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I don't get the rant about VPNs. Many ISPs (especially in not so democratic countries) collect a lot of data, and might sell it or store it for access for the a
by andix 2y ago
I don't get the rant about VPNs. Many ISPs (especially in not so democratic countries) collect a lot of data, and might sell it or store it for access for the authorities.
Tor is great for privacy, but usability is poor, it's really slow. VPNs are a great middle ground to just route all your traffic through. And yes, there are better and not so good providers. Some of them take privacy very serious, others not so much (do your research which one to trust). Many users also don't care about privacy so much, they just want to circumvent censorship or geoblocking.
- api 2y agoA middle option, and one that I use, is to run DNS-over-HTTPS on my pi-hole machine to tunnel DNS out. Without DNS information the local ISP can tell a lot less about the sites I'm visiting, since many sites are behind the same CDN IP pools.
- remram 2y agoFrom TFA: > VPNs just provide an encrypted tunnel to another ISP, and therefore do not offer anonymity.
- andix 2y agoVPN providers might be much more trustworthy than other ISPs.
- AyyEye 2y agoIf I ran a spy agency or specialised in blackmail the first thing I'd do would be to run a VPN service. We have no way of auditing their trustworthiness.
- andix 2y agoIf VPN providers would do that, it would soon be public knowledge. For some ISPs the abuse of user data is a known fact. So VPN is just the safer bet. But don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming this is impossible, it's just less likely.
- frankharv 2y agoCryptoAG was owned by spooks for decades. What makes you think VPN is different. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/national-security/cia-crypto-encryption-machines-espionage/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/national-...
- andix 2y agoIt might be true. But I know that the shady cop in my neighborhood could easily put in a request to my ISP to get some data about me. But he could never get the same data from the NSA. I'm not a terrorist, so I don't feel threatened by the NSA. The thing I need to protect myself against is corrupt law enforcement.
- 2y ago
- ls612 2y agoWhat VPNs can offer though are censorship resistance and masking your IP from non-governmental (and perhaps governmental if the logs really aren't kept) third parties. Which for many people is what they really need more so than full tor anonymity.
- dilyevsky 2y agoAll i need to setup with my vpn provider is a long ass random number and monero wallet. Show me a residential or business isp that provides this level of privacy
- wfn 2y agoAnonymity, privacy, confidentiality, (edited to add) censorship resistance / circumvention are different properties oftentimes perceived with some overlap. Different products and different audiences will provide / desire/need/prefer different subsets. P.S. also, for some people, privacy from target site/resource/network will be much desirable and more important vs. certain aspects w.r.t their ISP. And finally, there's a scale (see: threat models) - sometimes not leaking info or identity to some website / entity is enough, and there's no need to avoid to avoid state level actors, global passive adversaries, sophisticated timing correlation attacks and other funky creatures. Simplicity and ~zero maintenance (e.g. using some VPN with killswitch option) can be important factors in themselves. edit P.P.S. also see this comment of mine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43096066 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43096066 ; I legitimately and honestly believe that we should be (re)reading James Mickens rants (the usenix papers) and that this would give us more insight and guidance in relation to such security topics.
- kdmtctl 2y agoAnything and everything depends on the threat model. Often, a popular and trusted VPN is the first and necessary step to hide in the crowd and drop your most logged geo ID, which is the endpoint IP. Additional measures are certainly required.