Iâm interested to hear what you think a vpn will protect you against. Or what you think the flaws in Toms arguments are.
Edit: I donât know about you, but I trust my own, GDPR-backed isp far, far more than I trust whichever foreign based vpn company. Especially if they for it for free or cheap.
The only thing youâre âprotectingâ yourself from by using a vpn to surf the Internet, is your own provider. It wonât stop any spying software on your phone, or any nefarious scripts on the websites you visit.
Tomâs argument was more nuanced than that, which is why I linked it. I suggest you watch it and explain where heâs wrong if you want to give your argument to ignore him any weight. Ad hominems and âimaginedâ arguments alone wonât get you very far, Iâm afraid.
I actually work in cyber security and I was really happy Tom Scott released that video. VPN companies are some of the scummiest companies out there, and their rampant sponsorships on YouTube were shameless misinformation and fear mongering in order to scare you into giving all your internet traffic to them. Seeing so many sellout tech YouTubers take their sponsorships despite knowing better COUGH NetworkChuck, was one of my biggest pet peeves.
There are seemingly legit VPN companies out there, and there are some legitimate use cases for them, but what Tom is addressing are the shady ones that lie to you about what theyâre for and how they help you for their own monetary and in some cases data mining benefit. In most cases you do not need a VPN, and it doesnât do anything to protect you from âinternet criminalsâ, or provide extra âsecurityâ and it only âprotectsâ your privacy by shifting the for-profit company that gets to see all the websites you visit.
I too would like to know why you think a VPN is needed âon todayâs webâ, I would bet money it came directly out of one of theirs ads scripts.
I doubt either one of you will ever hear from them. I guess they havenât even watched the video to begin with.
When Iâm away from home, I use my own Wireguard VPN back into my private network, where all of my traffic is filtered.
Thatâs your own VPN, not a commercial VPN service and youâre using that for what I would assume is DNS filtering. Thats entirely unrelated to what a commercial VPN service does and what Tom Scottâs video is about. And thatâs not even a benefit of your VPN, your VPN is just a tool youâre using for remote access to your DNS filter/server which is whatâs actually providing you that service. I could do the same exact thing with a recursive DNS server and Pihole using DOH without a VPN at all.
I use a VPN for my job as well, and it isnât to protect company products (we donât make a product). Itâs to keep prying eyes out.
That is again an entirely different use case and product than what a commercial VPN service is offering. Thatâs not even for privacy, itâs for secure remote access to your company network.
Iâm sorry, but when my wife and kidâs phones are showing them ads for things we talked about 5 minutes ago, they appear horrified by it. Then they move along like nothing happened. Thatâs the typical user.
Thatâs not a problem a VPN service solves.
I will continue to not be spied on 24/7 by corporations and my government.
With a VPN service like ProtonVPN, all youâre doing is changing the corporation that can see which sites you visit from your ISP, to Proton. It isnât inherently any more private or secure, youâre just choosing which corporation you allow the ability to spy on you.
I donât remember if I saw that video from Tom Scott or not, but I imagine his argument was along the lines of, âif you arenât doing anything nefarious or you donât live in a nation state that censors you, then you have nothing to worry aboutâ.
No, his argument was that outside of spoofing your location, and hiding which sites you visit from your ISP specifically, VPN services donât provide the average consumer with any additional benefit over what you get for free by default due to the wonderful inventions of TLS, and HSTS. The point is that VPN service companies use scare tactics to get you to purchase a product you donât need to solve problems you donât have. NetworkChuck made a whole sponsored video about how somebody can man-in-the-middle you at a coffee shop to steal your credit card information to demonstrate the effectiveness of a VPN service and the attack he demonstrated was literally impossible. He created a fake, non-real world scenario straight out of 2003 to deceive the less tech literate public in order to shill a VPN service.
Tom Scott provided a fantastic public service by educating people on what a VPN actually DOES and what it DOESNâT DO. So people can actually make a decision as to whether they need one due to the facts, not misinformation and false advertisement. You on the other hand still canât seem to articulate what exactly you think a VPN services does for you and how it does it. You have a lot of buzzwords and vague statements about âbeing spied onâ, and never actually said why you think commercial VPN products should be used by the average user âOn todays webâ.
