Do You Need a VPN - Virtual Private Network?
Mates,
I know we have a boatload of internet and IT-savvy folks on this blog. I hear about VPN's, Virtual Private Networks, and I am curious if there's really a need for them for the average internet dude/dudette. Other than Mgo, my general browsing is news, sports and weather. I have done a bit of reading up on VPN's and get the occasional ad to try them, but do they really help anything?
Here's a link to a PCMag article for those who might be interested: https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/what-is-a-vpn-and-why-you-need-one
So the question is pretty simple: What do VPN's really do, and is it worth it for the average internet user to utilize one?
Thank you for any input and experiences you can share. Indeed, if you have a recommendation for one, please share that, too.
XM
Are you super concerned about your online privacy / staying anonymous? Get a VPN
Do you do shady shit (arrr matey) on the internet? Get a VPN
None of the above apply to you? Don't get a VPN
not concerned re: content - like i said, Mgo, news/sports/weather. but then again, its not like i want a bunch of anonymous companies following me around the interwebs.
Big tech has commoditized your information and is making trillions selling it. A vpn provides a defense. The web is able to detect eye movement and glean political leanings, preferences etc. that information is yours to share and yours to not share.
when one takes a shit they are doing nothing wrong. That doesn’t mean a company, or a government, should be able to spy on said shitter.
I hear this argument but let me play devil's advocate here. I'm genuinely concerned what the response to this is:
Why should I be concerned about someone selling my online information (browsing history, interests, purchase history, searches)? If I'm given a tailored ad experience because of it, and end up buying something I think would genuinely improve my life, then what is the harm? Even if these places make a few bucks off of selling my browsing history, where is the real harm?
I genuinely want to know the real danger this poses to me. I honestly don't think it's as bad as some make it out to be, but I want to know if I'm wrong.
I'm with you on this. That said, I was working for Doubleclick when they were sued by the Attorney General of Michigan because they acquired a direct mail company that would allow them to tie your online data with your physical address. Is it scary to see that FB knows your interests and serves you ads? Sorta. Do I buy some of these things? Indeed. It really speaks to the individual's privacy preference. For example, I would be all for a chip implant that links my ID, passport, credit/debit cards, work id, etc. (think Apple Wallet) so that I could not carry all of that stuff with me. I could just scan my wrist and go. My wife thinks I am insane, but she is starting to come around to the idea.
Waiting for someone with an aluminum-foil hat to haul out the apocryphal Cardinal Richelieu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu) quote ...
Thanks for your link, I hadn't heard of Cardinal Richelieu before. Certainly, you can't mean his quote, "If God forbade drinking, would He have made wine so good?"
But certainly, you're referring to what some believe to be a sign of the mark of the beast, per Revelations 13:16-18.
Here you go:
https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/23785/what-did-richelieu-mean-by-his-six-lines-quote
Attribution seems like the key word here.
- - -
How does this relate to the main topic? Something like posting on MGoBlog seems innocuous now but could (if you have some imagination) be viewed differently in the future.
It's funny. I remember phone books where you listed your name, your address and your phone number for everyone to see. Now that information is treated like gold.
apples and oranges, big time. back in the day, nobody was combing through phone books with AI, then tracking your calls, linking them up to your purchases, on-line activity, credit reports, background sweeps, insurance scores and on and on.
The reason is because it’s not just about tailored ads. Your reasoning implies a base assumption that tracking your moves on the internet would generally be used for good, or at least a non-harmful, purpose. I can’t possibly dream up all of the ways that information could be turned against you, or even just used to make sure you don’t see certain things, especially as AI becomes more advanced.
The more data collected about you, the easier it becomes for that data to wind up in the wrong hands. Suddenly, you become unable to get a loan because your credit has been stolen, you have a bunch of negative hits on that credit, and what you thought was a score of 820 is actually a 580. It happens, and that is one of the ways it happens. Corporations track you and collect all kinds of data, and employees within those companies can access this data. They may not know it’s you, specifically, but they don’t care.
