Why I no longer use a VPN (most of the time) and nor should you

In this episode, we explore why I no longer use a VPN (most of the time) and nor should you.
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Mullvad 👉 mullvad.net/en
How does built-in Phishing and Malware Protection work? 👉 support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/...
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[@kkiwirocks]

Mullvad being raided by Swedish and German intelligence services and them finding absolutely nothing was the best advertising they could've asked for.

[@HE-162]

Yep. I was team Mullvad long before the raid, and that was the icing on the cake

[@kornelobajdin5889]

I just bought it last week after the raid. Speeds depend from server to server. But payment is easy and quick. 5e a month. At least I know its private activity. Which is reassuring.

[@Lawliet734]

"Mullvad being raded [raided]..."

[@justanormalguy144]

Yeah, but can you 100% trust what they say?

[@kkiwirocks]

@@Lawliet734 thank you for the thoughtful contribution. fixed.

[@KarlRock]

My dad in New Zealand asked me if he needed one… that’s when I realised their advertising had gone too far. He’s the last person who needs a VPN 😂

[@rigierish3807]

I wouldn't necessarily say most people don't need them. Having some privacy on the internet, which is and should be a major selling point of those kind of services, is beneficial to everybody. So in that regard, it's great VPNs do get some kind of attention, especially for the ones who are privacy conscious but unfortunately, the major selling point we can see in most promoting videos isn't always around that, if not ever (at least, from what I've seen so far, except on rare tech privacy oriented channels like this one).

[@johnkeo358]

Karl you don't use one while you're abroad?

[@warholinteractive1526]

Used to be the “14 prying eyes”‘coalition of mass illegal bill surveillance that corporate interests and their blatantly obvious government embedded corruption is exposing itself nowadays with everyone talking about this stuff so much, remember when this want a thing? Now look at the mess this patriot act has created, saw it coming from DAY 1 Now I think it’s called the 5 eyes, Canada, US, British, Aus, NZ and I’m sure others who try to remain unnamed like Germany among others and Japan, all spy on us and others ON BEHALF of allied nations, so Japanese are spying on Americans based out of Texas where Toyota dominates the auto market in the country, and how many other spots? BMW manufacturing in the Carolina’s etc Catching the trend? Pharma involvement, big insurance too, basically one in the same (ask a PI attorney they’ll tell you the same thing, definitely with some booze in them too)

[@juupaju889]

@@rigierish3807 I completely agree with you, Rigierish. Privacy on the internet is indeed a crucial aspect that everyone should be concerned about. Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) can play a significant role in safeguarding our online privacy by providing a secure and encrypted connection, making it harder for third parties to track our activities or collect personal information. It's encouraging to see that VPNs are gaining attention and popularity among privacy-conscious individuals. However, you raise a valid point that the marketing focus of many VPN providers may not always revolve around privacy. While some VPN companies do emphasize privacy as a selling point, others may prioritize factors such as streaming capabilities, fast speeds, or bypassing geo-restrictions in their promotional videos. It's important for users to research and choose VPN services that prioritize privacy and have a proven track record of protecting user data. As you mentioned, there are tech privacy-oriented channels and resources available that provide in-depth insights into VPNs' privacy features and recommendations. Ultimately, promoting the importance of online privacy and encouraging VPN providers to prioritize and highlight this aspect in their marketing efforts can benefit both individual users and the broader online community.

[@rigierish3807]

@@juupaju889 What I'm afraid of, and that's what I think most VPN companies realized, is that most people, even if they say they want privacy, aren't willing to do the extra work to have it, so you have to sell another thing to them that they are willing to pay for and as a secondary value, you give them privacy. But you always have to put it in the background and not as the primary selling point, which is sad because it confirms people don't put they money where their mouth is. But if that's what it takes to increase everybody's privacy, I guess I'm all for it.

[@jamindavey]

For Australian users: All ISPs are required by law to track every website you visit, maintain the data for 2 years, and hand that information over to any government agency that requests it without informing users about the request. VPNs are not obliged to do this. Even if they were pressured by the government to hand over data which they say they don’t have, they would not be legally obliged to remain silent about it by Australian law. Additionally, if an Australian is accessing US servers the additional latency from using a VPN isn’t noticiable compared to the trans Atlantic lag.

[@nehpranatospsy5668]

wow thats dystopian, but prop the same as in us

[@Jidarious]

It isn't. In the US ISPs are not required to log anything at all. Whether they do or not is mostly a financial decision. Large ISPs that exploit your data and use it in some way probably log it, and smaller ISPs that wouldn't see much of a monetary benefit from logging your data probably do not. In every case ISPs in the US do not have to supply information to the government without a subpeona and they typically wont. That said there have been cases in the past of ISPs allowing surveillance (infamously AT&T let the NSA monitor most of their data). Source: Network architect at an ISP, 20+ years in the business.

[@nehpranatospsy5668]

@@Jidarious I respect that. May I ask you what you think about whonix and tails? What do you think is the safest and anonymous way to surf normal and dark web?

[@PeterKnagge]

lol, my comment got auto-deleted about that big brother is watching & censoring the entire world, including you. The ironry...

[@PeterKnagge]

Release Julian Assange. Totally innocent & held under authoritarian false pretences. Wait until the little green men come for you.

[@cenewton3221]

There is no such thing as complete privacy nor is there complete security when connecting to the public network. I use a VPN much of the time with the understanding that I'm trusting my provider to do what they say. I recognize trusts are broken sometimes. Still, for the most part, I'll rate my privacy as being much better with the VPN than without, even if it isn't 100%. I equate it to why we lock our doors at night. Clearly a skilled & determined thief/criminal could make it into someone's house if they are determined enough. At the very least though, it's about keeping honest people honest. Not much we can do about everyone else other than remaining aware, observant & diligent.

[@panama2468]

Absolutely well said 👌🏽

[@PhaseControlDNB]

Tom Scott did very good video on this topic. The funny thing was that the video was supposed to be a sponsored video by a VPN provider but since it was way too honest, the advertisers kept asking for changes and he ended up refusing to work with them. He then published the entire video without cuts (of course censoring it when he mentions the name of the VPN).

[@tobybartlett]

That was a great video!

[@enbycharlie6287]

Gay pirate assasins

[@Dodi-jf2jj]

@@enbycharlie6287 is that what gpa stands for?

[@RafaelMunizYT]

@@Dodi-jf2jj gorilla pounding ass

[@siringc]

@@Dodi-jf2jj yes

[@I_Evo]

Lets be honest, VPNs are being sold to us in advertisements as security/privacy applications because the real reason most people I suspect use them, to get around geo restrictions, is probably not seen as a good corporate look for these companies.

[@georgekerscher5355]

​@@Unknown_Genius It probably has to do with there being no specific law/restriction against lying; considering it's not as though the United States has the most robust laws when it comes to the Internet.

[@wininets]

Most vpn traffic is abusive traffic, not human or legit traffic, and increasing its getting blocked. Nord is owned by bunch of criminals, with foreign government connections. If they force their DNS then are monitoring everything.

