91–100 of 123 posts
I remember the good old days when privacy was important enough that video rental stores weren't allowed to share your data. Now it's just good business.
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VPN's aren't easy - and they're definitely not a default behavior in the same way not accepting third-party cookies is. But part of the solution if the regulations stay the way they are may well be that VPNs are made easier by being built into operating systems and provided by for ex. Apple as part of iCloud > You can't easily avoid emailing people with gmail accounts, or communicating with people on Android phones.…
> VPN's aren't easy - and they're definitely not a default behavior in the same way not accepting third-party cookies is. If you can buy something from Amazon, you can lease a VPN service. If you can download and install some silly game, you can download and install a VPN client. Which just works. So yes, it's easy. To opt out of third-party cookies, you actually need to tweak browser preferences. How is that easier…
First, there is the trade off of speed, location, protocol. Will a US based VPN be private enough? Do they really not log? Who do I trust?
Next there is actual usage: my Phillips hue lights don't sync with my alarm if the VPN is turned on. Torrents don't work if the VPN isn't on the slowest protocol. A few more in that vein.
This means that even after I've found and paid for a VPN I think I can trust, I have to be constantly switching it on and off, and have to be vigilant about what browsing I do when.
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> VPN's aren't easy - and they're definitely not a default behavior in the same way not accepting third-party cookies is. If you can buy something from Amazon, you can lease a VPN service. If you can download and install some silly game, you can download and install a VPN client. Which just works. So yes, it's easy. To opt out of third-party cookies, you actually need to tweak browser preferences. How is that easier…
I'm pretty tech literate, and even so getting an VPN is a huge pain. First, there is the trade off of speed, location, protocol. Will a US based VPN be private enough? Do they really not log? Who do I trust? Next there is actual usage: my Phillips hue lights don't sync with my alarm if the VPN is turned on. Torrents don't work if the VPN isn't on the slowest protocol. A few more in that vein. This means that even aft…
This is what advanced capitalism looks like - companies that are successful use their money and lobbying power to block competition. It's sad for everyone, except them. Capitalism tends to undermine competition and turn into monopolies. But maybe now this will give a new reason to boost TOR-like anonymity tools. If millions of people participated in such networks, then they would be much faster. VPNs could suffer fro…
> VPNs could suffer from the same problem as ISPs - how can we be sure they are not selling customer data? Mainly because many rabid privacy freaks use VPNs, and spreading news about VPNs that pwn users is a blood sport.
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> VPN's aren't easy - and they're definitely not a default behavior in the same way not accepting third-party cookies is. If you can buy something from Amazon, you can lease a VPN service. If you can download and install some silly game, you can download and install a VPN client. Which just works. So yes, it's easy. To opt out of third-party cookies, you actually need to tweak browser preferences. How is that easier…
I'm pretty tech literate, and even so getting an VPN is a huge pain. First, there is the trade off of speed, location, protocol. Will a US based VPN be private enough? Do they really not log? Who do I trust? Next there is actual usage: my Phillips hue lights don't sync with my alarm if the VPN is turned on. Torrents don't work if the VPN isn't on the slowest protocol. A few more in that vein. This means that even aft…
In my opinion, people tend to expect too much from VPNs, and then worry too much. VPNs don't provide anonymity. There's no way for users to know what they log. But if ISP tracking is the threat, pretty much any of the major privacy-centric VPN services is probably OK. The short list, in my opinion, is AirVPN, BolehVPN, IVPN, Mullvad and PIA. Not HMA, for sure.
I'm not sure what the deal with your alarm and lights would be. But I'm guessing that it's a firewall rule that blocks LAN access when the VPN is connected. About torrents, do you really mean "slowest protocol"? I would have thought that torrents would like the fastest protocols, with the least encryption load (such as BF-CBC).
Switching on and off, and keeping track of that, is problematic. Banks etc don't like VPNs, and neither does Netflix. But if ISP tracking is the threat, a few leaks won't matter much.
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I'm pretty tech literate, and even so getting an VPN is a huge pain. First, there is the trade off of speed, location, protocol. Will a US based VPN be private enough? Do they really not log? Who do I trust? Next there is actual usage: my Phillips hue lights don't sync with my alarm if the VPN is turned on. Torrents don't work if the VPN isn't on the slowest protocol. A few more in that vein. This means that even aft…
And you need to curate a fistful of routing rules to ensure your streaming traffic doesn't go down the VPN (no VPN provider wants your 20Mbit of Downton Abbey season 5 and you want that traffic to hit the CDN node down the street).
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> VPNs could suffer from the same problem as ISPs - how can we be sure they are not selling customer data? Mainly because many rabid privacy freaks use VPNs, and spreading news about VPNs that pwn users is a blood sport.
What do you mean at about spreading vpns?
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> I believe Sweden has avoided this in high population density areas with ISP access to city provided FTTH Australia has done this on a national scale. There is now a government owned network which the existing providers were forced to sell their networks into. The ISPs then compete for services over the top of this network. The idea is that eventually the national network is also privatized but constrained into bein…
> This model has some problems - for ex. it has prevented some genuine innovation in providing broadband Until the conservatives got into power it was going to advance broadband considerably. Now it's just a multibillion dollar gift to their political mates. 20 years from now when we still have slow internet I'm still going to be telling everyone it's the Liberal parties fault.
This is why I think Google Fiber, or some other ISP offering by Google, is an important strategic component for Alphabet.