Depends how you feel about your spending habits. If you are confident in your ability to turn down a "good deal" and stick to your saving goals, then sure it's not a problem. Most people aren't saving as much as they should and targeted advertising does hurt them in a concrete significant way.
I disagree that a "tailored ad experience" is all that useful. It's often somebody who just wants to try to sell you something that they think you might be interested in--regardless of whether or not you actually are.
For instance, I work in IT. For a long time, if I let targeted advertising run freely I'd get ads for certain large IT vendors I had to deal with and for crypto. Neither of which I had any interest in, as I'm not a big fan of most large IT vendors and I prefer to extort organizations in person rather than through ransomware.
I will admit that for me poorly targeted advertising is more annoying than the traditional scattershot approach.
Targeted advertising also doesn't deal with any of the issues that make advertising awful (misrepresenting the product, malware, excess repetition, etc.).
It is way more invasive then that. Your GPS location is tracked via your phone, etc.
Why should you care and what is the danger? Good examples- You google medical symptoms for an illness and that data is sold to insurance companies who raise your premiums. Prospective employers buy your data and see you've gone to supposed "pro-union" websites and don't hire you. Maybe you're gay and don't want people to know. Maybe you're goggling where to get an abortion and your data gets sold so you can get spammed with pro-life ads, etc, etc. These are just some examples. The biggest reason IMO is that no one should be able to see your private stuff if you don't want them to. If you want to opt IN for tracking, cool, go do that. I don't consent to that and it shouldn't be the default.
For example, how would you feel if I looked through your window to see you or your wife naked? I won't do anything beyond that, I'm harmless. I'll just look and leave. Unless I see you have a grateful dead tattoo, then maybe I'll send you a piece of mail trying to get you to buy classic rock posters lol.
This is the most thoughtful answer I've received. Thanks. Something to think about and certainly something that should be opted into.
"buying something I think would genuinely improve my life"
Ads are meant to genuinely reduce your savings account. What the hell ads are you talking about?
I believe the Brave browser defaults to disabling trackers and other things. VPN as I understand it changes your location, but that's about it.
I actually just set up a website and my own business and, if they accept all cookies, can literally watch where an individual put their mouse on the site (although it moves really wonky so it's definitely not exact), which is kinda creepy. Having said that, there's not much I can glean from that about you personally. I just want enough visits to get a heat map to see what people generally look at, click on, interact with, to improve the site.
I don't know a lot of them, but Tunnelbear has limited data if you're only doing the free version but it works well and isn't spammy (maybe have to unclick an extension on install).
Yea - I think a lot of people in this topic are rather confused about what a VPN actually does and does not do. The only thing a VPN really does is:
1.) encrypt your data - for the vast majority of internet traffic in 2023 this is already happening. Modern web browsers default to going to https:// on websites, practically every single public email provider utilizes SMTPS etc etc. That does not mean there isn't actual benefit to using VPN, but it's not giving the majority of people using it a massive increase in network security they likely think it is. It's kind of like wrapping an already wrapped present.
2.) It masks your IP address. I don't think this is as valuable as many people think it is, but it can be a very big plus for some users and is typically one of the big reasons people want it, to appear they are coming from somewhere else to the site they are interacting with. There have been ways to figure out your actual IP address even when using a VPN (WebRTC hello) but I don't believe those methods work on VPN clients discussed here.
That's it - people talking about using a VPN to protect your private data because websites make money selling that info... they're not getting that info via unsecure network transmissions, they get that information because you enter it into a website when you register for it. A VPN isn't going to somehow stop them from getting that data. A VPN doesn't protect your cookies or movements or anything like that.
A website itself can also be insecure - you may be terminating HTTPS to their content delivery network, but then the connection back to the website's origin - which will flow over the public internet - is over HTTP. A VPN isn't going to protect you from that at all either.
A VPN can have it's uses, and I don't think there is anything wrong or bad with using one, it's still pretty much just giving you good things at a very afffordable cost. But some of the claims as to what it actually does are just not accurate, and I think the vast majority of people actually using these services don't really need to use them.