[@DDoubleEDouble]

@@georgekerscher5355 In most developed countries (and many many other countries, too!) there are definitely specific laws that make lying about a product or the capabilities of a product illegal. This is particularly true when it comes to food products (eg. lying about the ingredients in a product etc) or building materials (eg. lying about the make-up or strength/grade of a product). This type of law is pretty standard to all products sold in shops or online stores.

[@DDoubleEDouble]

@@Unknown_Genius Yup, you’re totally right about the law not having caught up yet. Part of the problem is that the general public are unaware at the untruthful advertising and so a big enough fuss hasn’t been made yet. Once this happens, the issue will start to be taken more seriously. Another part is that these companies aren’t fully lying, they’re telling half-truths (whilst also using clever wording/phrasing.) This is currently allowing them to use specific loopholes in the law (at least in the UK/EU, I’m not 100% that this is fully the case legally in other countries as they have different laws)

[@I.____.....__...__]

The worst part is that the VPNs KNOW that bypassing geo-fencing (in any way) is specifically against the TOS of pretty much EVERY site and service and grounds for suspension, yet they still tout it as a main-selling point, knowing that it's going to hurt the people they're trying to convert to customers. 🤦 Also, do they think Netflix, Disney, etc. are going to just sit around while VPNs help and encourage people to break their TOS, often naming them specifically? 🤨

[@TheUberKevlar]

This is not why you shouldn't use a VPN but it's why you need to research the VPN that you do use, understand what a VPN actually does and when and how it is useful, what it can and can't do, and use something that is recommended by Infosec and privacy experts. I use Proton because (while it may not be perfect) their companies privacy/security model and ethics are of a lot better than most others out there.

[@marinawolf]

Same here, Proton is great.

[@GoalWalker]

Which AV to use with Proton on Windows?

[@biscuit715]

I've never found a good antivirus. Ublock origin to prevent pop ups and unwanted redirects on the web, and common sense about what you download, is the best antivirus. If I have a reason to suspect a file may be dodgy I'll run malwarebytes, and delete it straight after because AV popups are just adware. @@GoalWalker

[@Taxevader-gk9ms]

using a VPN also puts you in a smaller crowd so if someone is taking data from it you're more noticeable

[@melwoods-ml7nc]

and privacy laws in switzerland, where proton is based, is one of the best.

[@mark99k]

Like many others, I was talked into using VPN and still do, but the ridiculously obnoxious scare tactics in VPN marketing is souring me on the whole thing. It's reminiscent of antivirus offerings in the infancy of the consumer-level Internet (1990s), where you'd hear nothing from the AV all year until a week before your renewal, when it would suddenly, but consistently (and loudly), claim to have stopped a serious threat.

[@activ8me3]

Fully agree. Very unpleasant. Antivirus offerings are still the same (mostly lies) as in the 1990s though. And VPN companies are in majority conducting their business in a shady way.

[@dm5129]

I used to have VPN service. But I am not so sure it is the best option anymore.

[@xntumrfo9ivrnwf]

Mullvad was recently raided and from memory, the cops basically walked away empty handed because Mullvad really did store nothing

[@trumpisthemessiah7017]

Actually the cops left empty handed because of their 'policies' that SAY they don't. Which meant they had no rationale for searching under the law. This DOES NOT, mean they ACTUALLY have nothing.

[@alihorda]

Or they paid the police and they walked away 😅

[@EnderElohim]

@@alihorda if they able to paid the police to make them walk away well more power to them XD

[@fitybux4664]

Is there a way to know that the cops don't plant some employee there that installs some software onto their server to record things that shouldn't be recorded by a VPN provider? (Correlating IP to traffic.) Any VPN provider can have this happen at any time.

[@alihorda]

@@fitybux4664 I don't think they have the resource or motivation to do that. All vpn companies sell our data to gain profit, without exception, they are just not that open about it. Whether you trust your isp provider or a vpn company is up to you

[@larion2336]

I don't know what other magic people are expecting VPNs to be able to do, but for me all I want is for them to obscure ISPs I visit, protect me from legal bs when using torrents, and occasionally bypass geo blocks. For that it is very helpful. If you're the average grandma that just gets online to check her emails or something, I'd agree they are useless.

[@svicidellvma]

you clearly don't know what you're saying. "Obscures ISPs I visit". An isp is an internet service provider. Aka the people you get your internet from. Stop tryna act like you know what you're saying. A vpn doesnt protect from legal issues when torrenting. Your isp can still see the files on your hard drive and DMCA strike you. I know this for a fact because i've had emails from my ISP.

[@insquared1868]

it's a free packtloss removal when u have bad routing, truly a magical thing this vpn is xd

[@svicidellvma]

@@insquared1868 that's logically flawed.

[@RoyalFizzbin]

I think they are decent when hopping onto the hotel Wi-Fi. People in my experience are WAY too comfortable with open Wi-Fi networks. They don’t see them as the minefield that they so often are… or can be. So for that, sure. A VPN is good.

[@larion2336]

@@RoyalFizzbin Yeah, that too.

[@cfazio]

Sun, do you use wifi with your fiber set-up or only Ethernet connections?

[@TophinatorStreams]

I really appreciate the nuance expressed here. Legitimate reasons to use a VPN are still respected, but going blindly in on a service I know next to nothing about VPNs other than ~~SECURITY~~ and ~~GETTING AROUND NATIONAL BANS~~, so if I got one for that reason, I'd also want to know the downsides, too. Everything has that dark-silver lining to it and you can actually sell more product this way. I think you made shopping for a VPN more effective and that's why I appreciate this video! Great work!

[@Wolf-ln1ml]

As much as I love KZbinrs being able to get some support from companies, I don't think I've ever seen/heard _one_ ad that didn't at least massively overstate the usefulness of whatever was being advertised (up to being ads for outright scams like that Scottish Lord/Lady title thing...) Frankly, by now, I see such ads as a _warning_ to _at best_ look into other products of the same type, but to stay away from that company...

[@grumpy-dad3701]

When you are getting paid a shit ton of money. These influencers will sell out in an instant.

[@supremelordoftheuniverse5449]

Raycon earphones is one of them. kzbin.info/www/bejne/n6rdfoabq9WHaKs

[@janthran]

i bought a pair of sennheiser earbuds for cheaper than a pair of raycons.

[@kelseybrexit5224]

Especially if it’s a known scam. So many KZbinrs I stopped watching because cmon! You expect me to believe a 3 million followed channel not knowing they’re advertising a blatant lie 😑

[@MemTMCR]

​@@janthran damn. normal price or sale?

[@hakonsoreide]

The reason Nord VPN is everywhere is not because they're necessarily the best at being a VPN, but the ones that are the best at marketing and that pays the most influencers to flog their wares. I don't worry about privacy, but I've needed a VPN to watch Norwegian tv now that I live in the UK. NordVPN actually worked great for this. I had another VPN before, the name of which I can't recall now, that didn't give me enough bandwidth to watch live tv, and I think at some point it also got IP blocked by the streaming service I wanted to use. I don't have a VPN now, but I might get one again.

[@nemtudom5074]

Its not even that they are good at this, just that they spend obscene amounts of money on paying any and all influencers. 'best' hardly matters when literally everyone is telling people to use your services.

[@JamesScholes]

You don't even need to pay for a VPN. There's literally dozens of VPNs you can use for free in the Chrome Extension store.

