It's been clear for a long time that every single commercial VPN service is a waste of money. At best, you replace trusting your ISP with trusting a different group of unknown people with similar motivations. At worst, it's a government agency honeypot or someone like Facebook. If you think you want a VPN for "privacy", use Tor Browser. If you want a VPN for any other reason that "normal people" think they want a VPN…
Tor is too slow and often blocked by sites. And how do you know if an exit node is a honeypot or not?
It's been clear for a long time that every single commercial VPN service is a waste of money. At best, you replace trusting your ISP with trusting a different group of unknown people with similar motivations. At worst, it's a government agency honeypot or someone like Facebook. If you think you want a VPN for "privacy", use Tor Browser. If you want a VPN for any other reason that "normal people" think they want a VPN…
> you replace trusting your ISP with trusting a different group of unknown people with similar motivations I've always seen this argument but it's never made sense to me. For starters I absolutely don't trust my ISP. I know they are collecting, storing, likely selling my data and that they are 100% going to comply with any government requests from my government (I don't even trust that they would only respond to lega…
Plus, you can chain through a couple VPNs. Both VPNs have to be compromised for you to lose privacy.
It's been clear for a long time that every single commercial VPN service is a waste of money. At best, you replace trusting your ISP with trusting a different group of unknown people with similar motivations. At worst, it's a government agency honeypot or someone like Facebook. If you think you want a VPN for "privacy", use Tor Browser. If you want a VPN for any other reason that "normal people" think they want a VPN…
What if you want a VPN to unlock location based content?
Also create a fuse between DMCA requests and your sole broadband provider if you do any torrenting.
Browser fingerprinting works much better than checking IPs. With multiple devices being behind the same IP, it's necessary to distinguish between users. I'm not saying VPNs are worthless - I'm on one right now for work. Commercial VPNs, for most people who purchase them, are completely worthless. And I very much doubt that tunneling your connection through a VPN can improve ping.
As a frequent international traveler, using VPNs as a method to change routing absolutely can improve the results. Routing is not always done to get your specific packets someplace as fast as possible, particularly when submarine cables are involved.
Yup, I was going to say the same thing. I’m also a frequent international traveler (tho not in the last 20 months, alas, but before pandemic I averaged 2 international trips a month) and one of the benefits, security or not, of a commercial VPN service is the access to different nodes that can drastically improve speeds vs whatever routes the network you’re on is using. It’s not a guarantee but I’ve had it come in handy quite a few times.
Just for a moment close your eyes and imagine a world where you have to fill-in a mildly complicated form before you visit a website (or blindly sign away whatever rights you might have had). A world where every second funny video you might have found on Reddit leaves you with a cryptic message that some "rights holder" doesn't permit you to see it (and denies you from joining the fun everyone else seems to be having…
Ok. Use a proxy, or set up your own Proxy/VPN on a VPS? Then you also have a VPS - you can host your own website there, use it to download stuff and rsync it back to your local machine, deploy nextcloud, etc., all for less than the cost of ExpressVPN. And bonus points, you can use unlimited devices.
Less of the cost sure but you are saving a couple bucks a month tops and replacing that with work on setup and maintenance instead. Moreover that way you get a single IP rather than the 40 different countries with multiple IPs my provider gives me.
Just for a moment close your eyes and imagine a world where you have to fill-in a mildly complicated form before you visit a website (or blindly sign away whatever rights you might have had). A world where every second funny video you might have found on Reddit leaves you with a cryptic message that some "rights holder" doesn't permit you to see it (and denies you from joining the fun everyone else seems to be having…
Ok. Use a proxy, or set up your own Proxy/VPN on a VPS? Then you also have a VPS - you can host your own website there, use it to download stuff and rsync it back to your local machine, deploy nextcloud, etc., all for less than the cost of ExpressVPN. And bonus points, you can use unlimited devices.
90% of the average population doesnt know the first thing about command lines.
Get a VPS, they are actually cheaper than VPNs (if you only need one country location). You will have one single IP and you won't share IP with hundreds of other people thus being flagged. I have never been blocked from a site when using my VPS, including sites that otherwise block VPNs, I think they don't care for whatever reason. Doesn't mean they can't know, they will, but they seem to not care? Some websites migh…
Get a VPS, they are actually cheaper than VPNs (if you only need one country location). You will have one single IP and you won't share IP with hundreds of other people thus being flagged. I have never been blocked from a site when using my VPS, including sites that otherwise block VPNs, I think they don't care for whatever reason. Doesn't mean they can't know, they will, but they seem to not care? Some websites migh…
The problem is a VPS isn't anonymizing because your traffic isn't pooled with others. So if your goal is to bypass geoblocking, etc. then sure a VPS is a good choice. If improved anonymity is what you're after then a VPS isn't going to do that.
Browser fingerprinting works much better than checking IPs. With multiple devices being behind the same IP, it's necessary to distinguish between users. I'm not saying VPNs are worthless - I'm on one right now for work. Commercial VPNs, for most people who purchase them, are completely worthless. And I very much doubt that tunneling your connection through a VPN can improve ping.
What about using a VPN inside a VM? (or even a separate computer) Presumably all of your browser fingerprints would be different, yes?
Yeah, but unless you are blowing the VM away all the time (and maybe you are, but that takes a certain amount of effort, even if you try to automate it), you’re still going to have a fingerprint tied to that VM and browser(s). Will it be linked with your other devices? Maybe not, but depending on what accounts you are signed into (Google, Facebook, etc), there could still be a more robust profile associated with your various locations and devices, even if the fingerprints are different.