My biggest recommendation, using a VPN or not, don't expect anything you put on the internet to actually be secure and private.
(20+ years in IT security and networking)
Exactly right. You can use a VPN, but if you are logged into your Google account / Facebook / etc., you're still being tracked via various invisible bugs on the screen and other creepy techniques. They have also gotten better at tracking people after they log out of those accounts.
Some mail providers do not require SSL (it's an option, but it can be hard to set up correctly on every device), so that is an example of a place where a VPN can come in handy.
FYI, Michigan students and alums can use a VPN for free through the University.
https://its.umich.edu/enterprise/wifi-networks/vpn/getting-started
That's a pretty cool service.
Oh great now the University can track everything we do. /s
God, I love the wit on this board.
So I have a dumb question. I like to play season long fantasy football through Yahoo because I like its platform the best. For some even dumber reason Yahoo has chosen not to pay a fee to register in Michigan so it’s not available to instate users. Can I use a VPN to pretend I am in a different state that Yahoo is licensed to play fantasy sports in? Or is there some other tool I need to use to dork out?
Yes a vpn does that.
Yes. Same with bypassing georestricted videos all over the internet, like how people accessed The Office on British Netflix when they took it off of their US servers.
Are you hoping to win a prize from them? Depending on what you may need to verify, showing you're in Michigan later could void your winnings.
Yes yes yes yes
why why why why?
and assuming you use one, which one and why?
I like proton vPN. Use duck duck go for browsing and. Brave as your browser. I answered your first question above.
Essentially every free app is free because your user information is the real product that's being sold (to other companies, without you knowing).
Nord is solid. Surfshark is too. Proton isn't great.
I've actually switched back to Firefox after years with Brave. I just can't trust anything written on Chromium to not leak info, especially to google. The way they nerfed BAT a few years back was massively annoying, not to mention the browser extensions needed were glitchy and intrusive.
They could have just sent BAT to an existing wallet every month, but instead they created their own proprietary crypto wallet that everyone had to use, including uploading ID that said browser extensions would store. But they definitely weren't using that to identify end users and their browsing habits and selling that to the highest bidder. Definitely.
Uphold deez nuts.
what is wrong with Proton?
Proton has just been slower and less reliable than the other two in my experience.
Most boomer thread ever. Spelling out virtual private network and linking pcmag is extra amish of you.
just like charlie don't surf,
the amish don't compute....
Smells like ... victory. :-)
I live in Canada now and use it to watch my DirecTV Stream, Netflix, etc. Otherwise I don't really think I'd use one for much.
I haven't tried watching Canadian cable but I assume it's all hockey, CFL and how to make maple syrup all the time.
Gravy on fires is gross. Harvey’s is delicious and gross.
I mean if gravy is the only way to put out the wildfires you gotta do what you gotta do. Hope it doesn't affect the supply of poutine though. That shit is delicious.
I'm as disillusioned about Canada as anyone under the sun, but poutine is aggressively delicious.
I don't like gravy generally and don't like cheese curds but I love poutine. I don't understand it... there must be some sort of black magic involved.
For me it all depends on the gravy.
Cheap powdered Knorr's shit over cheap Sysco fries? Hard pass.
Shredded braised brisket and/or oxtail, sauced with the braising liquid after it's been strained and reduced, over double-blanched duckfat or clarified butter-finished fries that have been tossed with sea salt, fresh rosemary, and fresh thyme? All. Day.
damn.... i'm checking menus online and about to call door dash....
I'll take an order but hold the fries and the salt.
Yes, that's what Canadian TV is
Although I have the irresistible urge to start a grand debate about what happens in the underpants of strangers, I will remain strong and focus on my own genitals. Also, a vote for Proton VPN from me.
Although I have the irresistible urge to start a grand debate about what happens in the underpants of strangers, I will remain strong and focus on my own genitals.
Probably the most beautiful quote I've ever seen in my 31 years of existence. Words to live by.
what did I miss?