VPNs grant anonymity and privacy, also protection from hacking to their user. They can be used to bypass a government’s, ISP’s, company’s or geographic blocking. And of course protect from law suits for illegal activity like downloading torrents. The good ones charge subscription and assure privacy and no log keeping in their terms. So you can thrust them. Or maybe not so much? I’ve done some thinking and personal research on the subject. Firstly, if I were the NSA, FBI, CIA, MI6 etc, I’d set up a cheap VPN and monitor its users. Who’s to say they’re not doing it? Then there are always rumors about such authorities having access to specially made backdoors. And not so imaginary stories of spying apps planted by them. Or the service might get hacked. As an example: Snowden Docs Show UK Spies Attacked Anonymous, Hackers. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/invest...ies-attacked-hackers-snowden-docs-show-n21361 But let’s look what the more honest of anonymising services say. TOR in its FAQs says: “There are plenty of subtle attacks people might try. There might also be accidental bugs in Tor that could affect your anonymity. We periodically find and fix anonymity-related bugs, Tor does not remove personal information from the data the user’s application sends. Note that there are situations where Tor fails to solve privacy problems entirely. If your IP happens to be an illegally used exit node, you can get into legal trouble without doing anything wrong. Exit nodes can eavesdrop on communications. Tor is a work in progress. There is still plenty of work left to do for a strong, secure, and complete solution.” https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#Backdoor Also, Tor does not hide the fact that someone is using Tor. An adversary may try to de-anonymize the user by some means. One way is by exploiting vulnerable software on the user's computer. The bulk of the funding for Tor's development has come from the federal government of the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network) But what about VPNs? Taking the well known – and honest - Windscribe as an example, it says in its FAQs: Q: Will Windscribe make me 100% anonymous? A: Unlikely. Achieving complete anonymity online is extremely difficult if not impossible. Anyone who claims otherwise most likely has a pair of pants that are on fire. Windscribe will get you 90% there. And I’ve seen reports by VPN users who checked their anonymised IP using more sophisticated tests and their true IP showed thru. Finally, I’ve just come across this news story that prompted me to do the research: Facebook promotes a VPN under the Onavo brand that collects even more data on you https://www.techspot.com/news/73267-facebook-promotes-vpn-under-onavo-brand-collects-even.html So whom can you trust? What do you think?
you have to be extremely naive to believe that social media can be trusted. they can be trusted to do their damnedest to collect your data to spam you with creepy ads. that`s how they got too big to handle in the first place. i do not bother with social media, or vpns, waste of time.
I don't trust them at all. If there comes a time when I have to, then I'll just avoid the internet entirely. @nodnar: Yup. Don't make a mess and you won't have to clean it up.
I used VPN in the past with no issues...but to think that your a ghost because your on a VPN is miss leading.
I personally believe you are less conspicuous in a crowd. Comparatively speaking, there are not all that many VPN users, and just like TOR browser users, they are the ones who stand out in the crowd. If anyone is trying to do something illegal he would be the one trying to hide. The government would look for the people trying to hide rather than the people in the crowd!
I don't understand this. If you're not anonymous and they know who you are when you do something, how can you have privacy?
Your VPN does you're just swapping your Isp for VPN people who might be worse than isp. Remember this https://www.cyberscoop.com/hotspot-...on-vpn-users-and-selling-data-to-advertisers/ Rule#1 never trust humans
Geo-blocking, for instance, is beaten by a proxy or VPN (I use a cheap https://www.smartdnsproxy.com)... Watch or DL anything you need, regardless of the location you seem to be in... Also, if you wanna download something without your provider knowing what it is... They may be actively preventing you to even see, let alone DL something and you can beat that... So, there is a point for having those services, straight off the bat... And then, on top of that, making it way more difficult to see what you are up to... Sure, one can't stop them from getting in if they really want to but I doubt "they" will go after everybody regardless... too many are doing it... Moreover, I am not involved in anything 'bad', hence I just use it for small things, like DL here and there...
i heard a story how a student who threatened to bomb the college in England, over internet with tor, got caught within hours by police. police just searched every tor uses in college and thats it. vpn + tor or vpn + jondonym should be used. single layer isn't enough.
Business are there for profit maximization and In this day and age, data is key, alot of companies are going towards enormous lengths to get that data, even if it means taking advantage of unsuspecting users. So can one truly trust a provider, no.
I find to hide in plain sight works best, I used to use bit torrent from a private site , the site guaranteed I would never be traced ! on my second notice of copyright infringement I stopped using bit torrent and that site ! the more you try to hide the more you stick out like a sore thumb !
@zen45: I agree. IMHO, using a VPN would draw attention to ones' self. And if you're trying to block ads, then choose a fairly secure browser. (I used to use Firefox, but now I use brave.) Notice I said "fairly", since nothing is truly secure.
I got the letters when I did not use VPN. Now, anything goes. Torrents as well. This is really a non-starter of an idea, sorry...