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Please for the love of Jobe stop giving people the advice to use a VPN without qualification A VPN won't stop you from being tracked online, and using a non-se

Please for the love of Jobe stop giving people the advice to use a VPN without qualification A VPN won't stop you from being tracked online, and using a non-self-hosted VPN is a very, very bad idea if "not being tracked online" is something you care about.

sneak 6y ago
VPNs help a lot in obscuring your physical location. Most people seem to forget that an IP is a coarse location. A VPN plus regularly deleting most/all cookies actually prevents most of the common and pervasive tracking online.
- randomchars 6y ago
  It also gives access to all that tracking data to a single company who in turn ma - sell your data now - sell your data when they get acquired - get hacked - give your data to a government that would normally not have access to it
  - sneak 6y ago
    No, it doesn’t. The majority of traffic is TLS encrypted these days.
    - vector_spaces 6y ago
      TLS won't cloak your IP address nor your browsing history from the VPN provider... so, even if the content is TLS encrypted, your VPN provider has to that metadata (+ more) across all sites you visit while connected to their servers. which they can then turn over to law enforcement on request[1], or leave on an unsecured S3 bucket (or similar) somewhere[2]. So yeah, in short, we shouldn't be recommending the use of third-party VPNs without qualification. There are valid use cases sometimes, but avoiding tracking is very much not one of them. [1] https://securitygladiators.com/fbi-purevpn/ https://securitygladiators.com/fbi-purevpn/ [2] https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/07/20/7-vpns-that-leaked-their-logs-the-logs-that-didnt-exist/ https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/07/20/7-vpns-that-leak...
  - novok 6y ago
    Today, your ISP is probably doing all of that now, with a real billing address & identity. Your ISP is your default VPN. For example comcast sells traffic data to marketing firms. And because they sell that data to adtech, private investigators, the govt and creeps can also buy the traffic log to whatever is in your house. At least with VPN services, you can change it easily AND you can make it all they know about you is a coarse IP set via paying cash (see mulvad) vs. a fucking billing address. And changing VPNs is a lot less work and has far more options than changing your ISP.

sneak 6y ago

VPNs help a lot in obscuring your physical location. Most people seem to forget that an IP is a coarse location. A VPN plus regularly deleting most/all cookies actually prevents most of the common and pervasive tracking online.

randomchars 6y ago
It also gives access to all that tracking data to a single company who in turn ma - sell your data now - sell your data when they get acquired - get hacked - give your data to a government that would normally not have access to it
- sneak 6y ago
  No, it doesn’t. The majority of traffic is TLS encrypted these days.
  - vector_spaces 6y ago
    TLS won't cloak your IP address nor your browsing history from the VPN provider... so, even if the content is TLS encrypted, your VPN provider has to that metadata (+ more) across all sites you visit while connected to their servers. which they can then turn over to law enforcement on request[1], or leave on an unsecured S3 bucket (or similar) somewhere[2]. So yeah, in short, we shouldn't be recommending the use of third-party VPNs without qualification. There are valid use cases sometimes, but avoiding tracking is very much not one of them. [1] https://securitygladiators.com/fbi-purevpn/ https://securitygladiators.com/fbi-purevpn/ [2] https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/07/20/7-vpns-that-leaked-their-logs-the-logs-that-didnt-exist/ https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/07/20/7-vpns-that-leak...
- novok 6y ago
  Today, your ISP is probably doing all of that now, with a real billing address & identity. Your ISP is your default VPN. For example comcast sells traffic data to marketing firms. And because they sell that data to adtech, private investigators, the govt and creeps can also buy the traffic log to whatever is in your house. At least with VPN services, you can change it easily AND you can make it all they know about you is a coarse IP set via paying cash (see mulvad) vs. a fucking billing address. And changing VPNs is a lot less work and has far more options than changing your ISP.