[@lakedawg2462]

The fact the used Mark Rober is a huge red flag in my opinion, he is the next generation of Bill gates (Population Control Activist)

[@flagmichael]

I have Nord VPN because I tried it on a YT deal through one of my most trusted creators and found it to be easy, convenient, and affordable. After 34 years in IT Field Support for a Fortune 100 company I wouldn't connect without a VPN. Even in our own homes we are subject to sniffers in cars driving by or parking nearby.

[@nemtudom5074]

@@flagmichaelAnd yet you're using a service that spies on you. Nord and the like are not to be trusted.

[@jonsmidt3701]

Hi Sun, what are your thoughts on the Orion browser for MacOS? They make some pretty large promises when it comes to privacy, and the browser runs very well on M1 Macs. Is it too good to be true?

[@person880]

A major issue with not using a VPN is that your regular IP address narrows you down so close to where you live, and it changes infrequently. Every website you visit knows there are only a handful of people in the world living in that area. With a VPN, you can have a different IP address in a different location as often as you want, and tons of other people will reuse the IP address you were using, meaning each IP address is useless in any attempt to identify who the user might be. The VPN company may or may not be trying to use your data against you, but your ISP definitely is using your data against you!

[@hojo70]

I am assuming you mean "using data against you" to mean that your ISP can tracking your browsing habits and sell non-identifiable aggregated metrics to marketers. However if you meant that you were committing online crimes for which the data could be used to convict you, well, I guess you might deserve it. The latter doesn't apply to most of us so who cares.

[@zuzuspetals9281]

@@hojo70You will care one day because to our governments none of us are innocent. Eventually they will come for you too.

[@nightowl9519]

​@@hojo70Everyone commits crimes whether they know it or not, that is the whole point of having inflated law books

[@GonePh1shing]

That IP also belongs to your ISP, so if someone that had your personal details (e.g. You get doxxed) they could pretty easily launch an attack against you. This includes SIM jacking and SMS 2FA interception if your cell provider is the same as your home internet provider.

[@antuanperez426]

@@hojo70🤡

[@paarker]

When a VPN is being promoted on all the big KZbin channels, it screams “CIA”. “FBI”

[@lukereiner]

Right, if a privacy service isn’t be advertised to the mainstream, go with that

[@WilliamAncich]

it glows in the dark*

[@hypercrack7440]

Heard of the recent raid on Mullvad?

[@kevinbatts2804]

Facts

[@SolDizZo]

@@hypercrack7440 I'm reading about it now, but supposedly it has Proven that their No-Log policy is not a lie

[@deersakamoto2167]

Tom Scott did a good video (with lots of views) explaining why the messaging around VPN companies (and "influencers" like Mark Rober parroting them) are incorrect/misleading

[@haveaniceday4585]

After that video many VPN companies changed their ad reads because they were even more misleading then they are now.

[@justincenter4061]

The gay pirate assassin Tom Scott?

[@sudokode]

​@@justincenter4061 double scoop of vanilla Tom Scott

[@firehawk128]

Funny enough Tom eventually did a VPN ad. I can't remember for which company though, but it was a "I was away from England and used a VPN to get access to something" use case.

[@Andruspl]

@@firehawk128 I also remember Tom explicitly stating "Nord never suffered a data breach", which is technically true, but they did have a major security breach... and didn't tell anyone for 10 months in hopes of sweeping the whole thing under the rug. Definitely not the industry standard, and very bad look for the company.

[@rycin4457]

What are your thoughts on a DPN such as Deeper Network’s products? I’m considering the new Deeper Connect Air since I live half of the year outside of Canada and VPN’s don’t solve my issue

[@cyril6696]

Hi Sun, thanks for the vidéo again. Thanks for your work. Could you tell le what do you think of the new firefox Focus for mobile? Did you try it yet ? What about the security within it ? Thank you for your reply and maybe a video update about it. Thanks.

[@natec1]

Yep. For the average user, these commercial VPNs really don't offer much of anything other than a bit of added latency lol. They're good for accessing geo-restricted stuff and that's about it. I use a VPN to access my home network and I use a certain no-logs service for when I need a random IP. That's what I use them for, and that's way more than the average internet user needs.

[@jayspeidell]

It's basically a subscription fee for The Pirate Bay.

[@redpilljesus]

Surfshark hides KZbin traffic from Cricket so I can watch in 4K when it normally throttles me.

[@brentsummers7377]

Sites such as CNN Go will give an 11 minute preview of their service if they think you are based in the USA. And I think a lot of the BBC is blocked unless you have a UK IP.

[@d_trich]

@@jayspeidell if you're torrenting without one, every other peer will see your IP address. That means a company can harvest them easily and publicly.

[@josiahbrown7258]

Yeah I never got everyone advertising the privacy that hard. It's possible that a given vpn is private but again that is based on the customer trusting them to not access their data. They are preying on people who don't understand how the internet works. If you want to access region blocked content or similarly subvert the internet, sure. That's what I pay for. But otherwise using a vpn fulltime is rough. The latency can be unusable and I have tried many different ones with similar issues. I just cringe when even big tech youtubers have these ads advertising security and privacy...

[@rationalbushcraft]

You don't need cookies to be identifiable. There are browser fingerprinting techniques that looks at other things to identify you.

[@rizean2]

Saved me from having to add this. To be clear vpns don't stop finger printing.

[@Hasblock]

@@rizean2 I mean, it's better than having your browser finger print you AND having cookies

[@griffydz1789]

Add to that 0 day vulnerabilities on hardware maybe?

[@LeifNelandDk]

@@Hasblock vpn does not block cookies by itself.

[@mikaelhellsen4454]

How do I obtain this fingerprint as a webserver?

[@NellieMaySanford]

I recall being able to use school internet with a vpn. for the past couple of yrs, I can't use it in any fast food joint, library, or school. any money making app will also refuse to work if they detect a vpn. the average joe like me is mostly cornered to only use their home based wifi for everything. is it me or this is occurring to make it that much easier to track what we're doing? I am looking up how to do certain things now to gain more privacy. I may be getting on in yrs but I'm willing to put in the effort. any advice or suggestions are appreciated. other than that, I'll keep on researching n trying.

[@gordongarmaise6244]

Hi Sun, You mentioned in passing that you have 500Mps symmetric FTH in Montreal. What is your ISP? Do you recommend it? Are there any ISPs that provide a privacy guarantee? Thank you.

[@darpmosh6601]

The people in countries that ban websites for political reasons will and always will use a VPN to get past these unfair restrictions. It is an overstatement to say "nor should you". The people of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, China, South Korea, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Kazakhstan, Iran all need to use VPNs to get to the free internet.

[@sucyshi]

They have to be drastic to get views, but those people probably make up less than 0.1% of this videos views. Also, I've been to a few of those countries, and as a tourist I ran into none of the restrictions; only some American shopping websites themselves blocked me (ie. Target's website). And I didn't want to be in these countries so I was basically browsing the internet the whole time. If a tourist isn't going to run into these blocks even when googling why certain aspects of the country is shit, then the average citizen probably will not, and the ones who need the VPN will _know_ why they need it.

