Serious question. I often see people say to use a vpn to do certain things online so they can’t be tracked, but aren’t the various vpn ‘suppliers’ just companies that ultimately want/need your money? What is stopping them from logging your use and given the right circumstances selling it off to advertisers/law enforcement etc? Why should I trust some random company to protect the data that my service provider apparently is not protecting? And if there is any truth behind the claims how do I determine who to trust?
Kind of. First of all there’s a big misconception about what a VPN really does. It’s just providing an entry point into the ‘internet’ that isn’t your house. If you log into facebook via a VPN facebook obviously still knows it’s you. The VPN only protects you from your ISP/people snooping traffic on the network you’re connected to/your employer from knowing that you’re accessing facebook.
That being said if you’re not going to identifiable sites - say watching Youtube without signing in or something - then you can get to a level where it’s ‘really private’. However it involves not trusting the VPN. To do this you need to make sure you don’t identify yourself to the VPN, just pay via gift cards (that you bought with cash if you’re really paranoid) or a crypto currency in return for login details. You might struggle to find one that lets you do this without an email so you might need to create a throwaway.
You can then get into whether the throwaway presents a identifiable risk - do you create it while connected to your home network? Try and use a public wifi spot? Use a public computer? Do it over TOR?
But yes - you can get to a reasonable level of certainty. If you’re hiding from any of the big 3 letter organisations (CIA, NSA, etc.) you’re screwed.
You are perfectly right about everything you wrote.
The answer to the last question is research, research, research.
And remember there is no such thing as full anonymity on-line.
And if there is any truth behind the claims how do I determine who to trust?
Why do you think you can trust anyone?
You are absolutely right that blindly trusting a VPN only make browsing the web a lot less secure.
Good question. One might say the companies need to preserver their reputation so that alone is a deterrent, but then again there are many providers who have been cought doing shady stuff, some more than once, and they’re still in the business. The average user doesn’t really care.
Never heard of the etc before.