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1. I would love to know why people are using VPNs. I suspect it's for evading region blocks but if it is for privacy reasons it would be a strong counter-argume

1. I would love to know why people are using VPNs. I suspect it's for evading region blocks but if it is for privacy reasons it would be a strong counter-argument to the idea that people don't care about privacy. 2. Is this whole article a marketing piece? My understanding is that NordVPN has a somewhat checkered reputation including a data breach in 2018. The linked list[1] of best VPNs also effectively lists NordVPN twice since Nord now owns Surfshark. [1] https://www.techradar.com/vpn/best-vpn https://www.techradar.com/vpn/best-vpn

psychphysic 3y ago
I use VPN as some sort of disgruntlement if I'm honest. Some how VPNs convinced me using it was sticking it to the man in the same way using cash is. So I just leave it one. Don't think it affects me meaningfully I don't use websites other than Https nor am I interesting in any way. Occasionally I get past geo-locked content. Maybe once or twice a month.
rcme 3y ago
I run my own VPN on an EC2 instance. The main reason I do it is because even HTTPS leaks the domain names you connect to in addition to the IP address. It seems stupid to give that info to my ISP.
- aborsy 3y ago
  Wouldn’t AWS collect the same metadata on your traffic “to deliver a better service, fight abuse and etc”? Genuine question, I don’t know. I feel like they are better than any ISP, but still monitor traffic on their networks.
  - rcme 3y ago
    They definitely can and do collect the traffic. But most ISPs actively sell your data to marketers. I don’t think AWS does that.
_-____-_ 3y ago
I use Cloudflare WARP to avoid ISP traffic shaping. I feel a lot more comfortable when my ISP just sees one outgoing wireguard connection.
dathinab 3y ago
Wrt 1.: A lot of "common non technical people" believe it makes browsing more secure and private, often in ways which VPNs do _not_ provide. And evading region blocks is a neat additional benefit (through I also would argue that the need to avoiding region blocks varies quite a bit over time and depending on which country you are in). Also due to nation specific news sometimes spreading international, some people in regions where there is no major abuse of power of network carriers might think there is. E.g. similar how e.g. people in countries with only a small problem of police violence often think of it as being as bad as in the US due to how many "US sourced" stories they directly and indirectly hear. Lastly some VPNs try to provide additional security measurements, like blocking connections to known malicious sites and servers. The problem with such services is that they can be abused, and do you trust them? At least I do not trust many VPN providers.

psychphysic 3y ago

I use VPN as some sort of disgruntlement if I'm honest. Some how VPNs convinced me using it was sticking it to the man in the same way using cash is. So I just leave it one. Don't think it affects me meaningfully I don't use websites other than Https nor am I interesting in any way. Occasionally I get past geo-locked content. Maybe once or twice a month.

rcme 3y ago

I run my own VPN on an EC2 instance. The main reason I do it is because even HTTPS leaks the domain names you connect to in addition to the IP address. It seems stupid to give that info to my ISP.

aborsy 3y ago
Wouldn’t AWS collect the same metadata on your traffic “to deliver a better service, fight abuse and etc”? Genuine question, I don’t know. I feel like they are better than any ISP, but still monitor traffic on their networks.
- rcme 3y ago
  They definitely can and do collect the traffic. But most ISPs actively sell your data to marketers. I don’t think AWS does that.

_-____-_ 3y ago

I use Cloudflare WARP to avoid ISP traffic shaping. I feel a lot more comfortable when my ISP just sees one outgoing wireguard connection.

dathinab 3y ago

Wrt 1.: A lot of "common non technical people" believe it makes browsing more secure and private, often in ways which VPNs do _not_ provide. And evading region blocks is a neat additional benefit (through I also would argue that the need to avoiding region blocks varies quite a bit over time and depending on which country you are in). Also due to nation specific news sometimes spreading international, some people in regions where there is no major abuse of power of network carriers might think there is. E.g. similar how e.g. people in countries with only a small problem of police violence often think of it as being as bad as in the US due to how many "US sourced" stories they directly and indirectly hear. Lastly some VPNs try to provide additional security measurements, like blocking connections to known malicious sites and servers. The problem with such services is that they can be abused, and do you trust them? At least I do not trust many VPN providers.