[@darpmosh6601]

@@sucyshi UAE, China, and Turkmenistan are very drastic. You can't even browse Google and KZbin and basically many Western websites in China. UAE is a Muslim country, so they will be banning stuff. Turkmenistan is basically the North Korea of the Middle East.

[@michaelbarrett7327]

You forgot Canada. I can't even link local or global news on Facebook, and worse is on the way due to frightening new legislation that really puts no limits on censorship and media restriction.

[@aaronchrusniak1169]

South Korea?

[@darpmosh6601]

​@@aaronchrusniak1169 Yeah. Apparently the SK government bans some websites.

[@AidenRKrone]

The only time I've ever legitimately needed the services of a VPN was in 2020 when I was torrenting literally thousands upon thousands of gigabytes worth of movies and video games for my home multimedia setup. If I hadn't used a VPN for that, I'm sure I would've been slapped with dozens of copyright violation notices by my ISP.

[@omahanprabla3058]

I thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

[@fragileomniscience7647]

Lol. I do it to keep myself safe from salty islamists who could live kilometers from me inside my region and perform machete acrobatics.

[@ChrisGoldie]

This is why im getting a vpn. I have a few things i cant even find on the internet anymore from my heavy torrenting days. Perseveration is a must at these times

[@hydra70]

This is one of the biggest use cases for a VPN, but obviously VPN providers aren't going to advertise it.

[@jasonsmall5602]

I wouldn't call that "legitimate"

[@SamRussell]

What do you think about Proton VPN? Thank you for clearly explaining many of the issues.

[@StonedNoob]

I’m quite a noob where online security and privacy is concerned. Like I have no knowledge about this field. But I just want to use a VPN so I can access content (netflix) available in different countries and open websites from other countries or book cheaper airline tickets but doing all this while being protected from being doxed or having my data leaked. What VPN would you guys recommended? I have heard PIA VPN is good. Also, is getting into using a VPN something that requires a steep learning curve? Appreciate any help. Thank you!

[@celeriumlerium8266]

I think if you're paying for one thing and need to pay for something else just to use the first thing you should re-evaluate your life. Stop burning money.

[@thelasttellurian]

I think of this like this: In order to connect to the internet I have to either trust my ISP company or a VPN company (because if you use a VPN and SDNS all your ISP knows is that you use a VPN). Now there is a risk with the VPN I have researched for days and many security sites agree that it can be trusted - is, in fact, a government honeypot that is used by millions for the last decade and has not been caught. On the other hand, I know for a fact my ISP shares all of my data with my government, no court order is needed. So I choose to use VPN because then they have to work with the court of another country in order to get my data which requires too much effort from them. It's not perfect or riskless - there is no such thing as living risk-free - but it's the lowest-hanging fruit theory - unless they have a strong suspicion of something very bad, they will not go through the trouble and risk burning forever this VPN in my country.

[@trumpisthemessiah7017]

I know this is a crazy idea, but maybe don't break the law? Then you got nothing to worry about...

[@tumultoustortellini]

@@trumpisthemessiah7017 Who said he's breaking the law? If privacy is such a bad thing to want, give me your credit card number, date, funny numbers on back, and your ssn. Bet you won't

[@misakamikoto8785]

Or just use a work computer at work and log in as a local account...

[@majorgnu]

As if the law, as it is currently written and interpreted, is the only thing you have to worry about. Data lingers with changing laws and regimes, and not all such changes may have qualms about persecution of people for previously legal things. You think a newly installed neonazi regime would hesitate to use data collected by the previous regime in a persecution of their scapegoat minority of choice?

[@asdfssdfghgdfy5940]

@@trumpisthemessiah7017 Once when I was contesting something with my network provider (Optus lol), the person said, out loud, on speakerphone while I was in public, my phub search history and how disgusting it was. That was enough reason for me to use a VPN.

[@TravisNewton1]

I agree! I have hated these ads when they first started rolling out and even more now. They're very misleading. Especially for a lot of the reasons you mentioned. When it comes to VPNs, I roll my own. For a while, I just used a Wireguard VPN on a virtual firewall I have setup in my data center (I run a hosting company). Lately, I've started setting up a Headscale VPN (Tailscale, but the server-side component is third-party and reversed engineered Tailscale control server). So I really only use VPNs now for their intended purpose: to connect my device to a network it needs to access. I really only use the full tunneling capabilities when I'm on a network I do not trust - such as an AirBnB, hotel wifi, coffeeshop wifi, etc. And that's all you need it for.

[@resolveseed6913]

@@je4350 they have other things to do

[@JacobZigenis]

@@je4350 No part of that is illegal, what are you talking about?

[@competetodefeat4610]

Your spare bedroom does not count as a hosting company...Let me know when it dries out behind those ears son.

[@imshaunnurse]

​@@competetodefeat4610 doesn't take much to set something like that up for one device to run through

[@johnjennings3245]

Are vpns good for public Wi-Fi protection like airports and hotels? If a hacker monitoring the same network was good enough, would a vpn at least slow him down?

[@sdis8253]

what about decentralized vpn's or dpn's are they as safe as projected ?

[@milohdd]

I've always felt that if a company (like Nord VPN) is spending all that money on marketing constant sponsor spots then its probably not investing very heavily in the product itself, just like Raycons which are actually just cheap rebranded generic earbuds at a significant markup.

[@insu_na]

To be fair: running VPN services is incredibly cheap. I want to found my own ISP, which is why I was looking into methods for raising funds, and one of the easiest ones is to start a VPN company. The operating costs are near zero, but you get a decent income with a large enough user base, and the costs don't scale linearly, they actually increase increasingly slower with every new user you gain

[@roycedot]

That makes no sense. Marketing allows more revenue which means more capital to spend on the product, team

[@valegory]

I think renting out a VPS from a trusted, privacy-centric company outside the 14 eyes and hosting your own VPN from it is the best way to be more certain of no web traffic logs being kept, since you're the one setting it up and operating it. Wolfgang's Channel has a good tutorial showing how to set this up

[@colt5189]

Can you recommend a seed box for downloading torrent files to?

[@SupernovaSpence]

@@colt5189 bruh 😂

[@jimmypatton4982]

How are you getting your traffic into your setup? This only moves the onion out one level. Presume the server your renting is in the center of FBI agency and you get the picture how hard it is to rely on single service.

[@riley3269]

No because then you are just offsetting the initial problem of an ip address being tied to you. All traffic from that address is tied to you.

[@laztheripper]

@@riley3269 Which is fine, that ip won't have the same physical location as your home and if entities start pinging that ip, or even compromise it, it doesn't affect your home connection. Plus you actually own the server you're passing all your data through, and you can implement sniffing tools to get rid of ads or use it as a firewall, or analyze traffic of different sites you go to. It being one layer is fine, just add more layers if you're that worried, or get a vps with multiple static ips. Anyway the main way sites track you is cookies and you're still sending them when using a regular vpn, so yea.

[@robertchristensen7950]

I was wondering if a vpn on a virtual machine would protect the host machine from any viruses or outside attacks. currently have mine on usb wireless, and locked it out from the network card. just wondering about what other options are out there.

[@_marcobaez]

Thank you Sun! What do you think about ProtonVPN in Switzerland?

