill me regularly, and have (IMHO) a pretty strong incentive to violate my privacy -- either for commercial purposes, or by law. VPNs are not necessarily in my jurisdiction, exist in a highly competitive space, and live or die by their reputation for privacy. You can buy, e.g., time on Mullvad by mailing cash in the post -- or via a whole string of privacy-preserving altcoins. It doesn't get more anonymous than that.
- wycy 6y agoFair enough, that rationale actually makes sense in the context of that sort of VPN. The sorts of VPNs I don't trust are those like Nord VPN or one of the others with huge advertising budgets.
- falcolas 6y agoBut by the time they die, they've already compromised you. And even the strongest claims of privacy have been shown time and again to be outright lies. > It doesn't get more anonymous than that. Yes, it does. TOR. Those VPNs? They've got your source IP, which as people are enjoying pointing out is almost as good as an identity. Not much anonymity there.