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At one end, who but a competitor will be in a better position to explain why their competition sucks. At the other end, who but a competitor will be in a more

At one end, who but a competitor will be in a better position to explain why their competition sucks. At the other end, who but a competitor will be in a more biased position to explain why their competition sucks. Most of these company blogs feel like guerilla marketing, and even when I agree with them, they leave an odd taste in the mouth.

akira2501 6y ago
> in a more biased position It's not their bias against competitors that's my issue, it's their bias in believing that VPN is a credible long term solution to the privacy problems they highlight. It's right there in their basic premise. I only use VPNs for one reason: to securely connect to a remote location and participate as a local client on their network. For protecting your own privacy you're going to need an _entirely_ different set of tools.
- lilsoso 6y ago
  Could you please suggest tools other than a VPN for protecting privacy? I am guessing this would be along the lines of adblockers and custom browser configurations. I am told VPNs may not be that great for blocking newer forms of advertising tracking (owing to advances in fingerprinting) -- but I have very little on hand to substantiate this notion.
  - eindiran 6y ago
    There is a big continuum between better privacy and better convenience. You have to find a balance that works for your needs. Some recommendations, from across this continuum: Use a VPN, from a company that you trust. Firefox - use containers to get some separation between services. NoScript - for blocking JS. This takes some time to get used to but is definitely worth it. After you have a whitelist going, it is much less painful. uBlock Origin - for blocking ads. This one is a super low hanging fruit. Privacy Badger - occasionally catches some trackers missed by Firefox and uBlock Oigin. Decentraleyes - to avoid big CDNs. OpenDNS instead of your ISP’s or Google’s DNS. Or consider setting up a Pihole. Switch your search engine to DuckDuckGo. Tor (or even Tails) - significantly more privacy, but at a much higher convenience cost. The biggest privacy win will be no longer using services from companies that don’t respect your privacy. This is doubly true of mobile. Many people cannot go without a smartphone (I still use a smartphone) but it’s worth considering whether you can drop it.
    - lilsoso 6y ago
      Thank you! I hadn't heard of Decentraleyes, the project looks great. As you mention, tracking of smartphones is more troubling. I was dismayed to learn how many applications were tracking me via Facebook identifiers. For this reason, I restrict most apps from accessing 'cellular data' and 'background app refresh' on my iPhone in hopes this might help mitigate the problem. And the tracking done via bluetooth + bluetooth beacons by companies such as Gimbal is insidious.
- enos_feedler 6y ago
  Doesn't the network you connect to have certain level of privacy guarantees? Could you then not use the concept of a "network" to build a privacy sandbox?
badlucklottery 6y ago
Yeah, this one seems to be a lot of FUD. That's not unusual, sowing distrust seems to be a big component of VPN marketing. One one hand, yeah, Google could suddenly decide to use your VPN traffic for tracking. On the other hand, couldn't any VPN provider? The latter might also be why Google is rolling out their VPN: they don't necessarily want that data but they also don't want anyone else (competitors) to have a monopoly on it.
- enos_feedler 6y ago
  It could also just be at that VPN's are growing in usage and are a good business to be in. It builds on 3 growing parts of Google (Cloud, Fi and Pixel products). However, this is the boring answer and not as exciting as the "monetize your data" narrative

akira2501 6y ago

> in a more biased position It's not their bias against competitors that's my issue, it's their bias in believing that VPN is a credible long term solution to the privacy problems they highlight. It's right there in their basic premise. I only use VPNs for one reason: to securely connect to a remote location and participate as a local client on their network. For protecting your own privacy you're going to need an _entirely_ different set of tools.

lilsoso 6y ago
Could you please suggest tools other than a VPN for protecting privacy? I am guessing this would be along the lines of adblockers and custom browser configurations. I am told VPNs may not be that great for blocking newer forms of advertising tracking (owing to advances in fingerprinting) -- but I have very little on hand to substantiate this notion.
- eindiran 6y ago
  There is a big continuum between better privacy and better convenience. You have to find a balance that works for your needs. Some recommendations, from across this continuum: Use a VPN, from a company that you trust. Firefox - use containers to get some separation between services. NoScript - for blocking JS. This takes some time to get used to but is definitely worth it. After you have a whitelist going, it is much less painful. uBlock Origin - for blocking ads. This one is a super low hanging fruit. Privacy Badger - occasionally catches some trackers missed by Firefox and uBlock Oigin. Decentraleyes - to avoid big CDNs. OpenDNS instead of your ISP’s or Google’s DNS. Or consider setting up a Pihole. Switch your search engine to DuckDuckGo. Tor (or even Tails) - significantly more privacy, but at a much higher convenience cost. The biggest privacy win will be no longer using services from companies that don’t respect your privacy. This is doubly true of mobile. Many people cannot go without a smartphone (I still use a smartphone) but it’s worth considering whether you can drop it.
  - lilsoso 6y ago
    Thank you! I hadn't heard of Decentraleyes, the project looks great. As you mention, tracking of smartphones is more troubling. I was dismayed to learn how many applications were tracking me via Facebook identifiers. For this reason, I restrict most apps from accessing 'cellular data' and 'background app refresh' on my iPhone in hopes this might help mitigate the problem. And the tracking done via bluetooth + bluetooth beacons by companies such as Gimbal is insidious.
enos_feedler 6y ago
Doesn't the network you connect to have certain level of privacy guarantees? Could you then not use the concept of a "network" to build a privacy sandbox?

badlucklottery 6y ago

Yeah, this one seems to be a lot of FUD. That's not unusual, sowing distrust seems to be a big component of VPN marketing. One one hand, yeah, Google could suddenly decide to use your VPN traffic for tracking. On the other hand, couldn't any VPN provider? The latter might also be why Google is rolling out their VPN: they don't necessarily want that data but they also don't want anyone else (competitors) to have a monopoly on it.

enos_feedler 6y ago
It could also just be at that VPN's are growing in usage and are a good business to be in. It builds on 3 growing parts of Google (Cloud, Fi and Pixel products). However, this is the boring answer and not as exciting as the "monetize your data" narrative