[@Leo-sd3jt]

One of the worst things about NordVPN is that when you're using it on your PC, it opens up your browser to login. Thus if you have your browser set to remember open pages then NordVPN's client launching the browser will send traffic through a public network before you even get a chance to sign in. And speaking of China and other places that might be blocking VPNs, the fact that you have to use a browser to go to their web page to login is insane since it allows for access to be blocked by blocking the login page. A while ago there was another vpn company called ProXPN. It would login into the vpn via its vpn client but then the vpn client would reach out to the company domain to download a list of server IPs over an http connection. It was so badly designed. And the worst part is that it would clear out the existing list before any new connection so if the domain was blocked on your current network then it would just not work. It's weird how bad the vpn companies think the whole thing through.

[@trumpisthemessiah7017]

I heard nord is run by the fbi... so that criminals would hand over all their info directly to them. No warrant required.

[@hivemind514]

while nordvpn site is blocked in russia, and pretty much non of their vpn servers ended up working for me after february 2022, i can confirm that login page still works since i continue to use nordpass

[@cjalmighty]

Recently I've been thinking of using the split tunneling feature in my VPN (ProtonVPN) and changing my usage of the service. I basically login to all my personal accounts on my computer through the VPN, but then I have those same accounts on my phone without a VPN, so there's not really much point of me doing that anymore. I might put Mullvad Browser through my VPN for general web browsing and my Firefox not through it for my personal accounts. Thanks for the additional insight in this video, Sun. I'd love to hear your thoughts on Mullvad Browser by the way.

[@MrEthanhines]

I'm in Canada and I use a VPN on my Android phone to get by the geofencing imposed on some apps. However since most VPN's slow my connection down and I am using it to do the job then once the apps is "tricked" into thinking I am in the USA, I disconnect the VPN and use the local connection.

[@Anondady]

Some good points but I wonder if you get a man in the middle attack would the vpn help to protect you in a better way? Also can dns change alone be enough to prevent isp snooping on you to sell your info or target you? Thanks for that video.

[@tobias131314]

Nice video Sun, appreciate the depth and nuance, and challenging the status quo where VPNs are so often touted as a magic cure-all with no downsides (often by ‘tech’ KZbinrs). One thing not addressed in the video is your privacy from the perspective of the individual websites that you visit (which can read your HTTPS traffic since they are the intended recipient). Without a VPN, you will usually be connecting from the same IP address (your home network), and so even when you are not logged in the website will be able to correlate all your traffic into a detailed profile about you connected to your IP address (e.g. every page you visited / search you made on the specific site). Wondering if you had any thoughts on this since the video focused on ISPs and VPNs as bad actors, but didn’t address the websites themselves. Thanks once again for the great content, need more KZbinrs getting into the finer details like this!

[@haveaniceday4585]

Depending on if they really want to know who you are they could do browserfingerprinting which works even without your real IP address.

[@seraphina985]

The problem there is that there are a lot of ways for a website to still identify you regardless, modern browsers are extremely complex and their many features leaks a huge amount of data about both the browser and the local machine that can be used to identify it. There are browsers that are designed to make this harder but there is a limit to what you can do without actually killing the valid functionality that those functions exist to provide in the first place. Short of completely turning off all running of server provided scripts of any kind which will break basically every website there is pretty much no way to completely prevent fingerprinting. Also making browsers resistant to fingerprinting is a double edged sword since this in itself requires the browser to behave unusually and that is additional entropy that can add uniqueness to the fingerprint so it just becomes an arms race to create counters to the counters.

[@jamesready5]

This “privacy” theatre does nothing for if you go ahead and set up your PC/laptop, still on an admin profile, or your mobile device with your actual name and information. It’s the logging in with an actual identity that gets you. If they don’t actually know who it is, they can collect all the cookies, browser info, font settings, language settings, etc they want. The key is, the information big tech is collecting needs to be correlated to an actual person for the profiling and relationship mapping to work. Otherwise the data they sell to your government about “user x” is useless. That’s the end goal of privacy. To make it as if you are living life person to person, paying cash, voicing your opinions about anything, all without it being tracked and used against you.

[@seraphina985]

@@jamesready5 Depends exactly what the buyer wants, if you want to sell something or figure out the best way to manipulate voters etc the advertising profile of everyone using the internet in the target area will do the trick just fine. Not to mention of course this all assumes that you never at any point sign in to any site that is affiliated with the same ad network ever. If you have done that even once ever your fingerprint has a name pertinently attached to it too which will then be useful for more direct and manipulative interventions.

[@seraphina985]

@@jamesready5 Indeed, another area I think people fail to realise how much of a problem it could be is in say targeting a dissident group for more intensive monitoring and deanonymisation efforts. If you can identify the statistical similarities between known members of the target group you can search for similar patterns in others to flag them as a target of interest. There are ways for government entities to deanonymize a lot of things some are time consuming, expensive, or both but if you can narrow down the target pool these efforts become easier to fund. Also helps with efforts for more traditional infiltration techniques if you better know the profile of the sorts of people that these groups usually attract you can create a more effective bait persona for your infiltration agent.

[@electricjuice5627]

Also Mark is an engineer, not an IT guy per se. I think we shouldn't expect him to know the intricate details of how a VPN actually works. I believe he was just given a sponsorship script to read.

[@silverhawkroman]

That text he spoke is pretty much the copy paste all VPNs have for their sponsorships

[@danielyoung_]

KZbinrs have a level of responsibility to verify their claims, including in their sponsor reads.

[@Tao_Tology]

Buuuuuuulllllllshit. Rober _specifically_ sells himself as a) a smart guy b) a trained and experienced engineer c) a 'let's work out how this works' He 100% knows the flaws of vpns.

[@niqqaplz9648]

@@Tao_Tology money talks

[@Tao_Tology]

@@niqqaplz9648 'Dirty cash, I want you. Dirty cash, I need you o-ohh'

[@torengo]

I'm wondering if the VPN speed is faster if I connect to my own country?

[@twiciaa]

so what if i just wanna access different movies in different disney+ in each country should I get VPN

[@111yegreS]

Sadly, in some countries, where there is a heavy government censorship or external sanctions that block some of crucial services, it is not an option to not use VPN almost all the time. And sadly it is not limited to China, that was used as an example in this video. Many countries have this issue, to lesser or bigger extent. So for millions of people using VPN is not a priviledge that will improve their privacy or something, it is a crucial part of using web. The problem with VPN ads is that they are mostly targeted at customers from the countries that are doing fine without VPN.

[@hivemind514]

The vpn providers that actually work in those restricted countries do not buy ads from popular youtubers, thats for sure. I'm not even able to pay for nord from Russia, but they do keep asking me to renew :)

[@111yegreS]

@@hivemind514 That is true! Meanwhile, Mullvad that was mentioned in the video, not only accepts crypto, but also gifted, i think, 10k free 1 year subscriptions to Russian users last year. Sadly, part of its servers are now blocked by Roscomnadzor, but only part of them :)

[@PeterLawton]

Whenever I hear of heavy censorship in a country, I think of it as an indirect admission of government failure. Such a govt is telling the public that it is doing a good job, but the reality is less in some way(s), and the govt doesn't want people to know.

