11–20 of 281 posts
They are some valid points in the post, but ISPs collect and will market your data, including browsing data. They recently changed positions and claim they won’t anymore, but there’s no reason to trust them and they’re still using your data for targeted ads meaning they still retain the data. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/comcast-we-wont-...
>However, the sad reality is, there is no such thing as a “no logs” VPN. Because running it would technically be impossible. PIA has told the feds in the US to fuck off multiple times when asked for logs. You can't provide what you don't have, and lying to the feds is a fast track to PMITA prison (PIA is based in the US). I feel pretty confident they're not risking prison to cover for Joe Blow subscriber. Other "no l…
Just a thought—Couldn’t there be a service In front of ~5-1,000 different vpn services that would locally (depending on your subscription level) send each request to a random list of vpn providers (like a random dns provider? Somewhat complicating/obscuring the issue that arises with centralizing your traffic to single endpoint?
But the article should have touched on _how_ one would actually achieve the privacy levels that the VPNs claims to offer. For example, using TOR rather than a VPN is a much better guarantee of privacy against IP based tracking (and what the draw-backs of TOR is - such as accidental real-ip leaks via javascript).
A lot of users simply trust the marketing of VPN providers - because it's cheap, and it doesn't look like it'd do harm. Like how multi-vitamin pills are marketed as a cheap silver bullet for a complicated problem.
It's true that VPN services at best provide less anonymity than Tor does. And that some, such as HideMyAss (which pwned that LulzSec dude) provide none. But PIA clearly does, as demonstrated now in two criminal investigations.[0]
Of course, in both cases, defendants pwned themselves through poor OPSEC. But at least PIA didn't give them up.
And the Facebook example. Nobody paying attention expects a VPN service (or even Tor) to hide their identity if they login using their real name. That's just stupid.
0) https://torrentfreak.com/private-internet-access-no-logging-...
The article makes some valid points but overstates the case. I continue to be happier with trusting my VPN providers than any of the ISPs available to me.
>However, the sad reality is, there is no such thing as a “no logs” VPN. Because running it would technically be impossible. PIA has told the feds in the US to fuck off multiple times when asked for logs. You can't provide what you don't have, and lying to the feds is a fast track to PMITA prison (PIA is based in the US). I feel pretty confident they're not risking prison to cover for Joe Blow subscriber. Other "no l…
What about European based/GDPR compliant VPNs? Wouldn't they require to truthfully disclose if and what they log?
> Just like you have to trust your ISP that they do not collect data, you have to trust that your VPN provider is not storing the same data. Bull. Shit. Find me a major ISP that publicly claims they don't log any data. Anyone making a claim remotely similar to those made in https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-keep-you-anonymo... If it was the norm for ISPs to claim this, maybe this argument would work. For no…
I don't just mean law enforcement, though that's probably a problem too, (though I have less experience with that one) I'm also talking about the normal abuse an ISP gets. Spammers, etc... From experience, your upstream will shut you down if your customers aren't well behaved.
Seems to ignore two things... a) Your ISP is almost always in the same legal jurisdiction as you are. A VPN need not be. b) A VPN has some incentive to deliver on privacy. Your ISP does not. It's fair to call out that a VPN isn't perfect for either privacy or anonymity. But it clearly can be better than your ISP.