[@bobjohnbowles]

You mentioned using a VPN in China. Basically as a foreigner who wants to maintain social media contact (gmail, FaceBook, KZbin, etc) with anyone outside China it is more or less essential. Ten+ years ago I discovered the hard way that the GFWC was smart enough to detect a VPN connection and shut it down unless _you_ were smart in how you used it. I am pretty sure that given the advances in supercomputer power in China this even more the case now. Interestingly, nowadays super-cheap VPNs are available in China, but you can bet your boots they are back-doored, so it depends on your use case whether you want to risk using them.

[@I.____.....__...__]

Yup, using a VPN is literally illegal in China and the CCP can and does clamp down if they want.

[@Iceman96051]

I think TOR has always been much more recommended to use in insanely restrictive companies. Also, China forces every company they own to forfeit anything they want from a company at any time, I could guarantee those companies have all the usage stored. Like you said, it's a pretty high risk there. I think they can tell somebody is using TOR but it more becomes a question if they want to waste time to figure it out

[@NellieMaySanford]

I was wondering if any in china are able to access content that is normally banned. or if they download/upload torrents

[@lijiang5600]

@@NellieMaySanford I just spent 2 months there. You can access almost everything with a variety of VPNs available(Funny enough Nord is not one of them). Every government monitors internet traffic, China may be more aggressively doing so than most others, but if you're not doing/searching/spreading anything illegal, they don't really care if you use VPNs.

[@bugsygoo]

​@@NellieMaySanfordI'm watching this from China, using a VPN.

[@EmeraldHill-vo1cs]

As someone fairly in the dark,, what about Tails with vpn? Imust say that firefox must do something cos theyve got amazon enquiring if its me 1500 kilometres away.

[@mrwilliams8623]

Does mullvad work in Egypt so far only express works?

[@quantumdischarge]

Thank you for the video Sun! Can you share your opinion about services like Tailscale or Zerotier where we can tunnel things like our mobile phones through our home internet connections as an exit node similar to creating our own VPN ? This seems a lot more viable nowadays where internet speeds for home is much faster and also fiber makes it symmetrical.

[@xhanderhoek5315]

I am pretty security conscious and prefer to have my data anonymized as much as possible. My Setup: Wireguard tunnel between home Mikrotik and AWS server hosted "somewhere else" Adguard Home DNS-level add blocking for my whole home network hosted on the same instance above (DNS over HTTPS TLS with custom cert) Crowdsec blacklist server updating firewall rules on my router dynamically with a large community-owned blacklist (hosted locally) Do you think the above is adequate? Or do you have any suggestions? I would prefer not to used paid-for VPN services as their "no logging" policies are suspect

[@phototristan]

LOL

[@josiechaney9010]

You answered EVERY question I had about VPNs… but couldn’t seem to get answers-thank you!!!! 💕💕💕💕💕💕

[@comedianmattrossey]

Hi Sun, Thanks for clarifying this for me. I have been seriously considering getting a VPN, but from what I could tell, it didn't seem like any of them were really anything special. When I find businesses or services that are highly advertised I begin to doubt if they really are all that or if they are hype. And if it seems that they are all hype, then its for 1 of 2 reasons, being that they are really incredible, or they are all hype. You just answered most of the questions I had.

[@EnjoyerofYoutube]

This is super helpful, thank you! I'm so glad to hear that using a VPN isn't necessary in most cases because as you said, it really does slow down my internet speed.

[@silverhawkroman]

Obviously, since it's routing all over the damn place. I realized this while using Tor and then when it came out that exit nodes are being monitored to grab any whistleblowers I knew any commercial VPNs that came after were pretty much useless

[@VRTIXE]

@@silverhawkroman Open Source :)

[@thijsdeclerck5775]

Thank you for another great video, I look forward to seeing more of how you have set up your devices to strike a balance between performance usability and privacy and security

[@alstonian78]

I have a questions: is using VPN really get you better price when buying from online shopping site like amazon?

[@rudiservo]

I think the worst threat to security is mobile devices connection to a "free wifi" or 4G, because the router is the phone, hopefully a self hosted full route VPN will protect a mobile device, a lot depends on what you have (IDS/IPS NGFW), but I think it does provide at least some level of protection, hopefully from zero day issues.

[@mikehh8020]

My ISP likes to slap me on the wrist for DMCA stuff when I don't use a VPN for certain activities. They've temporarily shut my internet off multiple times. With a VPN, I haven't had that problem.

[@lokelaufeyson9931]

Dont step into the water if you dont want to get your feets wet. .. cant walk on the water like jesus did..

[@ChrisGoldie]

@@lokelaufeyson9931 downloading a video or song that is no longer available anywhere cause the company left it in the vault is not walking on water. Its damn near preservation at this point 😂

[@ANonymous-mo6xp]

Yep, my ISP spies on me, so yeah I need a fucking VPN.

[@lokelaufeyson9931]

@@ChrisGoldie If they turn off the internet and look at what the customer is doing with the internet, its over the limit and far over the limit. Change ISP is my only advice. My isp dont give a f*ck what im doing with my internet when im using it daily. IDK if usa have a messed up system that allow monopoly but where i live its illegal since a few years back. We have our corrupted ISPs here aswell but their only customers is the dead generation (the elderly, the retired and the tech zombies). If you show a blatant fake lawyer paper to them they will give you that persons entire life story from birth to that day.. I dont use those trash ISPs.

[@lokelaufeyson9931]

@@ANonymous-mo6xp tell them that you look at alot of pron and you dont want them to look at your internet history. If you can you can tell them that you watch everything between mormon pron and BDSM

[@TheSkyweasel92]

One use case is to allow you to share your mobile hotspot connection unthrottled with other devices. When using VPN your usage won’t count towards your limited “hotspot data”

[@ko-Daegu]

Would u explain this more ? I didn’t fully voted who’s throttling your hotspot ?

[@PatrikKron]

On some phones the hotspot did not work when I used a vpn on the phone.

[@onebacon_]

@@ko-Daegu some carriers restrict hotspot usage (which is very stupid). When you use a VPN it "turns on" a NAT on your phone so that the carrier doesn't know of the hotspot

[@msas6020]

​@@onebacon_ I never knew that was possible. Thank you!

[@wolfsquared]

Yes, Verizon has unlimited data on phone, but hotspot is limited to plans gig limit for full speed. Then it throttles hit spot to slow speeds.

[@lul.t.6831]

I like the way you delivered the information, even though I’m not resourceful or patient enough to an engage in other ways to use the internet privately. I will keep this in mind either way

[@kavianrowghani5085]

The random door opening at @4:05 had me thinking someone was coming into my house downstairs 😅

[@PelenTan]

Ok. But what if I use _two_ VPN's at once? That's twice as safe, right? I wrote that as a joke, but one of the reasons I stopped using a VPN regularly was it was causing issues when I tried to log into my company's VPN. I didn't pursue why, but I'm guessing it had to do with some of the endpoints I was coming out of being flagged.

[@bsenka]

In Canada, now that the feds have passed a new internet censorship bill, I'm never going to use the internet for anything without a VPN (I use PIA, not Nord). If nothing else, it circumvents the ever increasing instances of geolocking. I'm just not going to put up with "this content is not available in your country" or "this content requires a subscription in your country" (even though it's free everywhere else) any more.

[@ANonymous-mo6xp]

Yep, C-11 is censorship on steroids. I'm sorry you now live in a totalitarian hell state. Turdo is a bastard in more ways than one.

[@RichyRich-eo9uk]

Yep, fellow Canuck here. Trudeau will not dictate to me what I can and cannot watch or throw a bunch of inferior canadian content into my algorithm.

[@KITOMERO]

What kind of new internet censorship bill did Canada pass?

[@dfs-comedy]

@@KITOMERO Canada did not pass an "internet censorship" bill. That's just hype from disgruntled Conservatives.

[@alextaylor8776]

@@dfs-comedy Ok there Liberal, please educate us “ conservative conspiracy theorist on the truth as your freedom loving king Trudeau sees it.

[@PhelanPKell]

I haven't used a VPN in quite some time for casual purpose stuff. For work we use a VPN (Cisco AnyConnect), but that's configured and maintained by our network team, and is technically used in a different way from something like Nord or SurfShark. For home I can connect to my personal VPN when I'm outside the house. Similar store there. I can use it to access things I don't want to be visible to the outside world. I also use enterprise-grade hardware for my networking, so there's that.

[@FlipJoy-Demo]

Simple Question: How does ProtonVPN compare to Mullvad?

[@JesusVillanueva]

I agree in large part with the main point of this video, Most people don't need to use a VPN that often. I only find it useful while traveling, mainly at hotels and airport when having to use my notebook computer. I worry more about the people I have to share the Wifi with at those 2 locations, At home I control who has access to MY network, and by the time I'm on the internet AES does the rest.

[@colinmunro3158]

For people who plan to use Tor, there are a few Linux distrobutions that use Tor for all of their internet capabilities. The easiest to use is probably Tails but it's not a one size fits all scenario. Which secure Linux distrobution is the right choice largely depends on what devices you need it to work with, and your overall use case. For example, Tails is currently incompatible with Apple Silicon (ARM) based macs as well as the last few generations of Intel (x86) based macs.

[@TheChayxxx]

Alot of these issues apply to TOR as well. Its been widely known that traffic can be snooped and correlated if the bad actor knows what they are doing.

[@LeeirahBrashka]

Use a VPN is you use TOR 😂😂 any link can be a honey pot on TOR.

[@brekkoh]

fwiw brave has Tor built in

[@trappedcat3615]

​@@TheChayxxxTraffic correlation is probably not an issue for people with moderate threat levels, and it's only an issue if one leaves crumbs of personal info on low traffic sites.

[@lanzer22]

Network engineer since 97. I used VPN when I wanted to spoof my IP for pretending to be in another country so I can download some foreign apps. There’s so little security benefits that it doesn’t justify for the performance hit at all. The web is safer than you think, and the best security is to learn about the best practices you can do for yourself rather than to rely on one company to somehow do it all for you. Using a password manager for example. VPN doesn’t handle anything when some company gets hacked and your password is now shared with thousands of hackers.

[@HomelessShoe]

When it comes to security, you're totally right, but that is not the problem. Some people value privacy, you know. I personally don´t trust vpn services, so I run Wireguard on a raspberry pi with a 4G(I use cash prepaid)/Wifi router (I can turn on Tor mode if I want) attached which can be easily (re)deployed anywhere. You can stack it with multiple layers, but it is obviously more expensive and it doesn´t do much good in speed performance xd. I also make often use of TOR (slow af though) on my devices and virtual machines (and that sort of sandboxing tactics), redirecting my normal phone calls via VOIP, using two phone numbers to prevent contact tracing (one for internet use such as 2FA and one for my social circle), I make use of degoogled smartphones (at the moment Graphene OS ), using open source Password mananger and so on (you get the idea).

[@leenevin8451]

What if a government agency request data from your isp?

[@WillCouch]

I’m competent enough to understand what this stuff is to a vague extent but too ignorant on the subject to understand really the big picture of much of how the internet/ privacy methods work. So sorry if this is a completely stupid question haha. That said if my router has the ability to make the entire network tor is this different than the standard way of just having it on your phone / computer? If so is this better?

[@jamescollins8397]

Since using a VPN for general surfing, product searches & shopping, I've found that I'm am no longer getting targeted advertising; also, my search results are no longer specifically related to my search history.... for that reason alone I will stick with using a VPN.

[@BF-rn3oz]

Thank you for highlighting mulvad! I havent tried it yet. Overall, I appreciate you helping the layman cut through the sales narrative.

[@D.von.N]

I have been using Firefox for about a year and I found it launching much slower than the chromium based browsers. Is it just me for some reason or is it a common thing?

[@kendrickhummer8071]

What's your opinion of expressvpn using RAM instead of harddrives?

[@damian99669]

I use a vpn on my personal phone while connected to my company's wifi (I work in remote areas with no cell coverage). They have a guest access portal, but have limited what websites you can access and could possibly also see which sites were visited. The vpn gives me access to all sites and limits the information available to my company about my usage.

[@danwake4431]

same here. work blocks video heavy sites on their guest wifi. so a vpn is a big help.

[@tidalleaf]

Great video! I have a question: Your argument is mostly from a privacy standpoint. What about security? Can a malicious wifi network (e.g., a public network or just a badly-configured home network) still inject malware if you connect to it without a VPN layer?

[@chryslerxc]

yes that would be possible except your browser enforces strict certificate pinning like chrome does for certain google domains (it has the TLS-certificates hard-coded). It get's harder if you use DoT or DoH like Sun

[@sunknudsen]

Thanks for pitching in… spot on.

[@onebacon_]

This is a fear created by the VPN companies. If you use HTTPS, then the website your connecting to is guaranteed to be the one you opened. No one can see/change any content along the way.

[@mtebor]

I do use a vpn in certain places when I am not 100% that the internet is secure. I live in a HOA that provides internet to each home, but how do I know that is secure? When dealing with employee payroll and online banking, I will take the extra security every time. Yes, I do suffer speed connection (300 to 35 mbps) but I am fine with that. Thoughts on Express VPN?

[@brandonbrandon9965]

Your HOA is extremely sus… expressVPN is trash imo most of the big names advertising everywhere are. Id go with mullvad like stated in the video or Proton. Proton is based in Switzerland which has extremely strict privacy laws, its client side is open source and server side recently audited. Look into them, those are really the only two id somewhat trust atm.

[@dr_jaymz]

What's the point of dns over https if you then connect to that ip then fundamentally they still have a list of domains? I think that the way around that is a proxy.

[@Fattydeposit]

Snowden revelations also revealed that TOR users are basically put on a 'suspicious' list by the NSA too. That in itself killed my interest in using it.

[@Zeetana1]

So they succeeded in scaring you into submission/to not even try. At this point it doesn't really matter what you use, anything they don't like will put you on their list...

[@XanVicious]

@@Zeetana1 straight up lol. Real life criminals do way worse than you think, I don’t expect you to know but the drill scene in the US is a great example of cops not really caring until it’s too late. As long as you don’t move like someone like Kay Flock or King Von you should be ok.

[@LiEnby]

So what you connect over the plain internet instead? Lol

[@jacobwood7080]

Lol like your not on the list regardless

[@johnnydoe00]

I'm pretty sure they also cracked TOR, besides, anyone who asks questions is probably on a list anyways

[@Gallery90]

I tried using a VPN. The sites where I might have needed it most (such as financial sites) recognized that I was trying to log in from a VPN. The only way to get logged in without a lot of hassle was to turn the VPN off. 🤔

[@user-bc4en5ig8j]

So at Christmas time I start searching for gifts online. Then my daughter starts seeing ads for everything I have been looking for. How do I prevent this? They must be tracking my movement via IP address right?

[@CryptoDC-]

What would you recommend using in a public place like a coffee shop?

[@randykitchleburger2780]

The 4G/5G hotspot on your phone. It solves any issues of MiTM attacks at the shop and is probably far faster

[@petersvideofile]

You are the first guy who I've seen actually acknowledge VPN's are a honey pot and probably quite afew have back doors for 3 letter agencies. I don't see why more people don't just spin up a VPN every time they need one using a VPS host.... As soon as your done for the day you just delete the VPS. I mean I know that the same 3 letter agencies could be running a journaling file system on the VPS hosts to keep every single file system change, but it can't be any worse than using a VPN.

[@jaydouglas8845]

The government needs more time and resources to monitor everyone on the internet and what every individual is doing. Contrary to popular belief, the only organization that conducts that kind of surveillance is the NSA, and even then, they generally have to obtain a warrant from FISA.

[@mitchellsmith4601]

We use VPNs provided by our clients’ appliances or firewalls to work on their networks. There’s usually no reason to use VPNs while browsing websites as most websites use HTTPS these days. If I’m at a coffee shop and am concerned about security, I’ll just connect to our own company VPN and use that.

[@jpsuper]

In Austria and Germany I haven't been able to change the DNS on the modem/router. Certain devices have been setup with a DNS other than my ISP, in the hope that works.

[@billwilliams1709]

What about using VPN's on wireless devices connected to public networks like coffee shops, hotels, etc. I was under the impression that it's good prevention against man in the middle attacks. What's the consensus on this?

[@wakaneut]

I started using it a month ago. But not for security purposes (I know VPN isn't much about internet security). My country has just implemented major censorships. Blocked many many sites that they consider "harmful" (example, yes they think reddit is "unhealthy"). Nope, this isn't one of the easily bypassed by DNS trick. I'm never into censorship, so I started using VPN just for that. I don't even use it for "overseas Netflix" either.

[@Winning113]

what's the difference between all your traffic being routed through 1 VPN provider versus your ISP? It's the same thing but at least with the VPN there is some anonymity to what you're actually doing versus your ISP seeing anything they want. Or I am missing something?

[@djdawizz]

The ISP cannot snoop the data inside of the TLS encrypted streams that most/all of your traffic are encapsulated in. You're basically repeating his point why the VPN is unnecessary. It's an added encryption layer on top of datastreams that are already encrypted.

[@annaturquoise7114]

plain ISP isn’t better than VPN: he’s offering other alternatives

[@annaturquoise7114]

you need to use add-ons or some form of DoH

[@darrellbunger724]

Appreciate the video man, thanks for the maturity lesson and how to actually use these tools. I hear that question all the time, do I need a VPN? I'm in IT, and always have to explain the things you're discussing here too people seeing those ads. We're on the same page as far as VPN usage and TOR usage go. I'm a big advocate for education over any security or antivirus solutions because you don't really need them if you do it right and just be careful, spend a few extra bucks on a decent firewall that won't Bing you over yearly licensing for modular features, etc.

[@JigmeDatse]

Very good points. There *are* use cases. Some of the ISPs are really terrible. Finding ways around these issues certainly is worth it.

[@Valencia-gh8fl]

I use VPN just so my modem provider can't see what sites I visit, and not to anonymize myself. I would like some better, more reliable, and free (FOSS) alternative to my VPN company. If you know of something to replace our VPNs, that would be a nice video

[@pebblesandwoowoo5924]

I'm so glad I saw this! Now I know why VPNs are useless for watching things available abroad! I tried to get Disney Now in the UK; thankfully, I've had free money back after 30 days when I wasn't able to access US content but I've been unable to get access to what I've wanted to watch. Funnily enough, I went back to my onion browser to stream from random sites 😂 Can't beat that lol

[@guerillahag]

that's really interested, i didnt realise the whole 'if you're logged in then the vpn knows your location at all times' point

[@kkdiobel]

Access to marketing agency's KZbin channels in different countries from a my country is difficult due to the two-step identification (it is not always possible to reach the local colleague who receives the code). Please suggest a solution to ease this process.

[@Sai-tb1xt]

as a security professional, a bing THANK YOU ublock origin is also the only adblock one can trust imho and mullvad has a proven track record of standing behind what they are preaching i hope your video reaches a broad audience

[@therealb888]

Are you saying you're the sec pro or he is? Coz neither of you sound like you are.

[@Sai-tb1xt]

@@therealb888 this is the internet so everybody can claim or counterclaim what he/she/it likes, but my resume tells me i am somewhat of a security professional... you can also ask some three letter agencies in europe i have been working with in the past 10 years but then again... this is the internet and words are just words

[@Jaykurosakii]

I use adguard, ublock origin, and bitdefender anti tracker

[@script_tag]

8:35. Thats where the answer is. Once again, thank you SponsorBlock

[@terryalbracht7516]

Does a VPN stop companies like airlines from raising prices on flights when you return to a site to check a particular flight cost?

[@peterk6797]

I've seen some videos regarding how T0R users are being targeted, I think it was regarding exit nodes, is there anything privacy related for the internet that is 100% solid ?

[@DalePatch]

The biggest reason to route traffic through VPN is to prevent 3rd parties from gaining info from your ISP, but best practice would be creating your own VPN server in the data center of your choice. The data center will essentially become your new ISP and still have all the same privacy issues, but hopefully the data center country and policies are better than your residential provider.

[@DalePatch]

A compromise between creating your own and using a service would be seedbox providers. They allow one click VPN creation, but are at least one step removed as a provider and have reason to encourage privacy of their users.

[@user-cx7iv6zx6f]

@@DalePatch really? what is seedbox and how could it allow "one click VPN creation"?

[@DalePatch]

@@user-cx7iv6zx6f A seedbox is a server designed to run torrent software. It downloads the files then acts as a seed reuploading them to the the torrent network. Usually the companies that specialize in seedbox hosting will also have additional apps you can install such as VPN. Many provide these through one click installations but it depends on the specific host.

[@op_snooze]

Shout out to NoScript and Giorgio Maone. This is a really nice piece of software that lets you disassemble a site's scripts one at a time and prevent ads, pixel trackers, and anything else from showing up if you don't want it to.

[@zuezsz]

Do they have a app for iPhone?

[@konstantinstefanov365]

Thank you for your great clarification on the matter. Great points, great clarification.

[@glenvelascomi3115]

I was expecting a more tech savvy in depth approach to the discussion. But perhaps that was just a matter of preference on my part as I was begging for more. Overall it was insightful and I did get a lot of ideas from this. Well done.